Serenity, Partners in Health, stuff
I went with around 20 Oliners to see Serenity on Friday; I definitely recommend it, though you should probably watch a couple of episodes of Firefly first...
On Saturday, Alison Lee and I took a trip to Harvard to attend Partners in Health's 12th Annual Thomas J. White Symposium. It consisted of a briefing on what PIH was doing and an award ceremony for two of the people who made its work in Haiti possible. Paul Farmer also spoke near the end, but for me the most interesting element was the outside commentator who spoke. Philip Gourevitch, the author of We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, gave a talk about the difference between rhetoric and action/intention. He talked about Rwanda and the flaw of language that allows people to refer to the West's "failure" to act. A failure implies that the West attempted to intervene and failed. Instead what happened was a remarkably successful campaign to not become involved. He also talked about the well-meaning charities who, when the tide of the conflict turned, found themselves ministering to the perpetrators of the genocide after they fled the country. It didn't seem like Gourevitch did a particularly good job linking his material back to PIH, but it was a good talk nonetheless.
I started my OSS reading on System Dynamics while we were waiting to try to get into the talk - and wow...it's awesome. I should have listened to Gill and tried this before. One reading is enough to make me want to fill my schedule with courses in modeling next semester...why did I have to find this when I was about to graduate?
Last night consisted of a long walk/conversation with Kim followed by an introduction to Puzzle Pirates, the puzzling sensation that is sweeping through the Jon/Miks/Sean/Drew/Mike/Chris crowd. Steve's afraid to play because he knows he would get totally sucked in. Also included was a long thoughtful chat with Steve about life, Olin, and the quest for happiness. People consistently surprise me...I wonder why that is?
Doing laundry with the crazy non-coin operated machines at the moment and suppose it's time to hit the books hardcore, since I didn't really accomplish that yesterday.
On Saturday, Alison Lee and I took a trip to Harvard to attend Partners in Health's 12th Annual Thomas J. White Symposium. It consisted of a briefing on what PIH was doing and an award ceremony for two of the people who made its work in Haiti possible. Paul Farmer also spoke near the end, but for me the most interesting element was the outside commentator who spoke. Philip Gourevitch, the author of We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, gave a talk about the difference between rhetoric and action/intention. He talked about Rwanda and the flaw of language that allows people to refer to the West's "failure" to act. A failure implies that the West attempted to intervene and failed. Instead what happened was a remarkably successful campaign to not become involved. He also talked about the well-meaning charities who, when the tide of the conflict turned, found themselves ministering to the perpetrators of the genocide after they fled the country. It didn't seem like Gourevitch did a particularly good job linking his material back to PIH, but it was a good talk nonetheless.
I started my OSS reading on System Dynamics while we were waiting to try to get into the talk - and wow...it's awesome. I should have listened to Gill and tried this before. One reading is enough to make me want to fill my schedule with courses in modeling next semester...why did I have to find this when I was about to graduate?
Last night consisted of a long walk/conversation with Kim followed by an introduction to Puzzle Pirates, the puzzling sensation that is sweeping through the Jon/Miks/Sean/Drew/Mike/Chris crowd. Steve's afraid to play because he knows he would get totally sucked in. Also included was a long thoughtful chat with Steve about life, Olin, and the quest for happiness. People consistently surprise me...I wonder why that is?
Doing laundry with the crazy non-coin operated machines at the moment and suppose it's time to hit the books hardcore, since I didn't really accomplish that yesterday.
posted by Will at 12:27 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home