Dec 8, 2015 | Politics
Writes Maajid Nawaz on Why ISIS Just Loves Profiling – The Daily Beast:
If early indications are correct, the mass shooting in San Bernardino would be the deadliest ISIS-inspired attack on US soil to date. Yet the chief suspects, Tashfeen Malik and Syed Rizwan Farook, were “clean skins” completely unknown to the authorities, and assumed not to be a risk to US homeland security.
The most disconcerting part of this, therefore, is the knowledge that it almost certainly could happen again, and not knowing how to stop it. Neighbors have reported that their suspicions were aroused, but that they did not want to report anything out of fear of appearing racist.
[…]
So what should Tashfeen Malik’s neighbors have reported?
She and her husband Rizwan Farook were indeed arousing suspicion. They should have been reported, but not for their ethnicity, or overt displays of piety—his beard and her face veil—or lack thereof. They should have been reported simply because, according to those same neighbors, they were behaving suspiciously. Psychological and behavioral patterns are always a more reliable indicator that something is afoot, over religious or ethnic markers. And to report strange behavior, is not racist or anti-Muslim. Overt signs of nervousness, regular deliveries of obscure items at strange hours, or adopting an extremely dogmatic mindset, are more suspicious than mere appearance.
Islamist radicalization is a process. It begins when a person, whether originally of Muslim origin or not, starts to become convinced that a certain version of Islam must be enforced over society, and that it is incumbent on them to work to resurrect a theocratic “Islamic Caliphate” in order to achieve this. Usually, this is accompanied by the false notion that the entire West is at war with all of Islam.
This process of radicalization is complete when jihadist violence is prescribed to “resist” the West.
If the above was more widely understood, people would feel less reluctant to report suspicious behavior for the right reasons. Likewise, the wider public—and my fellow Muslims—will better understand that what is being reported is suspicious behavior, and not a racial or religious stereotype. This combination of sharpening what we are looking for, while reducing the potential stigma about looking for it, could literally save lives and bring our communities closer, which is everything the terrorists hate.
Dec 7, 2015 | Politics
Imagine each state in America was a country like Europe. Here are the two extremes in America. Wyoming is the state with the most guns per capita. District of Columbia is the least — yet Washington D.C. has the most gun murders. Simply banning potential victims from having guns will not stop criminals from using them. It will only leave the victims disarmed.
Further Reading:
Great Quote:
“Like most gun owners, I understand the ethical importance of guns and cannot honestly wish for a world without them. I suspect that sentiment will shock many readers. Wouldn’t any decent person wish for a world without guns? In my view, only someone who doesn’t understand violence could wish for such a world. A world without guns is one in which the most aggressive men can do more or less anything they want. It is a world in which a man with a knife can rape and murder a woman in the presence of a dozen witnesses, and none will find the courage to intervene. There have been cases of prison guards (who generally do not carry guns) helplessly standing by as one of their own was stabbed to death by a lone prisoner armed with an improvised blade.” — Sam Harris: The Ethical Importance of Guns
Dec 5, 2015 | Politics
From the egalitarian (“social justice”), partisan, left-wing Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law:
Today, the national crime rate is about half of what it was at its height in 1991. Violent crime has fallen by 51 percent since 1991, and property crime by 43 percent. In 2013 the violent crime rate was the lowest since 1970. And this holds true for unreported crimes as well. According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, since 1993 the rate of violent crime has declined from 79.8 to 23.2 victimizations per 1,000 people. Americans who lived through the 1960s and 1970s remember the fear associated with a real surge in violent crime. In fact, the violent crime rate increased by 126 percent between 1960 and 1970, and by 64 percent between 1970 and 1980.
[…]
Government statistics show that, except for some small blips, serious crime has decreased almost every year from 1994 through 2013. For over a decade Gallup has found that the majority of Americans polled believe crime is up, contrary to the fact that crime rates have plummeted in almost every small and large city since the 1990s. This is not to say that all cities and areas are experiencing decreases in violent crime year after year, but the overall rate of violent crime is significantly lower than historic levels.
