the guy by the door …

Last Monday, cartoon voice actor [the Simpsons] Dudley R. Herschbach gave a most[ly - another post] excellent talk on “Einstein as a Student” Why have an actor talk about Einstein? Well it seems that in his troubled youth, Herschbach won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His Nobel Lecture, “Molecular Dynamics of Elementary Chemical Reactions,” is about the then young field of chemical kinetics that is, going beyong what combines with what - getting a “moving picture” of how molecule A interacts with molecule B. His work was both experimental - actually shooting A’s at B’s - and theoretical.This was part of a new summer program called PRISE. Well worth the price of admission [free] and well worth the time. I’ll keep you abreast of future editions.
Note to WordPressinados. This thing not only has bugs, but different bugs in different themes.

It was close to closing time at Tealuxe, the Harvard Square vessel of high tea adventures. Rachel was on the bridge doing the accounts while John was battaning down the galley. John served me Ti Quan Yin, “The Iron Goddess of Mercy”. It was my second trip of the day. I found the Goddess quite compelling. He had told me the tale of Quan Yin. I must defer retelling that tale for now.

Rachel called down from the bridge. She and John conferred over navigation. I had taken pictures of them but not yet posted here. Rachel offered a few poses. I have no experience with flash and picked the wrong mode, but despite my ineptitude, beauty will out. Even in good hands, on-camera flash is prone to red eyes. I will pursue her with my new Rebel.

A fermata is a note held longer than its normal value. It is denoted by the upside down smile above the note [below the word]. The bottom of the shirt says, “Hold Me”. Sadly, I’m probably older than her father and should understand this figuratively.

On September 11, 2001 Vice President Cheney issued an order to shoot down any commercial airliner still in the air after the nationwide grounding. [The 911 Commission report suggests that that order was too late to be of any usefulness.] Recently on PBS, Frontline documented how Cheney pushed through the NeoCon “War on Terror” over the objections of CIA Director George Tenet.

Cursor.org linked reviews that accuse Frontline of overlooking CIA missteps and George Tenet’s own deportment. Frontline definitely mentioned both. Whether they gave them short shrift is a matter of judgement.
The program, which originally aired on Tuesday June 20, is still available online.

In the recent anti-immigrant frenzy, Mario Rodas, an honor student who graduated last year from Chelsea High School, was detained by immigration and is currently facing deportation. Mario moved to Chelsea with his family from Guatamala at age 12. He has no criminal record. Given the troubles the Chelsea Schools have had, tgbtd wonders if it’s good for Chelsea to let go of such a promising young man. The We Are Mario campaign thinks not. SLAM is joining them. Hop over and give a hand?

The guy by the door missed this call on Wednesday from S.E.I.U 615 to support Harvard janitors laid off for the summer. Fortunately, SLAM was on the case:

——

RALLY TO SUPPORT HARVARD JANITORS!

Every year the Unicco Service Company at Harvard temporarily lays off several
janitors and during this period the janitors lose their health insurance.

Many of the workers have children and it’s dangerous for them to be without
insurance.

Join in solidarity with the janitors from SEIU Local 615 to say:

STOP PLAYING WITH OUR HEALTH!
CONSISTENT HEALTH COVERAGE FOR ALL!

—-

Unicco’s labor practices were the subject of the hunger strike at University of Miami this spring. Unfortunately, I can’t give you any of my own coverage of Wednesday’s rally and the Crimson didn’t cover it. However, the SLAM Website has gone to “community portal” software. Anyone who went to the rally can hop over to the site, create an account* and post an article. There is no substitute for a good rally, but why get as much mileage as you can out of it?

*The account create function works. Thanks to the Havard Computer Society.

Thanks to j of the Thursday Bloggroup at the Berkman Center for pointing out the upcoming Grassroots Use of Technology 2006 right near my home at Umass Mandela*. The center of mass of the conference will probably be a quasi-liberal optimism about the possibility of reversing the ever greater concentration of wealth and power with it’s concomitant/enabling control of the mainstream media. Still I will go to see if as Marx once said to Friedrich Engels, “there is something we can use.”** Further, I will urge others to go. At the same time, I will urge folks to keep an eye on the “net neutrality” legislation in Congress. Verizon and cohorts may claim to own the pipes, but we’re letting them use our right of way. The grass roots have a right to water flowing through pipes on public land. Should you wish to add your voice, Save the Internet is a good site.

*I refer, of course, to the almost forgotten proposal that the poor and disenfranchised of Boston would be better served if they seceded and renamed Roxbury, Dorchester, and parts of the South End. after the Nobel Peace Prize winning South African leader Nelson Mandela. I was not sure if I remembered the geographical boundaries correctly and the current Wikipedia entry does not mention Dorchester, but Websters Online does.
**I greatly admire Marx and am informed by him, but his critique of science, while bold for his day, is, in the light of subsequent developments, naive. I will show that the notion of ‘Natural Law’ in and of itself has marketing/political component, but I need to elaborate the Greenberger Universe to do that. Also, I am significantly skeptical of Marx and his derivatives’ eschatology.

We’ve been getting ready for you.

And we’re glad to do it, but here’s the thing. We need to live. That pretty much means we need a living wage. Some of y’all worked on that as did some of today’s graduates. The new bunch changed the name to Student Labor Action Movement [SLAM]. I understand that each generation of students has to have it’s own sense of contribution, but the idea that they alone can transform Harvard permanently is probably a bit of infantile omnipotence. Certainly leaving y’all out of the picture [as they pretty much did this year] makes no sense.

Anyhow, the Dining Service Workers, represented by Unite-HERE! Local 26, are coming up on contract renewal [June 19]. There is apparently a tentative contract agreement. Administration, no doubt, wanted to put the best possible spin on this for y’all. Harvard’s PR machine also cooked up this new bit for y’all. SLAM doesn’t have quite the same resources as administration :), so give them a bit to come up with their response.

SLAM has pointed out on their list that the tentative agreement says nothing about summer employment. Without new language in the contract, most of Harvard’s cooks will not work during the summer and thanks to the Bush administration [there’s that ugly word again] they cannot collect unemployment. Long ago, Dining Service workers could bid on other summer jobs on campus. Harvard administration no longer allows that.

There is another point in the tentative agreement that SLAM has not looked at yet. Joe Wrinn cites $31,000/year as the average salary. Is that an actual $31,000 or is it $23,250 for nine months ANNUALIZED! Lest you think I’m just being picky, administration did something like the latter with the HUCTW contract. They claimed a 4.5%/year increase for the first year, but it would not take effect until 4 months into the contract. In dollar terms that worked out to 2.8% which was about the the rate of inflaltion at the time of contract negotiation. Subsequent oil shock inflation pushed our “raise” into the negative in real terms.

So I hope y’all enjoy your visit. Sorry about the whether. I told Sally to order up some better whether, but she’s the last one to listen to the employees. Anyhow, I hope y’all will keep an eye on things over the summer. We won’t have as much student support so your help is unusually important.

Thanks.