MITPressLog

Wednesday Blog Watch - Book Reviewers

In this age of book reviewer cutbacks, it is heartening to see bloggers reviewing books on their websites, and keeping alive the spirit of critique. This week we look at bloggers who've reviewed some MIT Press books recently.
Paying with Plastic, a book about the history of the credit card industry, was reviewed by the blog Only Slightly Bent.
John Palfrey blogs about Learning Race and Ethnicity in his blog at Harvard Law School.
Confronting the Coffee Crisis is reviewed on, of all things, a blog about tea called The Tea Pages:

Yes, I know this is a tea blog and this book is about coffee. However, the topic and content are extraordinarily important for the tea industry as well - how do we ensure that growing and producing coffee (and tea) can continue to be ecologically and economically sustainable?

Not really a book review, but in a post about Grand Theft Auto, the Brainy Gamer recommends chapters from Jesper Juul's Half-real , Ian Bogost's Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism, and Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman's Rules of Play.
Speaking of reviews of games books, Second Person was reviewed on Slashdot recently.

The classic The Rediscovery of the Mind by John Searle is discussed on the Thoughts, Books, and Philosophy blog.
Another classic: the aesthetic appeal of 1969's Bauhaus is discussed in this Tonyvenne.org post.

Two Consummate Authors of Music, Language, and Culture Join Forces!

McNally Robinson is hosting the Sound Unbound book launch tonight.  There will be readings from Sound Unbound and Jonathan Lethem's novel You Don't Love Me Yet. Stop by if you are in the neighborhood.The bookstore is really easy to reach, and It'll be a great time. Who knows, maybe there will be a remixable Allen Ginsberg party afterwards...

Friday May, 2nd 2008, 7pm
McNally Robinson Bookstore
52 Prince St, just off of Lafayette
FREE!!!

Dulles Rail Revival

The Washington Post reports that The Dulles Rail project, one of the largest transit infrastructure plans in the nation, that has been "on hold" until yesterday when the Federal Transit Administration approved the final design stage.  This decision will expand the Metrorail through Tysons Corner to Dulles International Airport and beyond. 

This is exciting news for everyone in the area.  Paul Ceruzzi, author of Internet Alley: High Technology in Tyson's Corner, 1945-2005, commented on the project and it's decade-long history.

I talk about the Dulles rail link as part of a general discussion in the  final chapter of Internet Alley. I also mentioned it in the chapter on Dulles Airport history. There was a plan for a rail (monorail?) as early as
1962(!) but it never got built. Now everyone realizes that it is needed - Dulles is very hard to get to without driving.

Fortunately the land was reserved along the median of the Access Road, so at least that cost is avoided. Nevertheless, in spite of not having to condemn and buy land, the project is very expensive. That is what
caused the Federal government to balk (see below).

Where it gets interesting is that an ideal link to Dulles would go straight there, with only a few stops along the way. The Tysons Corner developers, however, want a lot of stops in Tysons, both to bring people to their buildings; also to get the county give them increased zoning that comes with being close to mass transit ("transit oriented development"). However, these two goals are incompatible: Dulles passengers don't want to ride a "Broadway local" that makes lots of stops: they want to go straight to their plane. Real estate developers don't want to spend money on a rail link that sends all those affluent
people past their buildings without stopping.

The local planners thought they had all this solved, with a set of 4 stops in Tysons and an (eventual) fast link to the airport, but last January, the Federal Transit Agency vetoed it - to everyone's surprise. Without Federal money it cannot be built. Now the Feds have apparently changed their minds.

I my book I tried to get to the basics of this issue, not knowing of course all the drama that would unfold. But I am not al all surprised about this, as I did research the underlying issue, which the local news media have not always done.

Want more?  Listen to the podcast interview with Professor Ceruzzi here. 

Wednesday Blog Watch - American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Yesterday, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported that The American Academy of Arts and Sciences had announced the election of 190 new fellows and 22 new foreign honorary members. ArtForum reports the news here.  A quick perusal of the list reveals that a several MIT Press authors are represented, including Bruno Latour, Mel Bochner,  Nuel Belnap, and John Tinsley Oden. Some other famous new fellows this year include Pedro Almodóvar, the Coen Brothers, and B.B. King.  The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, located here in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was founded during the American Revolution by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock, and other leaders. It has been noted that fellows have quite often continued on to win Nobel Prizes... to see the entire list of members, go to http://www.amacad.org/members/alpha_list.pdf. 

A Robot that Loves You Back

As part of the Cambridge Science Festival,  Cynthia Breazeal and our own Sherry Turkle (whose latest book, Falling for Science, just hit the bookstore shelves) will give a talk tonight called "Sociable Robots." These women are experts on intimacy and technology and will discuss how robots can be made to communicate like humans. Basically, these women are the key to what you've all been waiting for - a robot that loves you back.

6 p.m.
Free.
MIT Museum
265 Massachusetts Ave
Cambridge
617-253-5927
More information about this event and all of the Cambridge Science Festival activities can be found here. 

Wednesday Blog Watch - Bio Art or Bio Terror?