[…]
As with the Gallup polls data, the narrative of violent crime — at least in the popular press — doesn’t have much to do with the crime reality. Crime across the nation is at an all-time low. We need to recognize that and embrace effective policies to keep it even lower. Just as with the case of airplane crashes, the public may see the extraordinary event as representative of the norm when it is not. [America’s Faulty Perception of Crime Rates]
Hat Tip: Violent Crime Rates — US Statistics | National Review Online
Dec 5, 2015 | Politics
From The Riddle of the Gun: Sam Harris
Most of my friends do not own guns and never will. When asked to consider the possibility of keeping firearms for protection, they worry that the mere presence of them in their homes would put themselves and their families in danger. Can’t a gun go off by accident? Wouldn’t it be more likely to be used against them in an altercation with a criminal? I am surrounded by otherwise intelligent people who imagine that the ability to dial 911 is all the protection against violence a sane person ever needs.
But, unlike my friends, I own several guns and train with them regularly. Every month or two, I spend a full day shooting with a highly qualified instructor. This is an expensive and time-consuming habit, but I view it as part of my responsibility as a gun owner. It is true that my work as a writer has added to my security concerns somewhat, but my involvement with guns goes back decades. I have always wanted to be able to protect myself and my family, and I have never had any illusions about how quickly the police can respond when called. I have expressed my views on self-defense elsewhere. Suffice it to say, if a person enters your home for the purpose of harming you, you cannot reasonably expect the police to arrive in time to stop him. This is not the fault of the police—it is a problem of physics.
Like most gun owners, I understand the ethical importance of guns and cannot honestly wish for a world without them. I suspect that sentiment will shock many readers. Wouldn’t any decent person wish for a world without guns? In my view, only someone who doesn’t understand violence could wish for such a world. A world without guns is one in which the most aggressive men can do more or less anything they want. It is a world in which a man with a knife can rape and murder a woman in the presence of a dozen witnesses, and none will find the courage to intervene. There have been cases of prison guards (who generally do not carry guns) helplessly standing by as one of their own was stabbed to death by a lone prisoner armed with an improvised blade. The hesitation of bystanders in these situations makes perfect sense—and “diffusion of responsibility” has little to do with it. The fantasies of many martial artists aside, to go unarmed against a person with a knife is to put oneself in very real peril, regardless of one’s training. The same can be said of attacks involving multiple assailants. A world without guns is a world in which no man, not even a member of Seal Team Six, can reasonably expect to prevail over more than one determined attacker at a time. A world without guns, therefore, is one in which the advantages of youth, size, strength, aggression, and sheer numbers are almost always decisive. Who could be nostalgic for such a world?
Until a better form of self-defense like a blaster that can be set to stun comes around, a gun is the ethical weapon of self-defense when the police are not there to protect you.
Thoughts?
Dec 4, 2015 | Culture
On November 30, 2015, the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property released a new issue paper, The Gene Revolution, by Amanda Maxham, a research associate and writer at the Ayn Rand Institute.
Dr. Maxham explores how innovations in biotechnology, enabled by the intellectual property rights that protect them, have led to the “Gene Revolution,” where scientists use genetic engineering to dramatically improve human life. In order to combat widespread misinformation about genetically modified organisms (GMOs), she traces mankind’s long history of improving plants, animals, and microorganisms to better serve our needs.
In particular, Dr. Maxham looks at twenty-nine different GMOs, including insulin, flu vaccines, cheese-making enzymes, apples, cotton seeds, and pet fish, as examples of the endless possibilities the “Gene Revolution” holds for the betterment of humanity–if we can overcome the groundless mistrust and strive to protect the future of scientific innovation.
Dec 4, 2015 | Philosophy, Politics
On December 2, 2015, the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property released a new white paper, Copyright Principles and Priorities to Foster a Creative Digital Marketplace, by Sandra Aistars, Devlin Hartline, and Mark Schultz.
As Congress continues its comprehensive review of the Copyright Act, the authors suggest how the law and the institution responsible for its administration–the U.S. Copyright Office–might be updated and restructured to better support a thriving, creative digital marketplace. They offer several organizing principles, as well as several areas to prioritize for action, for Congress to consider as it revises the copyright law.
