Survivor Tree ~ Resilience, Survival, Rebirth...

The Survivor Tree thrives beyond near-death and destruction...

"A callery pear tree became known as the "Survivor Tree" after enduring the September 11, 2001 terror attacks at the World Trade Center. In October 2001, the tree was discovered at Ground Zero severely damaged, with snapped roots and burned and broken branches. The tree was removed from the rubble and placed in the care of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. After its recovery and rehabilitation, the tree was returned to the Memorial in 2010. New, smooth limbs extended from the gnarled stumps, creating a visible demarcation between the tree’s past and present. Today, the tree stands as a living reminder of resilience, survival and rebirth."

Kuriositas spots The 9/11 Survivor Tree’s Story Voiced by Whoopi Goldberg: A True Metaphor for the Human Spirit...

"This beautiful animation, with the tree given voice by Whoopi Goldberg, forms the centerpiece of a campaign to encourage people to visit the 9/11 Memorial & Museum outside of which the tree stands proud and tall, welcoming visitors. Survivor Tree was animated by Elastic, through the BBDO Agency. As a metaphor for the human spirit and testament to the healing power of caring, it takes some beating."

Breastpump Hackathon ~ MomTech @ Media Lab!

Today's Day 1 of Breastpump Hackathon here at the MIT Media Lab has explored a wide range of prospective new, better, and alternative approaches to improved connections between babies and busy moms!

"The health benefits of breastfeeding (both to mother and baby!) are numerous and include the reductions of type 2 diabetes, hypertension, obesity, female cancers, heart disease and osteoporosis. Despite the overwhelming data and worldwide endorsement of breastfeeding for at least two years, many women do not breastfeed at all or wean after several months. In particular, low-income, working women are rarely able to take extended maternity leave, to afford the cost of a pump, or to pump breastmilk at their workplace. In emerging economies around the world, women who go back to work wean their babies rather than using a breast pump."

There's lots of room for improvement and creative re-imagination of the current and prospective enabling technologies! Here's just a few of the key people -- Media Lab students, alums, and and friends, including many Moms and Dads -- who are making this goodness happen...

Inside Our Skin ~ Lupita Nyong’o on True Beauty

The Kid Should See This spotlights Lupita Nyong’o with Elmo on Sesame Street talking about their lovely skins... Joseph Lamour on Upworthy shares another moment with Lupita Nyong’o where she spoke again about skin at the Black Women in Hollywood Luncheon hosted by Essence... And, for good measure, here's Lupita's role model Alek Wek on Tyra's show... It's truly stunning how much superficial aesthetics play a role in peoples lives planet-wide. One of the most shocking illustrations of this for me -- beyond the experiences of Lupita, Alek, and Tyra's lovely guest Nya -- remains the Black Dolls & "Girls Like Me" stories.

Moments of Science 2014 ~ Our IgNobel Acts!

Harvard Chemistry lecture demogod Daniel Rosenberg of In Demo Veritas fame and I performed our latest Moments of Science at the 2014 IgNobel Prize Ceremony yesterday! First, Alginate Gelatenous Snakes at 19:32... And then Comparing Apple and Oranges at 01:11:40... P.S. Here's one of my favorite of our Moments, Big Bang Trash Can!

R.I.P. Kay Stratton ~ MIT's Gracious First Lady

The lovely and kind Catherine “Kay” Stratton, wife of MIT’s 11th President and a wonderfully gracious first lady, has alas passed away at age 100. I met her during my grad studies when she shared how she and her husband connected both newly arrived and senior faculty and linked interesting people with one another through regular dinner gatherings at the President's house. Mrs Stratton stayed very active well beyond her formal duties. Indeed, as MIT's News Office reports...

"In 1988, Stratton created the “Aging Successfully” lecture series at MIT to explore health topics of concern especially -- but not exclusively -- to an aging population. MIT created a Lecture on Critical Issues series in her honor in 1994, which has included such varied topics as Internet security, population growth, control of nuclear weapons, and microfinance."

