Vertigrow prototype

What would your heart sound like if it played music? How much hunger can be cured with growing vertical plants? These questions and more were addressed at the "The Laboratory," a three-year experiment in the Northwest Building at Harvard University.

The Laboratory will serve, for the first year, as an exhibition and meeting space for Harvard students to show off their ideas and help other students generate more ideas regarding the intersection of science and art.

Photo via the Harvard Crimson

As the audience was filing into last night's "The Wire at Harvard" panel, Professor Lawrence Bobo leaned over and spoke to Bubbles.

"You saved it for me," Bobo said.

"I saved it for you?"

"In the last show, when poor Duquan went down," said Bobo. "I said, 'At least I got Bubbles.

UPDATE!: Download a podcast of the entire forum, "The Wire at Harvard," featuring Kima, Bubbles, and Omar

William Julius Wilson, the legendary Harvard sociologist and a giant in the field of African American studies, has a thing for The Wire. "Superfan" doesn't quite capture it. Last year, on the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King's death, Wilson welcomed The Wire creator David Simon to Harvard for a public forum bringing together cops, community activists, and academics to discuss the show's impact.

BAD TIMES
5 years ago
May 16, 2003 | Dan Kennedy called for “tougher standards” in journalism in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal.
“Yet by purging Blair, it would be wrong to think that all is now well at the Times, or in journalism. Tougher standards are needed. We all deserve better. I was struck by a comment that Alex Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center.

PLAYING FAVORITES
5 years ago
April 25, 2003 | Brent Kendall analyzed how a presidential candidate’s declared “favorite book” can affect his campaign chances.
“The 2000 election demonstrated precisely how candidates' book choices play right into the media's preconceived storylines--for better and for worse.

With The Wire's fifth and final season in the can -- we'd talk more about it, except that a couple of our slacking staffers are still plowing through seasons one through four -- creator/mastermind David Simon stopped by Harvard to accept we're-not-worthy genuflections from a few serious social-science superstars. Leading off was William Julius Wilson, whose landmark When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor was namechecked by Simon as a strong influence on the dockworkers' plot in Season Two.