The authors also give a brief overview of the constitutional origins of copyright protection, explaining how the premise of our copyright system–that authors’ rights and the public good are complementary–comports with the dominant natural rights philosophy in the early American Republic. They then examine several ways in which the copyright system fulfills its purpose, as envisioned by the Founders, by driving innovation in the creative industries.
To download the full white paper, please click here.
Dec 3, 2015 | Business, Politics, Sci-Tech
A half century ago the famous philosopher Ayn Rand identified the principle that motivates the haters of success. In her essay “The Age of Envy” she called it the “Hatred of the good for being the good”:
Today, we live in the Age of Envy.
“Envy” is not the emotion I have in mind, but it is the clearest manifestation of an emotion that has remained nameless; it is the only element of a complex emotional sum that men have permitted themselves to identify.
Envy is regarded by most people as a petty, superficial emotion and, therefore, it serves as a semihuman cover for so inhuman an emotion that those who feel it seldom dare admit it even to themselves. …That emotion is: hatred of the good for being the good.
This hatred is not resentment against some prescribed view of the good with which one does not agree…. Hatred of the good for being the good means hatred of that which one regards as good by one’s own (conscious or subconscious) judgment. It means hatred of a person for possessing a value or virtue one regards as desirable.
As a concrete illustration of this principle, ponder the envy-filled “progressive” “social justice” warrior Devon Maloney’s response to Zuckerberg’s donation of 45 billion dollars to charity:
Studies have shown that billionaire altruists like Zuckerberg are increasingly directing the course of American science, for example, and can supercharge research that has otherwise been bogged down in public sector and governmental bureaucracy – thus saving thousands if not millions of lives. But it also means that the rich are still effectively buying the future they’d like to see, no matter how selfless their intentions may be.
Apparently they should build a future that Maloney wants to see.
International philanthropy and the western world’s desire to eradicate poverty and disease can’t ever truly rid themselves of their imperialist roots; as many critics have pointed out, the white savior industrial complex has never been more pervasive in global culture. When you have an extra $45bn lying around, nothing you do with that money will come without strings, whether you craft those strings or not. Simply by creating and overseeing the world’s largest social network and one of the most influential corporations on Earth …. Mark Zuckerberg himself continues to reproduce the inequality he and his wife are taking aim at with their pledge. […] if it took Max Chan Zuckerberg’s birth to give her parents the courage and determination to destroy their own ivory tower for the needs of the many, we should all be praying that she’ll get a few more siblings in the coming years.
One wonders what kind of Ivory Tower of envy and hatred Maloney lives in.
Zuckerberg and other entrepreneurial businessmen have the ability to create values (like Facebook) and make money at the same time — Maloney has little or none. Ergo the “white industrial complex/ivory tower” (capitalism) is wrong and must be destroyed.
Quoting from Galt’s Speech in Atlas Shrugged:
They do not want to own your fortune, they want you to lose it; they do not want to succeed, they want you to fail; they do not want to live, they want you to die; they desire nothing, they hate existence, and they keep running, each trying not to learn that the object of his hatred is himself . . . . They are the essence of evil, they, those anti-living objects who seek, by devouring the world, to fill the selfless zero of their soul. It is not your wealth that they’re after. Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, which means: against life and man.
Dec 3, 2015 | Business, Politics
Two views on the Zuckerberg donation.
Complains Jesse Eisinger on How Mark Zuckerberg’s Altruism Helps Himself at the NY Times, “superwealthy plutocrat” Zuckerberg’s charity LLC will allow him to donate money to charity and avoid paying taxes on the money donated to charity.
Society, through its elected members, taxes its members. Then the elected officials decide what to do with sums of money. In this case, it is different. One person will be making these decisions.
… I think I might do a good job allocating $45 billion. Maybe even better than Mr. Zuckerberg. I am self-aware enough to I realize many people would disagree with my choices.
… Mega-donations, assuming Mr. Zuckerberg makes good on his pledge, are explicit acknowledgments that the money should be plowed back into society. They are tacit acknowledgments that no one could ever possibly spend $45 billion on himself or his family, and that the money isn’t really “his,” in a fundamental sense. Because [if] that is the case, society can’t rely on the beneficence and enlightenment of the superwealthy to realize this individually. We need to take a portion uniformly — some kind of tax on wealth.
