Latest news with #UMassBoston
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Nearly 1400 people took part in national ‘Walk MS 2025′
Despite a rainy weekend, the weather certainly held out long enough for 'Walk MS 2025.' It's part of a national annual event that raises awareness and funds for the fight against multiple sclerosis. In Boston, participants walked along a one to three-mile route, overlooking the harbor, before finishing up at the UMass Boston campus. Multiple Sclerosis is a disease that affects a person's nervous system. Symptoms can often vary from person to person, including numbness and tingling to mobility challenges, blindness, and paralysis. Multiple Sclerosis affects an estimated 1 million people in the United States. Lori Espino, President of the National MS Society Greater New England Chapter, reflected on the walk. 'We had close to 1400 people come out either supporting a loved one with MS or living with MS themselves, and we raised over half a million dollars for a cure.' Sunday's walk was the sixth held in Massachusetts over the past few months; together, they've raised nearly one million dollars in donations. This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available. Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW
Associated Press
27-05-2025
- General
- Associated Press
Omar Khayyam's Tent: His Autobiography of 1000 Bittersweet Robaiyat Wine Sips Forthcominng on June 10, His True Birthday
The book reveals the unitary architecture of his Robaiyat's philosophical, religious, and scientific wisdom as an epic poem in search of true human happiness. 'For this reader encountering this series was like the astronauts who experienced seeing the Earth for the first time from outer space. It was nothing I could have imagined, from prior experience.'— Winston E. Langley, Professor Emeritus and Former Provost of UMass Boston GREATER BOSTON, MA, UNITED STATES, May 27, 2025 / / -- The original Robaiyat of Omar Khayyam (AD 1021-1123) as shared in the forthcoming OKCIR book is an epic, at once a personal, world-historical, and cosmic search for true human happiness. Khayyam composed it to be highly readable so that it can be read by all, continually, and today, before it is too late, like a prayer book or a rosary of pearls or ruby stones, since it was meant to be not only reflective but also generative of search for happiness. If you begin reading it, you must do so at least once to its end, so that in later readings any of its parts can be recalled amid the unitary architecture of its philosophical, religious, and scientific wisdom rendered as an astounding and most beautiful work of art. Khayyam was right; there is nothing on Earth like his Wine. His poetic 'book of life' was intended to be released posthumously, so its existence was not known to his contemporaries. Following his death, it was released but became scattered and its logical unity was shattered by natural and social disasters and scribal poetry alphabetizing styles, some quatrains wandering into other poets' works and others becoming misattributed to him. The Robaiyat as shared in the forthcoming book were logically re-sewn and newly translated in verse by the sociologist Mohammad H. Tamdgidi during his integrative study of all of Khayyam's works as reported in his unprecedented 12-book series 'Omar Khayyam's Secret: Hermeneutics of the Robaiyat in Quantum Sociological Imagination,' whose last book (12th) is also forthcoming simultaneously. Following a summary of his series' findings, Tamdgidi presents in the book nothing else but Khayyam's Robaiyat, including the Persian originals and his verse translations (his study of them having been shared in his series, especially its Books 8-11). The quatrains, comprising songs of doubt, hope, and joy, are logically organized to address three questions, based on the 3-phased method of inquiry Khayyam himself introduced in his other writings. Quatrains 1-338 of Part 1, Songs of Doubt, open by explaining his epic's secretiveness and address the question 'Does Happiness Exist?' Their order follows a logically inductive reasoning through which Khayyam delves from surface portraits of unhappiness to their deeper chain of causes. Quatrains 339-685 of Part 2, Songs of Hope, address the second question 'What Is Happiness?' Their order follows a logically deductive reasoning through which he moves from methodological to explanatory and practical quatrains. Quatrains 686-1000 of Part 3, Songs of Joy, address the third question 'Why Can Happiness Exist?' Still deductively ordered, they show how happiness can be made possible through his poetry's Wine itself, realizing that one can never become truly happy by bringing sadness to others since human self and society are always twin-born and universal. Hurting another is always a hurting of that self in you that represents that other. For Khayyam, happiness can be possible by way of joyful, creative, and constructive humanizing efforts by own example, like his Robaiyat, which must also start from our inner and interpersonal todays and spread globally. Khayyam's Robaiyat represented the tent of which he was a 'tentmaker,' his poetic pen name having been inspired by his true birth date horoscope chart as discovered by Tamdgidi and reported in his series for the first time. The metaphor also underlies the numerical geometry of its triangular unity, proportional to the dazzling Grand Tent (Triplicity) features of his birth chart, the same way he embedded his own triangular golden rule in the mysterious design of Isfahan's North Dome. A metaphor of the Robaiyat as Simorgh (or Phoenix) songs is also hidden in its deep structure. Khayyam's Robaiyat are his Simorgh's millennial rebirth songs served in his tented tavern as 1000 sips of his bittersweet poetic Wine of happiness. Winston E. Langley, Professor Emeritus and former Provost of UMass Boston, wrote in his Foreword to the last book of the series: 'Tamdgidi's offering in his Omar Khayyam's Secret series of a translated tri-partite and then, integrated, version of this poem (this epic) is of utmost importance. … In Khayyam's work, especially his poetry, one finds the