She remains an inspiration for those of us seeking to make MIT a welcoming and gloriously creative place.

Slum Urbanism ~ UCT's Edgar Pieterse on Africa

Thanks to Emeka Okafor at Africa Unchained for spotting UCT Professor Edgar Pieterse, head of the African Centre for Cities, exploring the reality of Slum Urbanism and future of Africa's cities...

R.I.P. Narendra Patni ~ Father of IT Outsourcing

I'm very sad to discover today that MIT Sloan alumnus Narendra Patni passed away this past June.  Together with his wife Poonam and brothers, Narendra founded Patni Computer Systems, the first of the Indian IT outsourcing firms and an inspiration to many including Narayana Murthy who worked for Patni before leaving with his software team to start Infosys. The Globe's Robert Weisman first wrote in 2004 of the Patni's offshoring revolution starting in a Central Square apartment in 1972 and beginnings of operations in Pune, India in 1973. Overall, it's a epic saga and his passing is a real loss for us all.

Who Is John Galt? ~ Atlas Shrugged, Part 3!

Atlas Shrugged, Part 3, Who is John Galt? showing now! Trailer... See more videos, etc, in their gallery. It's an epic story -- i.e. productive people finally going on strike, stopping the motor of the world -- but one which infuriates nearly everyone on the spectrum of stupidity, from tax'n'spend left-wingnuts to faith freak right-wingnuts, basically parasites and statists of all stripes. Plus, it's an ambitious project to put to film, even in three parts, especially on a lean budget with the antagonism of Hollywood, DC, and related establishments. So, here's a salute to John Aglialoro and his fellow producers and colleagues who got this trilogy done!

Amsterdam in Motion ~ Jack Fisher's Hyperlapse!

Kuriositas spots Amsterdam in Motion, Jack Fisher's hyperlapse!

Feline Fun House ~ Asperger's Cat Hobby!

MissC spots Greg Krueger's Feline Fun House...

Math In Your Feet ~ Learning #'s by Dancing!

Thanks to MIT friend Birago Jones for spotting Math in your Feet...

"An integration of two separate but highly complementary paths of inquiry. Percussive dance is a sophisticated, precise, and physical expression of time and space using foot-based dance patterns. Mathematics has been called the ‘science of patterns’ initially developed to understand, describe, and manipulate the physical world. Math in Your Feet leads students through the problem solving process of creating their own dance patterns. Along the way, they increase their understanding of mathematical topics."

Mission Continues ~ Avenge 9/11, Cauterize Evil

Evil religious swine slaughtered thousands on 9/11 including my classmate David Berray. Alas, in the interim years, we have yet to fully extirpate irrationally-faithful and incorrigibly-violent ideological-cancer carriers from civilized humanity. Whether it's the messianic wingnuts occupying the land of Canaan, or the desertine usurpers of the Hejaz, or the pestilential-pretender neo-caliphate in today's fertile crescent, or other mad maniacs ruling west asia and beyond, humanity is still infested with verminous cretins believing in fundamentally bad ideas and executing mystical mandates for supposed higher powers. We must do our best to avenge the assassinated and sterilize the faithful stupidity that continues to plague civilized peoples.

The Top ~ Urban Luxury Lifestyle Constructions...

New Midtown ~ NYC's Penn Station, MSG++

H3 reimagines NYC's Midtown by moving Madison Square Garden, rebuilding Penn Station, and enabling up-densing of the neighborhood!

Moto 360 ~ WSJ Reviews Wearable Wallclock

WSJ's Joanna Stern reviews the Moto 360 wearable wallclock...

"The round display isn't perfect. The bottom of the circle is frustratingly chopped off. Motorola explains that it's where the engineers had to put the display driver and ambient light sensor. All I know is every time I looked at it I was reminded of making construction-paper squircles in kindergarten. And the problem for women like me, with thin wrists, is that the watch may sound small -- 1.8 inches in diameter and just a half-inch thick -- but it almost looks like I grabbed a clock off the wall and strapped it to my arm."