Compare this to the eloquent Ross Kaminsky on Not Giving Back, Just Giving | The American Spectator:
Still, when the uber-wealthy promise to give away their fortunes, there’s a part of me that can’t help but anticipate with some annoyance the inevitable fawning reactions of the commentariat that the particular billionaire is “giving back” — as if he or she had taken something, as if depleting a fortune is more newsworthy or praiseworthy than earning it (even though earning it seems more difficult and a precondition for giving it away).
… the Chan-Zuckerberg letter betrays an unfortunately collectivist mentality, discussing their “moral responsibility” and urging people to “collectively direct our resources,” as if resources are “ours” instead of “theirs” or “yours” or “mine.” Unless a person inherited or stole his riches — and I don’t believe that anyone mentioned above falls into that category — both in moral and economic terms the wealthy have by definition already given back.
….After years of hearing the twisted jealousy of the left, too many Americans believe that billionaires are “takers” and therefore have a duty to “give back.” That turns reality — and morality — on its head. These people have been wildly successful because they have made the lives of millions of human beings wildly more productive, secure, healthy and even fun.
…. Their affluence is a measure of their contributions to society, not their impoverishing of it. As laudable as it is that Mark Zuckerberg and other participants in the Giving Pledge direct their wealth toward charitable enterprises that reflect their goals and values, what should truly be celebrated is that they were able to earn those fortunes to begin with. No matter how well the billionaires target their altruistic impulses, they have improved our lives more by making their fortunes than by disposing of them.
Dec 3, 2015 | Politics
Climate Change Will Not Be Dangerous for a Long Time – Scientific American
The climate change debate has been polarized into a simple dichotomy. Either global warming is “real, man-made and dangerous,” as Pres. Barack Obama thinks, or it’s a “hoax,” as Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe thinks. But there is a third possibility: that it is real, man-made and not dangerous, at least not for a long time.
This “lukewarm” option has been boosted by recent climate research…
[…]
Dec 3, 2015 | Education
Robert Tracinski identifies the the real purpose behind the student protests over at the The Federalist.
He notes that much of the student demands “read less like a manifesto of student revolutionaries, and more like a particularly aggressive salary negotiation…There is a lot going on in these demands, including an attempt to turn universities into organs of leftist indoctrination, with all opposing viewpoints rigorously purged….But underneath the creepy totalitarianism, there is a more mundane and practical purpose.” Writes Tracinski:
[…] who do you suppose is supporting and encouraging the campus protests? Who taught them the ideas they are using, and who is egging them on? The very same faculty and administrators for whom the protesters are demanding more money and power.
Everyone who has ever spent time around a university or with academics knows that beneath all the high-flown ivory tower stuff, there is a constant scramble for money and authority. Every department’s job is to expand itself, to hire more faculty and administrators, to expand its budget, to get bigger offices in a nicer building. Now the “social justice” faction among the faculty has found a way to club everyone else into submission and win departmental office politics once and for all. Accuse the university of systemic racism, force its nominal leaders into groveling apologies, and then dictate terms to the rest of the system. Emboldened and seeing that no one wants to stand up to them, they’re even attempting to take over every other department of the university by foisting mandatory courses in “social justice” on the math department.
So what looks from the outside like a student protest movement looks on the inside like an administrative coup by a small faction of the faculty, using naive and ill-informed students as their shock troops. No wonder marginal faculty members are climbing on the bandwagon and signing up to muscle out reporters and guide the young protesters. They hope to ride this to higher-paid, more secure, more powerful positions.
And what about the majority of students who are not protesters and just want an education?
As for all of the other students …. it doesn’t benefit them at all. They are the ones whose education will be watered down with tedious mandatory indoctrination sessions and who will have to spend four years of their lives living in fear of making the wrong move and offending the wrong people.
They might want to consider the way in which they are being exploited for the institutional interests of a very few people, who feed them a lot of high-minded guff about ‘systemic racism’ while angling for bigger offices and cushier salaries.” [Student Protesters, You Just Got Used]
It is these students who need to speak up and be heard.