pathos of the tragedian, with the author of Gilgamesh, Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Goethe calling; one comes face to face with anxiety, doubt, and the absurd, and tastes Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Camus, and Kobo Abe; one confronts subtleties of the most refined kind and meets Buddha, Pushkin, and the practical genius of Da Vinci and Bacon; and one, confronted with the heart and matters of faith and reason, love and happiness, finds voices from Aristotle, St. Augustine, and Aquinas, to Zara Jacob, Jefferson, and Bonhoeffer. Happiness, for example, is not only a state of well-being, but a process of continuing liberation. … While Khayyam's life is a major story of fierce intellectual passion and a like devotion to ideals of philosophy, science, and poetry (and modes of living that combined those of the solitary and the celebrated, the private and the public), there is an area that is also part of his identity that cannot be overlooked without an injustice to scholarship, history, and human culture. It is the role of satire—that which humorously criticizes defects of reason, science, philosophy (including theology), politics, history, custom (however sacred), even in face of deep disappointments or lived catastrophes. Welcoming the comedy, as Aristophanes, Cervantes, Vico, Erasmus, Santayana, and Chekhov knew, is part of coming to know, of wisdom, of ensuring human flourishing. One may say that Khayyam could be regarded as the first true humanist. All that is human find unhidden expressions through him.' Jafar Aghayani Chavoshi, Professor of Philosophy of Science at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran, and a pioneer in Iran's scientific Omar Khayyam studies, has regarded the Omar Khayyam's Secret series as '… a masterpiece in Omar Khayyam studies.' ——————————————————————— Mohammad H. Tamdgidi, Ph.D., is the founder of OKCIR: Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics) ( est. 2002). He is a former associate professor of sociology specializing in social theory at UMass Boston. Mohammad Tamdgidi OKCIR: Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research [email protected] Legal Disclaimer: EIN Presswire provides this news content 'as is' without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.
Boston Globe
13-05-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
If you don't see the perils of AI, Pope Leo XIV has a warning
The new pope pointed to a a famous encyclical issued by Pope Leo XIII in 1891 called 'On Capital and Labor' that sought greater respect for worker's rights and unions, limited working hours, and fair wages. 'The discussion is not easy, nor is it void of danger,' the earlier pope Advertisement Leo XIV said he saw clear parallels to the current AI boom, amid the rise of massive data centers, AI bots, and tech billionaires. 'In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice, and labor,' the pope said (in a Vatican translation of the speech delivered in Latin). Advertisement Leo is only the second pope to explore the implications of AI, though so far he has focused on the darker aspects. Starting two years ago, Leo's predecessor, Pope Francis, repeatedly praised the advance of technology and AI while also warning of the dangers of unchecked use of AI without moral and ethical boundaries. 'We cannot allow algorithms to limit or condition respect for human dignity, or to exclude compassion, mercy, forgiveness, and above all, the hope that people are able to change,' Francis said in a Some Massachusetts AI leaders, assembled by UMass Boston chancellor Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, In making reference to the Gilded Age industrial revolution, Leo appears to be more concerned about the potential for AI to allow for exploitation of workers and harm to society, according to Greg Epstein, Humanist chaplain at Harvard and MIT who wrote a book last year about technology and religion. Epstein, who fears that technology has become a substitute for religion for many people, welcomed Leo's involvement. 'The Catholic Church has a mixed record when it comes to moral authority, but some of its best moments in history have been using its push for justice,' Epstein said. 'And I think that's what we need right now.' AI also raises concerns about devaluing human relationships, which the pope could address as well, said John Pittard, a professor of philosophy at Yale Divinity School. Advertisement 'I'm very concerned about the degradation and impoverishment of human relationships as we come to increasingly rely on AI and less on other people,' Pittard said. 'And obviously religion and Christianity and Catholicism have a lot to say about that. I would be concerned if he wasn't tuned into these challenges and issues in a significant way.' Aaron Pressman can be reached at
Boston Globe
28-04-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
AG Campbell sued Trump more than a dozen times in his first 100 days, saying ‘courts are our strongest tool'
As federal Democrats have limited power, with the White House and both chambers of Congress under Republican control, state Democrats have led many fights against the Trump administration. None are better positioned than Campbell and 22 other Democratic attorneys general who have Campbell, who served on Boston City Council during Trump's last presidency, says while she and her colleagues prepared by studying Project 2025 and Trump's first term, 'Trump 2.0 is different.' Advertisement 'What we could not have expected was that the volume of the attacks from the federal administration on the rule of law, on immigrants, vulnerable communities, state economies, would be much greater and quicker than the first term,' Campbell said in a press briefing Friday. 