I'm excited to be co-teaching a handful of class offerings at MIT this Fall 2017! Please spread the word to those who you think might find any or all of these compelling! All motivated students are urged to attend the First Class session. Details below and at the class sites...
Development Ventures ~ Thu 10a-12n E14-633 ~ 15.375/EC.731/MAS.665 ~ http://developmentventures.org ~ Towards the entrepreneurial deployment of emerging market innovations solving problems faced by at least a Billion people worldwide in developing countries and underserved communities.
First Class: Thu 9/7
Revolutionary Ventures ~ Thu 2-4p E15-341 ~ 9.455/15.128/20.454/MAS.883 ~ http://revolutionaryventures.org ~ Exploring personal entrepreneurial strategies and envisioning and building transformative ideas and organizations to initiate and/or accelerate bold engineering revolutions. Email reven@media.mit.edu ASAP if interested.
First Class: Thu 9/7
Future Law (H1) ~ Tue 1-2:30p E14-633 ~ MAS.s71 ~ http://mitfuturelaw.org ~ New Media & AI disrupts Legal Services plus New Laws for Emerging Technologies, e.g. spectrum, space, autonomous driving, etc.
First Class: Tue 9/12 (First Half Semester offering)
Future Commerce (H2) ~ Tue 1-2:30p E14-633 ~ MAS.s72 ~ http://mitfuturecommerce.org ~ New Media including Mobiles, Crypto, AI, Blockchain meets Markets & Finance, Transactions & Security.
First Class: Tue 10/31 (Second Half Semester offering)
Understanding MIT ~ Tue 4-6p 9-450A ~ 11.s941 ~ http://understandingmit.org ~ Special seminar on the challenges of designing and building research universities and crafting conditions for a supportive, vibrant, and entrepreneurial learning community.
First Class: Tue 9/12
Independent Studies & UROPs ~ On Invention, Entrepreneurship, VCPE, etc
Glenn Hodges writing in National Geographic spotlights a paradigm shift in Geology, the discovery by former school teacher Harley Bretz of the cataclysmic flooding which created the channeled scablands of Washington in northwest USA...
"Bretz’s research was thorough [when he first presented it in 1927], and his map of the channeled scablands was so accurate that it’s a virtual tracing of modern-day satellite images, creating the immediate impression of channeled floodwaters. But his audience [at a DC geologists conclave] -- none of whom had visited, much less studied, the scablands -- was having none of it. Bretz’s hypothesis was not just “wholly inadequate,” in the words of one critic, but “preposterous” and “incompetent."
"For some of Bretz’s most stubborn critics, even eyewitness experience wasn’t enough. Bretz’s arch-adversary, Richard Foster Flint, a Yale geologist who remained a premier authority in the field until the 1970s, spent years studying the scablands and resisted Bretz’s theory until he was virtually the only one left who did. He finally acknowledged the scablands flooding (grudgingly, with a single sentence in a textbook in 1971), but as philosopher Thomas Kuhn observed, new scientific truths often win the day not so much because opponents change their minds, but because they die off."
Finally, here's a computer simulation of how it might have happened...
"In 1989, [artist Pat] Rawlings was working on illustrations for a collection of children’s science books by the science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov. Using acrylics, he painted a view of a solar eclipse as seen from the moon, and named it after the date when the next eclipse would cross over the continental United States: August 21, 2017. This week, Rawlings tweeted a photo of the painting, which is at the top of this story. “I actually thought 28 years in the future tourists might watch the eclipse from the Moon,” he wrote. “Sigh.”
P.S. Here's the real thing from Mon 8/21/2017...
"Scientists at UW–Madison’s Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) observed the eclipse through the eye of one of the world’s most advanced weather satellites, GOES-16. The eclipse images from the satellite were taken at a rate of one every five minutes. Stitched together, the images show the shadow of the moon tracking west to east across the continental United States."
Plus here's a previous eclipse seen in March 2016 over ASEAN + Pacific region via the Himawari-8 Spacecraft in Geostationary orbit!
Inhabitatspotlights Dutch city Utrecht to have new greenbuilding complex near central train station...
"The Hawthorn Tower will, like its Milanese predecessor, be blanketed in greenery -- and it’s expected to absorb over 5.4 tons of carbon dioxide. The equivalent of one hectare of woods will be installed on the tower to create a real urban ecosystem with over 30 different vegetal species."
The first use of the A-Bomb as weapon of mass destruction happened today, August 6th, 1945 over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Days later, second use over Nagasaki. Hundred thousand-plus civilians slaughtered, both directly and slowly, agonizingly by the wasting effect of burns and radiation. It was atomic-powered urban armageddon. Here's remarkable footage shot soon after both blasts...
"By getting “religion out of politics”, Europe made space at the political “bargaining table” for economic interests, creating a virtuous cycle of “pro-growth” policy-making. Islamic rulers, by contrast, continued to rely on religious legitimation and economic interests were mostly excluded from politics, leading to governance that focused on the narrow interests of sultans, and the conservative religious and military elites who backed them."
"A new modular medium speed engine power barge design [...] This radiator-cooled modular power barge design permits the same hull to be utilized with a range of power outputs from 80 MW to 180 MW. [...] The new design is presently being modified for dual fuel and natural gas operations to suit combined operations with LNG […] and combined cycle systems for specific market opportunities."
Power barges are the fastest way to ramp up electricity (and cogen + water desal) infrastructure in coastal or navigable river areas. By floating in and being modular, they can be incrementally added to (with more barges) or floated out and moved to new or better location (and/or refurbished). See also my previous posts on this topic!
MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, Enterprise Forum Global, Enterprise Forum of Cambridge, Muddy Charles Pub, African Business Club, Sloan Entrepreneurs for International Development, Global Startup Workshop, Sustainability@MIT, TechLink, Making Progress, HighTechFever.tv, MIT Innovation Tours
I'm excited to be co-teaching a handful of class offerings at MIT this Fall 2017! Please spread the word to those who you think might find any or all of these compelling! All motivated students are urged to attend the First Class session. Details below and at the class sites...