Dec 2, 2015 | Culture
Brilliant analysis by ARI’s Don Watkins on Thomas Piketty’s The Economics of Inequality. Here are some notable gems:
Why should we care about inequality in the first place? Economic inequality, after all, can result from the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer…but also from everyone getting richer, some more rapidly and others less. Indeed, the story of capitalism is of steady and, over time, dramatic improvements in living standards. Economic inequality in capitalistic societies refers not to absolute deprivation, of which there is less than ever in human history, but to relative deprivation, whose odiousness is not self-evident.
[…]
To earn something, however, doesn’t mean that factors outside your control played absolutely no role in the outcome. When we say that someone has earned something, we aren’t distinguishing people who chose their parents or place of birth from those who didn’t. Rather, we’re acknowledging that the knowledge, skills, or expertise that makes one person’s work more economically valuable required effort, ambition, and initiative, whatever one’s natural talents or social background. If you attained your wealth as a result of non-fraudulent, non-coercive exchanges with employers or customers, then you earned it—and it’s wrong for the government to seize it on the theory that it would be nicer if someone else had it rather than you.
[…]
[Piketty’s] egalitarian project rests on the premise that the actual possession of wealth and the moral right to it are inversely related. This dogmatic indifference to the processes whereby wealth is created and acquired, and the habits and dispositions that have proven conducive to individual prosperity, as opposed to the habits and dispositions that reliably result in poverty, means that advocates of “social justice” like Piketty are devoted to perpetrating a profound injustice. [Piketty’s Unaswered Question]
Dec 2, 2015 | Business, Politics
Alex Epstein explains The Truth About Mark Zuckerberg’s Letter To His Daughter – Forbes:
…Every problem that Zuckerberg says he cares about has been solved by political-economic freedom: the liberation of individuals from coercion by one another and by government. If that freedom existed in the impoverished world then the impoverished world would quickly become prosperous. What will not make the impoverished world prosperous–or free–is for billionaires to dole out huge sums of conspicuous charity to unfree people while doing absolutely nothing to fight for their freedom.
[…]
And yet when billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates talk about improving energy access or environmental quality around the world, they steer clear of challenging the anti-freedom governments and anti-freedom ideas that cause these problems. Quite often, they embrace anti-freedom ideas–such as the movement to force us to use the most expensive, unreliable sources of energy such as solar and wind. All of this is based on a fundamental pretense–that what moves life forward is people like them doling out wealth–instead of people like all of us living in free societies where we can create our own wealth.
This pretense is psychologically convenient. It makes the billionaire feel good about himself and often enables him to win back some of the approval he lost by making so much money. Importantly, a billionaire doling out a lot of money requires no independent thought or courage whatsoever–whereas fighting for freedom requires a lot of it, because fighting for freedom is always connected to controversial issues.
[…]
And thus what we have is a world in which the world’s most brilliant business minds, minds that have reached their potential only because of freedom, do absolutely nothing to promote freedom. When was the last time that you saw a prominent billionaire businessman take a courageous stand for freedom, a stand that would invite disapproval but was nevertheless the right thing to do?
Well said.
Nov 28, 2015 | Politics
Nov 28, 2015 | Culture
pinion: What’s in a flag– reflections on race in South Carolina – HS Insider quotes Professor C. Bradley Thompson, Executive Director of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism:
“I think it’s entirely appropriate for the state government to take down the Confederate Flag from government buildings,” Thompson said. “I don’t see what relevance it has to be flown on any government building, and given its history, I think there’s very good reason to not want to fly it. That said, I do know that a lot of South Carolinians, white and black, have a great affection for the Confederate Flag and, for them, it has nothing to do with what it’s often portrayed as representing. So there’s a culture clash, I think, between those who still want to be able to fly it either privately or on war memorials and those don’t.” “I think the very best thing that has come out of this controversy is a conversation about the meaning of that flag. I think that’s an important conversation to have and I don’t think it’s one that people have had for a very long time.”