Understanding MIT ~ Crafting Our Creative Place

My DUSP Campus Planning colleague Bob Simha and I are hosting our Understanding MIT seminar again this Fall 2014 every Tuesday afternoon 4-6pm starting next week September 9th to survey research universities and how they work, with the Institute as our live-case study. Each week, we invite a different senior academic, administrative, or trustee leader of MIT to share with us what they do to help the Institute stay vital in the short, medium, and long term -- and ask what we can do to be pro-active in improving MIT as well. This is part of my larger action-research agenda on understanding creative places and innovation ecosystems and is sister-class to our MIT Cities Initiative design workshop on Changing Cities.

Neurotechnology Ventures ~ Minds, Money, MIT

My MIT Media Lab colleague Ed Boyden and I are again co-hosting our Neurotechnology Ventures class this Fall 2014 at the Media Lab starting this Thursday afternoon September 4th from 2-4pm. This course is all about envisioning, planning, and building ventures -- both entrepreneurial startups and intrapreneurial product-lines or business units -- to bring neuroengineering innovations to the world. Compelling venture themes include Neuroimaging, Neuromarketing, Neurology/Psychiatry Screening & Diagnosis, Mood & Behavioral Influencing, Rehabilitation, Neurosurgery, Neuropharmacology, Brain Stimulation, Prosthetics, Sensory and Motor Augmentation, Regenerative Neuromedicine, Learning, Memory & Cognitive Influencing, and more.

Development Ventures ~ Solving Global Problems

My MIT colleague Alex (Sandy) Pentland and I are again hosting our Development Ventures action lab class this Fall 2014 at the Media Lab starting this Thursday September 4th from 10a-12noon, with special focus on frugal, DIY, and ultraffordable technologies as well as exponential innovations including mobiles, big data, and analytics. As always, we look forward to the latest new venture concepts our students propose -- in domains ranging from Health & Wellness, Energy & Sustainability, Education & Creativity, Commerce & Financial Services, Civic Engagement and beyond -- and we try to help the most motivated teams and promising ideas actually start and thrive!

Changing Cities ~ Prototype New Urban Systems

I'm leading a module this Fall 2014 in the Changing Cities course taught by my MIT Media Lab colleagues Kent Larson and Ryan Chin, starting Wednesday, 3 September at 2pm, as part of our MIT Cities Initiative. We seek to move beyond so-called “Smart City” solutions that have focused on optimization rather than vital re-invention. This course will focus on how to design and prototype new urban systems to address the challenges of mobility, food, living & working, planning, and more through five “How to” modules:

1. How to prototype autonomous, shared, electric mobility systems 
2. How to prototype hyper-efficient, transformable spaces (robotic architecture) 
3. How to prototype controlled environment urban food systems 
4. How to realize computational urbanism using augmented tangible models 
5. How to quantify innovation, entrepreneurship, and creative vitality in cities

Together with colleagues Daan Archer, Jennifer Saura, and Dan Harple, we're keen on #5 -- Our overarching goal is to seek better indices (or rankings or scores) and analyses of vitality in the city by tapping into novel datasets and new analytic approaches. Ultimately we aspire to compare and contrast not only cities and neighborhoods, as they exist today, but simulate how they might become as new urban systems and solutions are deployed.

Terra Incognita ~ Larsen's Epic Adventure Painting

Artist Bryan Larsen was commissioned to paint Terra Incognita, an epic adventure weaving youthful imagination and historic figures into a Martian future! Quent Cordair, purveyor of fine artworks, has kept everyone appraised of the painting in progress...

"The painting features famous inventors and discoverers such as Alan Turing, Rosalind Franklin, Galileo Galilei, Nicolaus Copernicus and John Harrison. [And, of course, the] two little astronauts!"

Click through to see the full imagery (and also buy limited edition print) and read Larsen's progress reports!