Friday, March 26, 2021 Tim Cumings: Technology for the Blind

My Life With Technology, Past, Present, And Future
presented by Tim Cumings

Presentation Outline:
I. Introduction
II. Braille, the door to literacy
III. More high-tech and low-tech ways to access printed material
IV. Orientation and mobility
V. Personal note-taking from a blindness perspective
VI. Computers, DOS and beyond
VII. The smart phone revolution

Bio:
I grew up in Winchester, graduated from Boston University in 1985 with a bachelor's degree in broadcast journalism, and completed my master's degree in theology in 1989. 

In 1990 I joined the Visually Impaired Blind Users Group, part of the Boston Computer Society. I later served as president and am currently the webmaster. I worked for twenty years as a customer service representative at Eversource. 

Since 2014 I have worked at Perkins School for the Blind as an assistive technology trainer and currently as a customer service representative.

In 2015 I joined Blind Information Technology Specialists, an affiliate of the American Council Of The Blind, served as a board member, and chair the presentations committee.

In my spare time I enjoy karaoke and digital audio editing.

The presentation was recorded with Tim's permission.

Friday, March 12, 2021 Dan Metlay: Future Technological Innovations

summary:

Our next meeting is scheduled for March 12th: Dan Metlay will speak with us on the topic of his essay from The NAE 50th Anniversary Issue of The Bridge – A New Categorical Imperative. The central theme of Dan’s talk is the proposition that future technological innovations almost certainly will differ from past and current ones; they will have a broader reach, intensify social complexity, and deliver more ambiguous and opaque consequences. Consequently democratic control of them will be increasingly problematic. The tests will be twofold: acquiring epistemic insights and sustaining institutional constancy. Dan’s essay begins on page 107 of the anniversary volume (available at https://www.nae.edu/244832/The-Bridge-50th-Anniversary-Issue). Please review in advance of our meeting and come prepared for a full conversation.

bio:
Dr. Daniel Metlay recently retired after 24‐years of service on the senior professional staff of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. Prior to joining the NWTRB, he taught organizational theory and public policy in the political science departments of Indiana University, Bloomington, and at MIT. As a Senior Visiting Scholar at the International Institute for Science and Technology Policy at George Washington University and as a Senior Fellow at the B. John Garrick Institute for Risk Sciences at UCLA, he is now working on a book dealing with the institutional and technical challenges of developing a deep‐mined, geologic repository for high‐activity radioactive waste.

presentation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCfdlh2QUkE 

slide deck:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/17zo0lgS1J5kiHSJ97dzR1tvLovKNQuQi/view?usp=sharing

Friday, February 26, 2021 Bob Lewis: Preventing Hitler From Building the Atomic Bomb

Preventing Hitler From Building the Atomic Bomb
Presented by Bob Lewis

Video of Bob's talk (February 2020) at the Lexington Veterans Association https://youtu.be/RwC_jrYPmYQ?t=828 - the presentation begins at 13:48 in the recording.

Summary:

As early as the 1930’s, German scientists were studying nuclear fission.  Heavy water, a key component in the development of a sustained nuclear reaction, was only produced in the quantities required at the massive Vemork hydroelectric plant in the mountains of Norway.  When war broke out and Germany invaded and occupied Norway, the Allies knew they had to deny the Germans access to this key resource.  

On Friday, February 26, Bob Lewis, retired Navy Captain and Navy pilot, will describe one of the most important acts of sabotage in World War II, the actions of small teams of Norwegian Commandos who survived months in a snowy wilderness to execute two successful missions that denied Hitler’s scientists the means to build an atomic bomb.  

After two failed attempts, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) trained and sent a third team of Norwegian Commandos to destroy the facility at Vemork.  Armed with little more than parachutes, skis, light weapons, and explosives, they eluded on skis a huge Nazi manhunt.  On February 27, 1943, they blew up a major portion of the heavy water production cells.  On February 20, 1944, Norwegian Commandos sank a ferry carrying barrels of heavy water to the Third Reich, effectively ending Hitler’s quest for the bomb.  

Bio: 

Navy Captain Bob Lewis spent seven years with the U.S. Navy as an Aircraft-carrier- based Patrol Plane Commander, serving on the aircraft carriers WASP, INTREPID, and SARATOGA.  As a Naval Reserve officer, he flew P-2s and P-3s and commanded his Naval Reserve unit.   In his 30 years as an engineer with the MITRE Corporation, he spent 7 years in Germany at Headquarters, US Army Europe, helping to develop joint communication systems to integrate the Army, Air Force and Marines.  He later returned to Germany to lead the communications engineering effort for an alternate command post in Romania.    

Additional items mentioned in the presentation:

• Film: Heroes of Telemark (available at the library https://find.minlib.net/iii/encore/record/C__Rb2918625__Sheroes%20of%20telemark__Orightresult__U__X7?lang=eng&suite=cobalt ) 
• Winston Churchill flew a Boeing Flying Clipper to Washington https://images.app.goo.gl/ouKyrwooj6VAKw8y5 
• The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Operations_Executive