Nov 24, 2015 | Politics
Maajid Nawaz is Co-Founder and Chairman of Quilliam – a globally active think tank focusing on matters of Integration, Citizenship & Identity, Religious Freedom, Extremism and Immigration writes in the Daily Beast that ISIS Is Just One of a Full-Blown Global Jihadist Insurgency:
I say this as a liberal, and as a Muslim. In fact, I speak as a former Liberal Democrat candidate in the U.K.’s last general election and as someone who became a political prisoner in Egypt due to my former belief in Islamism. I speak, therefore, from a place of concern and familiarity, not enmity and hostility to Islam and Muslims. In a televised discussion with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on the issue, I have argued that of course ISIS is not Islam. Nor am I. Nor is anyone, really. Because Islam is what Muslims make it. But it is as disingenuous to argue that ISIS has “nothing to do with Islam” as it is to argue that “they are Islam.” ISIS has something to do with Islam. Not nothing, not everything, but something. If you’re going to talk to a jihadist—and believe me, I have spoken to many—you’re not going to find yourself discussing Hitler’s Mein Kampf. You’ll be discussing Islamic texts.
It is important to define here what I mean by Islamism: Islam is a religion, and like any other it is internally diverse. But Islamism is the desire to impose a very particular version of Islam on society. Hence, Islamism is Muslim theocracy. And where jihad is a traditional Islamic idea of struggle, jihadism is the use of force to spread Islamism. Defined in this way, it becomes easier to understand how this global jihadist insurgency seeks to recruit from Islamists, who in turn operate among Muslim communities.
The danger of not recognizing this relationship between the ideology of Islamism and the religion of Islam is twofold. Firstly, within the Muslim context, those liberal reformist Muslims, feminist Muslims, gay Muslims, dissenting Muslims, and minority sects—all these different minorities-within-the minority of the Muslim community—are immediately betrayed. By failing to name the ideology and isolate it from everyday Islam, we deprive these reforming voices of a lexicon, a language to deploy against those who are attempting to silence their progressive efforts within their own communities. We prevent a conversation around ending Islamism’s appeal while also reforming traditional Islam. If it has “nothing to do with Islam,” there is nothing to discuss within Islamic communities. In this way, we surrender the debate to the extremists, who meanwhile are discussing Islam with impunity.
The second danger is in the non-Muslim context. What happens if you don’t name the Islamist ideology and distinguish it from Islam? President Obama in his last UN speech referred to a “poisonous ideology,” yet failed to name it. Most people, who are understandably in need of some guidance on such topics, may well assume that the ideology they must challenge is Islam and all Muslims, ergo the rise of current populist xenophobic trends within Europe and America.
We should be able to distinguish Islamist extremism from Islam by clarifying that Islam is simply a religion and that Islamism is a theocratic desire to impose a version of that religion over society. And once we do that, we are then able to clearly identify the insurgent ideology that we must understand, isolate, undermine, refute, and provide alternatives to. It is precisely this distinction that I have spent the last few years advising Britain’s Prime Minister Cameron on, and I would like to think that is why Cameron corrected Obama on this very issue at the United Nations.
Nov 19, 2015 | Education
After acquiring his entire elementary and secondary education from OpenCourseWare and MITx, Ahaan Rungta joined the MIT Class of 2019 at age 15.
Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15 | MIT News
Ahaan Rungta and his family moved from Calcutta, India, to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 2001, the same year MIT announced OpenCourseWare (OCW), a bold plan to publish all of MIT’s course materials online and to share them with the world for free. Little did his parents realize at the time that their two-year-old son — already an avid reader — would eventually acquire his entire elementary and secondary education from OpenCourseWare and MITx, and would be admitted to the MIT class of 2019 at the age of 15.
“When I was five years old my mom told me ‘there’s this thing called OCW,’” says Rungta, who was homeschooled. “I just couldn’t believe how much material was available. From that moment on I spent the next few years taking OCW courses.”
When most kids are entering kindergarten, Rungta was studying physics and chemistry through OpenCourseWare. For Rungta’s mother, the biggest challenge to homeschooling her son was staying ahead of him, finding courses and materials to feed his insatiable mind.
“My parents always supported me and found the materials I needed to keep learning. My mother was a resource machine. As I got older, I studied math through OCW’s Highlights for High School program, and when I was ready for Linear Algebra, I watched all of Professor Gil Strang’s 18.06 video lectures. From the time I was 5, I learned exclusively from OCW. And I knew then I wanted to go to MIT.”
