Architects Nader Tehrani and Robert Campbell @ CCAE

Nader Tehrani

The Cambridge Center for Adult Education recently hosted a talk with the architect Nader Tehrani (an associate professor of architecture at  MIT, and the co-founder of the influential Boston-based architecture and design firm Office dA) whose work is on view, among other locations, at the Museum of Modern Art

Click here to listen (36 minutes).

— and Robert Campbell, the architect and Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic for the Boston Globe (who also happens to be a poet and photographer). The subject of their talk: progressive architecture.

Posted on March 20, 2009 in MIT
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Has the Global Economic Crisis – or GEC – got us?

Eat Lunch or Be LunchCalling for Acronyms!
Here’s mine to start off —
The GEC — it sounds like a mix between guck, yuck, ick and eck. Like the noise you make in the back of your throat when you’re about to regurgitate, or cough up spume. And isn’t that what we’re doing now? Out comes the excess… Oh, and what about the Global Economic Meltdown, or “GEM” – with a hard g? Sounds chewy, gooey and horror-movie-ish. The GEM is on the move…
And ThoughtCast wants YOU to contribute an acronym as well!
Might as well get – if not a free lunch, then a free laugh out of all of this…

So, here’s Dale Hobson’s contribution:
“How about GRR–for Great Republican Rip-off or Global Resources Rape.
I don’t want to spit or hurl; I want to bite.” Ouch!
And here’s William’s:
I always thought “The GBR” captured it well. “The Great Brain Robbery”
Leighton says: WODD — world order down the drain
While Lee Goldberg has come up with:
Global Economic Meltdown Offers Rude Awakening – GEMORA – !!!
And Anthea Raymond gives GEC two thumbs up:
GEC works for me quite possibly because of the gagging sound evoked.
We’re in for a long slow retch on this one.”

Meanwhile, Valeria Villarroel suggested Governmental Fail (GF?)
and Barton George followed up with Worldwide Total Fail: WTF
while Helen Tan writes: “GEC sounds like the cracking of an egg!”
Hence: Giant Egg Cracking

Have we covered the whole alphabet yet?
Oh, and that GEC-monster gracing this post?
It’s a sculpture by Juan Cabana, called Stranded
Perhaps he hatched from Helen Tan’s egg!

For more acronyms — Continue Reading →

Posted on March 6, 2009 in Economics, Words@Work
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The Economic Pits with James Poterba

Note: this interview was broadcast on the WGBH public radio affiliate WCAI, on the Cape and Islands!

James Poterba

What is the right expression to describe today’s economic nightmare? I’m sick of “mess” and “crisis” is too bland. What about “cesspool”? Well, I compromised with “pits” — feel free to add your own juicy descriptions in ThoughtCast’s comments section!
Either way, I dived into the “pool” with MIT’s Mitsui Professor of Economics James Poterba, who’s also the head of the National Bureau of Economic Research, the think tank in charge of determining when recessions start … and end. Wouldn’t that be nice? Headlines proclaiming the “end” of this rather inordinate business cycle.
Are these ups and downs indeed just a part of capitalism’s inevitable booms and busts? Ought we to accept them as natural, rather than resist them? Or ought we to scrap the “system” and rebuild? You tell me…
But first, listen to this: (15:30 minutes).

Posted on February 23, 2009 in Economics, MIT, Politics, Psychology
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Getrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas & Janet Malcolm!

They were a strange pair: Gertrude Stein, the avant-garde writer, salonniere and collector of art and artists, and her lover and companion, the querulous Alice B. Toklas, standing beakishly in the background. But together they formed a whole. Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice, a new book by journalist Janet Malcolm, explores this relationship, and the literary output it sustained.

Click here: to listen (30 minutes) to Janet Malcolm speak about her book, at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, presented by the Harvard Book Store.

Posted on December 3, 2008 in Literature
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Reading List for Obama – your thoughts?

Scott McLemee, who pens the Intellectual Affairs column for Inside Higher Ed, asked a few of us for a suggested reading list for the president-elect.

I discovered that one contributor, Daniel Drezner, is a fellow Williams alum, who blogged about the column here. Other contributors were James Marcus, the editor-at-large for the Columbia Journalism Review; Claire Potter, a professor of history and American studies at Wesleyan University; and James Mustich, editor of The Barnes & Noble Review.

And Christopher Hayes, who blogs for The Nation, picked up this thread for his Capitolism column.
Feel free to elaborate in the comments section, below.

Posted on November 7, 2008 in Literature, Politics
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How Fiction Works — with James Wood

James Wood, the sincere, somewhat old-fashioned, unpretentious yet high-minded New Yorker literary critic, spoke at the Harvard Book Store recently about his new book, How Fiction Works.
Click here: to listen (30 minutes).
Also… ThoughtCast will be interviewing Wood shortly – hooray! – and we’re interested in your input! We’d like to discuss, among other topics, different kinds of literary creativity. What makes a great critic, rather than, say, a great novelist, or poet? What does the critic look for? How personal is the art of criticism, and how much a matter of taste – or instinct? Just how ‘creative’ is it?

Please add your thoughts in the comments section below, or email them to feedback at thoughtcast dot org!

Posted on November 2, 2008 in Harvard Luminaries, Literature
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