'We can't take on every issue, we won't win every fight,' she acknowledged. But 'regardless of what the narrative is out in the public, the law and courts are our strongest tool against federal overreach, and they are working.' Advertisement Massachusetts' attorney general's office is smaller than those in other Democrat-run states, such as California or New York, but it's punching above its weight. Campbell joined her 14th lawsuit against Trump Friday, suing his education department Similar to her predecessor, Governor Maura Healey, Campbell's recognition is rising as a result. The attorney appears frequently on national television to tout her legal moves. She testified before Congress in February to 'The last AG that pushed back against Donald Trump is now our governor, so Massachusetts has rewarded, with the highest office in the state, individuals willing to push back against Trump. All the evidence on the ground suggests there's no political cost and only political upside,' said Erin O'Brien, a political scientist at UMass Boston. 'She's doing what most Massachusetts residents want, so I would be surprised if she wasn't at least flirting with higher office,' O'Brien added. Campbell said her office has challenged the onslaught of federal changes at all hours. She pointed to an instance when, in February, the Trump administration Advertisement Paul Nolette, a Marquette University political science professor who 'There's so many targets now, with all of these executive orders and executive actions that it's not clear what the legal authority is for these things. That elevates the opportunities for AGs to get involved,' Nolette said. The attorneys general have been successful in temporarily stopping several actions while cases make their way through the courts, such as Campbell expressed concerns about their legal approach, saying, 'We can't have a functioning democracy or a functioning economy or address the issues our residents care about the most if we don't protect the rule of law.' But attorneys general have largely been able to 'get the Department of Justice to get the Trump administration to be responsive' through legal challenges, she said. She's also protesting in other ways, such as joining a rally supporting Advertisement Massachusetts left-leaning voters and advocates frequently praise Campbell for taking on the Trump administration, sometimes Acknowledging Campbell's expanded role, the Massachusetts House made its first effort to oppose Trump 7 percent more than what she received this year, extra funds Becca Kornet, the Medfield Democratic town committee chair, 'The lawyers are going to save us,' Kornet recalled telling her members. 'It's not always going to work ... but there are lawyers across the country, and especially in Massachusetts, who are really, really smart people and trying to do the right thing.' While Trump's favorability has plummeted 'Our top law enforcement official, Andrea Campbell, the attorney general, has no interest in enforcing the law here in Massachusetts and is just working to obstruct President Trump from actually enforcing the law,' said John Milligan, the Massachusetts GOP's executive director. Advertisement He added Campbell has continued 'lawfare' against Trump, building on the president's claims during his campaign he was politically targeted. They've also criticized Campbell over an ongoing feud with Still, the attorney general's anti-Trump work has become a litmus test even for Republicans. In a Campbell has responded to critics saying she's focused on national fights by pointing to her office's work at home, such as Carol Rose, the local ACLU executive director, said their national organization has filed at least 100 lawsuits against Trump, many alongside attorneys general like Campbell, whom she called 'courageous.' 'The people really want leaders who are going to fight back and to uphold our democracy,' Rose said. 'Having a really great and strong state attorney general, combined with civil rights groups that are also fighting back, enables us to slow down some of the worst excesses and hopefully stop and turn the tide.' Advertisement Anjali Huynh can be reached at
Boston Globe
23-04-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
UMass President Marty Meehan focuses on climate tech in his latest address
The $4 billion legislation, the Healey administration says, represents a $1 billion investment in climate-tech over 10 years — though not all of that money is in the actual bill. Mass Leads includes $200 million over a decade in bond authorizations for offshore wind farm infrastructure, $200 million for other capital grants to help companies and nonprofits research or commercialize climate technologies, and up to $30 million a year for tax incentives for clean-tech firms that add jobs (totaling another $300 million). The administration counts another $30 million a year to support the quasi-public Massachusetts Clean Energy Center toward the total; those funds come from the state's operating budget, which needs legislative approval each year. 'UMass ... will be the engine that drives the state's economic ambitions, as we've been for 160 years,' Meehan said in the address. Advertisement Meehan talked about some specific efforts that are already underway: climate resiliency research at UMass Boston's Stone Living Lab, UMass Dartmouth's work on sustainable fisheries, and water treatment and purification research at UMass Amherst. He also mentioned the importance of global partnerships, singling out the Clean Energy & Environment Legacy Transition Initiative that UMass Lowell and Boston University are working on with university partners in Ireland, as well as UMass Boston chancellor Marcelo Suárez-Orozco's efforts with the Vatican Climate Summit last year. In an interview, Meehan said he believes it's important for UMass to put its research and teaching efforts to work to help with the state's economic development priorities. That includes researching innovative climate solutions and preparing a workforce for the new jobs that will open up. 'There's no question that the federal government is trying to take us back with regard to climate change,' Meehan said. '[But] I would argue that climate change is the existential threat of our time. ... Our goal is to position UMass to be the partner of choice for state government, the private sector in Massachusetts, and also globally. This is an installment of our weekly Bold Types column about the movers and shakers on Boston's business scene. Jon Chesto can be reached at
