Bestial Sense: A Smell and Taste Workshop
JIA-HUI LEE
Enrollment: Limited: Advance sign-up required
Sign-up by 01/24
Limited to 25 participants
Attendance: Participants must attend all sessions
Prereq: 21+; Please bring your ID
There is now a wait-list for this workshop. Please email the organizer if you would like to be on the waitlist.
"Bestial sense" engages the nose and the tongue. It explores two sensory engagements with the world that are said to be more animalistic, visceral, and less understood when compared to sight and hearing. This workshop will try to refute a hypothesis: That smelling and tasting are some of the most arbitrary, private, and subjective sensory modes of experiencing the world. Participants in the workshop will learn a little bit about these senses -- their histories, industries, aesthetics, and sciences -- before participating in an experiment that involves collective smelling and tasting. If, as anthropologists argue, that the senses are indeed social, then by the end of our workshop, we should be able to have produced a local MIT culture of smell-tasting/taste-smelling.
In this workshop, you will have the opportunity to smell and taste different things, including everyday items, food, wine, and fragrances (as well as some surprising concoctions!). You will be introduced to a few techniques for smelling and tasting, including those practised by perfumers and oenologists, and to other less conventional methods. Please bring your own methods or observations about how you (and other animals) smell and taste! The experiment will run throughout the two days so participation on both days is expected.
Sponsor(s): Science, Technology, and Society
Contact: Jia-Hui Lee, E51-075, 617-888-4343, JIAHUI@MIT.EDU
| Jan/25 | Wed | 02:00PM-05:00PM | Compton Gly, Bldg10, Be 21+ and please bring ID |
For the first session, we focus on smelling. Bring your noses.
JIA-HUI LEE
| Jan/26 | Thu | 02:00PM-05:00PM | Compton Gly, Bldg10, Be 21+ and please bring ID. |
For our second session, we engage our taste buds!
JIA-HUI LEE
Defense R&D and the Military-Industrial Complex: Science and National Priorities
Subrata Ghoshroy, Research Affiliate
Enrollment: Limited: First come, first served (no advance sign-up)
Attendance: Participants welcome at individual sessions
Prereq: No pre-requisites, only an interest in defense policy
After the end of World War II, the U.S. embarked upon a policy to spend large sums of money for defense and created a "black budget" for nuclear weapons. The rationale was two-fold. One was to fight the growing threat of communism and the other was to spur the post-war economy. A big part of the defense budget was for R&D to develop science and technology for weapons, in order to have a technology edge over the USSR. The dual Cold War rationale - prosperity at home and fighting wars abroad - to contain "communist aggression" continues 25 years after the collapse of the USSR. Today, the U.S. military spends about $600 billion including between $70 billion and $80 billion for R&D. 1 trillion-dollar will be spent on nuclear weapons over the next 30 years, shortchanging the research on climate change, e.g. From the early days of the second world war, academics participated in the Manhattan project to develop the atomic bomb, the radar, missile guidance systems, etc. Today's subjects are artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and cyber defense, for example. The Pentagon also funds research in social sciences like political science, anthropology and psychology. Eisenhower's warning of the danger of a "military-industrial complex" (MIC) has come true.
There will be four sessions as follows:
Sponsor(s): Science, Technology, and Society
Contact: Subrata Ghoshroy, E51-296, 617 253-3846, GHOSHROY@MIT.EDU
| Jan/11 | Wed | 04:00PM-05:30PM | 4-163, CANCELLED DUE TO MEDICAL EMERGENCY. |
| Jan/18 | Wed | 04:00PM-05:30PM | 4-163, CANCELLED DUE TO MEDICAL EMERGENCY. |
| Jan/25 | Wed | 04:00PM-05:30PM | 4-163, CANCELLED DUE TO CONTINUED MEDICAL ISSUE |
| Feb/01 | Wed | 04:00PM-05:30PM | 4-163, CANCELLED DUE TO CONTINUED MEDICAL ISSUE. |
Our apologies for having to cancel this activity entirely, due to a prolonged medical issue. We were hoping to have the last day of the original session run as a condensed version, but unfortunately this is not possible.
Subrata Ghoshroy - Research Affiliate
Designing Your Life
Gabriella Jordan, David Mindell
Enrollment: Limited: Advance sign-up required
Attendance: Participants must attend all sessions
Prereq: Short written assignment, before the course begins
This course provides an exciting, eye-opening, and thoroughly useful inquiry into what it takes to live an extraordinary life, on your own terms. This course addresses what it takes to succeed, and to be proud of your life and happy in it. You will tackle career satisfaction, money, your body, vices, your relationship to yourself. Address your own life and how you live it and learn from it. For past participants, look at what you need to take yourself to the next level in wherever you are in your life. An inquisitive nature and willingness to face the truth are required.
Sponsor(s): Science, Technology, and Society
Contact: Paola Andrea Garces, paola@handelgroup.com
| Jan/23 | Mon | 10:00AM-01:00PM | E51-085 |
| Jan/24 | Tue | 05:30PM-07:00PM | E51-061, TA session |
| Jan/25 | Wed | 10:00AM-01:00PM | E51-085 |
| Jan/26 | Thu | 05:30PM-07:00PM | E51-061, TA session |
| Jan/27 | Fri | 10:00AM-01:00PM | E51-085 |
Pre-screening of Richard Leacock's unfinished film "November Actions"
Deborah Douglas, Curator of Science and Technology, MIT Museum
| Jan/16 | Mon | 02:00PM-04:00PM | 6-120 |
Enrollment: For MIT community only; RSVP required to ddouglas@mit.edu
November Actions is a detailed depiction of a distinctive and significant campus protest incident at MIT in the fall of 1969. Produced by Richard Leacock, a well-known, innovative documentary filmmaker and former MIT professor, it is, arguably, the most important film ever produced about MIT. Few have ever seen it because shortly after completing the rough cut, Leacock found an anonymous note suggesting he was a “lackey” of the administration. In 1994, Professor Glorianna Davenport transferred the large collection of November Actions negatives, work prints, rough cuts and sound tracks to the MIT Museum. In 2010, when the MIT Museum was preparing its major MIT150 Exhibition, Davenport and another Leacock student and colleague, Brian Bradley proposed the idea of restoring the work. It was a spectacular idea but even better because Leacock himself agreed to allow them to finish the film for release. Lacking funding, the Museum prepared four short excerpts that were included in the exhibition. The MIT Museum has now secured the funds to complete the project and has plans to premier a “finished” version this June. Open to members of the MIT community only, including spouses & partners and alumni, this pre-screening is a unique opportunity see an extremely rare museum artifact depicting firsthand a very dramatic moment in both MIT’s and U.S. history.
Sponsor(s): MIT Museum, Science, Technology, and Society
Contact: Deborah Douglas, N51 (MIT Museum), 617-253-1766, ddouglas@mit.edu
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