Yesterday, Boing Boing reported that bioterror charges against artist Steve Kurtz have finally been dropped. Four years ago, Kurtz, a University at Buffalo professor and a member of Critical Art Ensemble, was working on an educational biotechnology art project and was arrested after police, upon responding to Kurtz's wife's heart attack, found biological lab equipment and bacteria in his house.  Kurtz was initially investigated for bioterrorism but later indicted for mail and wire fraud.  Kurtz’s story is retold in graphic-novel format in Alphabet City's Suspect, with text by Timothy Stock, a PhD student and philosophy lecturer at the University of Toronto, and graphics by illustrator Warren Heise.  For more information about the growing phenomenon of Bio Art and its theory and practice, you might want to read Signs of Life: Bio Art and Beyond. Also, Kurtz's collective, Critical Art Ensemble, is one of the artists featured in The Interventionists.  In fact, Kurtz's incident occurred shortly after The Interventionist show opened at Mass MOCA.

A Feeding Frenzy for the Brain

If you're in Cambridge this weekend, check out the Loading Dock Sale. 

The Spring 2008
MIT PRESS BOOKSTORE LOADING DOCK SALE
---------------------------------------
DAY:    Saturday & Sunday
DATE:    April 19th & 20th
TIME:    10:00am to 7:00pm
ROOM:    MIT E38, 292 Main Street, Cambridge
MAP:    http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg?selection=E38

"a feeding frenzy for the brain"

On April 19th & 20th The MIT Press Bookstore will hold its legendary Loading Dock Sale. Literally *tons* of books will be on sale at drastically reduced prices--up to 90% off their original retail price. Can't come in the morning? Don't worry--new items will be added throughout the course of this two day extravaganza. Come visit our lovely loading dock to enjoy Huge Savings on:

MIT Press overstock
damaged books (minor scratches and dings)
out-of-print MIT Press books
journals & magazines
other publishers' overstock books

For parking or event information call 253-5249, email books@mit.edu,
or check here. 

Award News - Reinventing Los Angeles wins a California Book Award

Robert Gottlieb’s Reinventing Los Angeles has won the “Californiana” category of the California Book Awards given by the Commonwealth Club. The Commonwealth Club, based in San Francisco, calls itself “the nation’s oldest and largest public affairs forum”. The book awards were established in 1931 and are credited with having “discovered” John Steinbeck and other now-famous authors.
More information can be found here: http://www.commonwealthclub.org/features/caBookAwards/about.php

The award will be presented on June 5th.

Dr. James Austin at MIT Tonight

ZEN AND THE BRAIN
Speaker: Dr. James Austin, MD
Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 7:00pm
Venue: MIT Building 3, 3-270
(Open to the General Public)

Dr. James Austin has spent most of his years as an academic  neurologist, first at the University of Oregon Medical School and  later at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. He is currently Clinical Professor of Neurology at the University of   Missouri-Columbia's Health Sciences Center. Included in Dr. Austin's   cultural background was his first sabbatical spent in New Delhi, India; and the second spent in Kyoto, Japan, where he began Zen meditation training with an English-speaking Zen master, Kobori-Roshi, in 1974. He maintains a keen interest in the experimental  designs and findings of investigators who study meditation, insight,  and related states of consciousness. His early research background  includes publications in the areas of clinical neurology,  neuropathology, neurochemistry, and neuropharmacology.

Dr. Austin is the author or co-author of more than 140 professional  publications, including three MIT Press publications: Zen and the  Brain: Toward an Understanding of Meditation and Consciousness  (1998); Chase, Chance, and Creativity: The Lucky Art of Novelty  (2003); and Zen-Brain Reflections: Reviewing Recent Development in  Meditation and States of Consciousness (2006).

This special event is organized by MIT Prajnopaya.

For more information can be found here.

Award News - Veronica Gonzalez wins Premio Aztlán Literary Award

The National Latino Writers conference has announced that Veronica Gonzalez has been awarded the 2008 Premio Aztlán Literary Award for her novel Twin Time: Or, How Death Befell Me.
The Premio Aztlán Literary Award is a national literary award, established to encourage and reward emerging Chicana and Chicano authors. Renowned author Rudolfo Anaya and his wife, Patricia, founded Premio Aztlán in 1993. The prize was reestablished in their honor in 2004 by the University of New Mexico Libraries.

The prize committee writes:

This exciting novel traces Mona's search for her twin brother who was given away for adoption soon after the mother died.  Gonzalez takes the reader on a marvelous journey full of uncertainty, mystery, seances, dreams, and intuitions that reveal Mona's cultural roots in her native Mexico and in her new homeland, the United States.

Twin Time is enticing, beautifully written, lyrical and poetic.  Flashbacks, stream of consciousness, and circumlocution are techniques that Gonzalez employs with ease.  But the writing goes beyond technique.  The novel speaks to something much more profound and intrinsic - Gonzalez' literary talent.
This year's judges for the Premio Aztlán were in agreement, Gonzalez has a natural gift for writing.  In Spanish this gift is called a don.  Twin Time is a novel with don. 

Congratulations to Veronica Gonzalez!