When Rungta turned 12, his family moved to Lowell, Massachusetts, as his parents realized he needed to be in a more intellectually stimulating environment. He also wanted to live closer to MIT.
For his 13th birthday, Rungta only wanted one thing — a visit to the Institute. “I stepped onto campus and it changed my life,” he says. “I will never forget the feeling of walking into the lobby of Building 7, looking up, and then touching the pillars to see if they were real. I couldn’t believe I was at MIT. My life and my ambitions moved to another level at that moment.”
Later that day, Rungta saw an Indian restaurant in the Student Center that had been closed down. He suggested to his dad — a chef who owned a restaurant in Lowell — that he look into reopening the café. His father soon became the manager of Café Spice, and the family moved from Lowell to Cambridge. Rungta studied in the Student Center every day while his father ran the café.
MIT was undergoing big changes of its own that year, with the launch of MITx, in which MIT courses would be made available online and delivered on the edX platform. Just as Rungta was ready for a new intellectual challenge, MIT once again was there for him, as its own digital learning efforts were expanding to now provide online courses in addition to course materials. When he was 9, Rungta took 3.091 (Introduction to Solid State Chemistry) through OCW with Professor Donald Sadoway. Four years later, he signed up to take it again — this time through MITx with Professor Michael Cima. He has since taken 55 MITx and OCW courses, and he now uses these online resources to supplement his on-campus undergraduate experience.
Reflecting on his journey from Calcutta to Cambridge and the many intersecting moments with MIT, Rungta is grateful to his parents and to MIT for being responsive to his needs every step of the way. “MIT has been my middle school, my high school, my entire education. That’s pretty amazing. Some people think I’m gifted, but I don’t think so. OCW was a gift to me. I was lucky to be born at the time MIT was opening up education to the world and extra lucky that OCW brought MIT and me together.”
As he ponders declaring a major next year, Rungta pauses for a moment, and then he lights up. “In an ideal world, I would want to major in everything.”
Nov 18, 2015 | Politics
Exclusive: After Westgate, Interpol Chief Ponders ‘Armed Citizenry’ – ABC News
Societies have to think about how they’re going to approach the problem,” Noble said. “One is to say we want an armed citizenry; you can see the reason for that. Another is to say the enclaves are so secure that in order to get into the soft target you’re going to have to pass through extraordinary security.”
[…]
“Ask yourself: If that was Denver, Col., if that was Texas, would those guys have been able to spend hours, days, shooting people randomly?” Noble said, referring to states with pro-gun traditions. “What I’m saying is it makes police around the world question their views on gun control. It makes citizens question their views on gun control. You have to ask yourself, ‘Is an armed citizenry more necessary now than it was in the past with an evolving threat of terrorism?’ This is something that has to be discussed.”
“For me it’s a profound question,” he continued. “People are quick to say ‘gun control, people shouldn’t be armed,’ etc., etc. I think they have to ask themselves: ‘Where would you have wanted to be? In a city where there was gun control and no citizens armed if you’re in a Westgate mall, or in a place like Denver or Texas?'”
Nov 17, 2015 | Politics
From the UK Telegraph:
The Paris attacks are the culmination of a 200-year-long battle over how Islam should respond to the rise of Western power
The fundamentalist interpretation of Islam is not a common mode of thinking for most Muslims, especially in recent times. But it is clearly driving the political agenda in Muslim countries. Not all Muslim modernisers are willing to confront the anti-Western and anti-Semitic beliefs that feed the Islamist narrative. The Islamists are dominating the discourse within the Muslim world by murdering secularists and forcing many of them to leave their countries.
With over 1.4 billion Muslims around the globe, the swelling of the fundamentalist ranks poses serious problems. If only 1 per cent of the world’s Muslims accepts this uncompromising theology, and 10 per cent of that 1-per cent decide to commit themselves to a radical agenda, we are looking at a one million strong recruitment pool for groups such as al-Qaeda, IS and whatever comes next.
Only a concerted ideological campaign against medieval Islamist ideology, like the one that discredited and contained communism, could turn the tide. [“Paris attacks and the civil war between Islam’s medievalists and modernisers“]
