Jim Phillips will lead a discussion on the issue of illegal immigration on June 20, 2019, 8:15am in the Lilian Gade room at the DCA.
https://www.numbersusa.com/solutions
https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/real-reform-can-fix-immigration
https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_are_some_realistic_solutions_to_immigration
Monthly arrests at border reach highest point since 2007 – The Washington Post
KIRKUS REVIEWA novelistic tech tale that puts readers on the front lines of cybersecurity.
For all whose lives and connections depend on the internet—nearly everyone—this biography of the pseudonymous “Alien” provides a fast-paced cautionary tale. Smith (Epic Measures: One Doctor. Seven Billion Patients., 2015, etc.) has enough experience as a computer programmer to understand the technicalities of this world, but his storytelling makes it intelligible to general readers; indeed, the narrative is more character-driven than technology-driven. The book requires a few leaps of faith—not only that Alien is who the author says she is, but that she can so vividly recount events and conversations that happened years before she met the author. The story begins with Alien at MIT. Lacking focus and direction, she was drawn to a hacking community in a time when the term could extend from picking locks to taking drugs and didn’t become more focused on technology until computers became more central to society. The hackers often lived more adventurous lives than many students, and Alien experienced plenty of casual sex, drug use, and a few tragic casualties along the way. She graduated from hacking computer systems to helping protect them from hackers at a time when “Corporations from Microsoft and Cisco on down had begun hiring hackers of their own to help defend themselves against other hackers.” Some worked one side of the fence, some worked the other, and some straddled the line and were capable of “going rogue.” Smith goes into great detail to demonstrate how Alien could penetrate the security of whomever was employing her, showing how a real criminal would do it, and makes fearfully clear that there is “no such thing as absolute security in this world, or any definitive and final fixes.” Alien now runs a small hacking company that assists with security for banks, governments, and other organizations.
A page-turning real-life thriller, the sort of book that may leave readers feeling both invigorated and vulnerable.
KIRKUS REVIEWHow one Frenchwoman’s spy network helped win the war against the Nazis.
Marie-Madeleine Fourcade (1909-1989) was raised in a well-to-do French family, but she was extremely independent for her time and refused to comply with the unstated rules of proper feminine behavior. “All her life,” writes Olson (Last Hope Island: Britain, Occupied Europe, and the Brotherhood That Helped Turn the Tide of War, 2017, etc.), “she rebelled against the norms of France’s deeply conservative, patriarchal society.” When she was approached to work with an espionage group to help the Allies before the onset of World War II, she accepted the position with little hesitation. Following this life-changing decision, she became the eventual leader of the group known as “Alliance,” a vast network of spies and radio operators who worked all over France. In a comprehensive, often exciting narrative, the author chronicles the actions of Fourcade and Alliance from 1936 to 1945. Her use of quotes and solid descriptive passages help re-create the tension and anxiety Fourcade and her friends felt as they risked everything to save France. Olson also effectively integrates a thorough history of the role of the Vichy government during this time as well as details on how MI6 and the Allies used the information Alliance collected to change the course of the war. She shares specifics on many of the agents under Fourcade’s control, their daring exploits and escapes, and what happened to those captured by the Germans. With the same attention to detail, Olson writes about Fourcade’s secret lover and her children. Although the text is overlong, the author brings into the spotlight a woman whose courage and endurance helped shape history yet whose full story had not yet been told. “For several decades following the war,” writes the author, “histories of the French resistance, which were written almost exclusively by men, largely ignored the contributions of women.” Olson rectifies that omission.
An engaging, informative addition to World War II history.
Discussion Leader: Jack Fitzgibbons
CRISPR is a technique to edit genes. It has been compared to a word processor to edit the genome of any living organism. This capability has the power for breakthrough developments such as biofuels, disease resistant and more nutritious crops, and actually “repairing” a human gene that causes a deadly disease such as sickle cell anemia. But, like nuclear energy, CRISPR can be used for good or bad. Should we “fix” or even “improve” nature? What regulations are called for? Can the genie be put back in the bottle? Jack Fitzgibbons will lead the discussion as we struggle with this promising but challenging technology.
https://dariendma.org/wp-content/uploads/CRISPR-US-Patient.pdf
https://dariendma.org/wp-content/uploads/CRISPR-What-are-the-Ethical-Concerns-of-Genome-Editing.pdf
Dr Edward Schuster is a Stamford cardiologist and internist who has practised in this area for almost 40 years. A graduate of the Chicago Medical School he completed his residency at Duke and Fellowship in Cardiology at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Over the years he has received several honors. For the past 15 years he has appeared in the List of Best Doctors not only in CT but in the entire country. He has extensive teaching experience with both the house staff at Stamford Hospital and medical students from Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. He developed the EMS system in Stamford and the use of defibrillators throughout the city. He specializes in all aspects of cardiology with an emphasis in Preventative Cardiology and Aging Successfully. His talk is entitled “How to Live to be 110 without disabilities.” Drawing on his experience as well as medical studies, he will be giving between 30-40 tips as to how this aspirational goal can be achieved.
Host: Sunil Saksena
Video of his presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVjNxJ76uIQ
Wednesday May 22, 2019
Prof Hamish Lutris will speak to us about Connecticut’s role in the Civil War. Connecticut provided a greater percentage of its citizens as Union manpower than any other state. Its soldiers and sailors underwent triumph and tragedy in every theater of operations in the war. In addition, Connecticut was the arsenal of the Union, with factories producing uniforms, guns, and equipment for the Union armies in unheard of profusion, making Union armies the best-equipped in human history until that time. This presentation paints a portrait of Connecticut in the Civil War, a contradictory picture of a state on the cusp of change, though struggling to retain a way of life rapidly fading into a bucolic past.
Hamish Lutris is an Associate Professor of History and Political Science at Capital Community College in Hartford, Connecticut. He has worked in some of America’s premier natural and historical sites, leading hiking and historical programs. He has also lectured extensively in the United States, Europe, and Canada, presenting programs on wide-ranging historical topics, including Native American history, the Civil War, Scientific History, Social and cultural history, World War I, World War II, and the American West.
Video of his presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlISkBoi6fw
Draggan Mihailovich, Producer CBS 60 Minutes, will talk about what goes into making a great “60 Minutes” story, from conception to casting to writing to editing. He’ll give some examples and also talk about his favorite story of all time, which he produced during his time at CBS Sports: a piece on Louie Zamperini which was the inspiration for the best selling book “Unbroken.”
Mihailovich, 57, started his network television career at ABC Sports in 1984 where he worked on the Sarajevo Winter Olympics, the Los Angeles Summer Olympics and the Calgary Winter Olympics. In 1988, CBS Sports hired Mihailovich to produce features for the next three Winter Olympics: in Albertville, France; Lillehammer, Norway; and Nagano, Japan. For the past 21 years, Mihailovich has been a producer for the CBS News program “60 Minutes”. Since joining the broadcast in May 1998, Mihailovich has won seven Emmy Awards. In all, he has won 11 Emmy Awards, four of them for his work as a feature producer at CBS Sports. A native of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Mihailovich now lives in Stamford.
Host: Sunil Saksena
I’ll be speaking about my latest book, The Game: Harvard, Yale, and America in 1968, which tells the story of the 1968 Harvard-Yale football game, the legendary 29-29 tie that is on nearly every list of the top ten most exciting games in college gridiron history. Although the book includes a detailed description of the game itself, this is a book about more than football. It’s a book about a watershed year in American history (the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, rioting at the Democratic National Convention, the Tet Offensive, increasing racial tension, not to mention sex, drugs, and rock and roll) as navigated by a group of young men and by the contrasting institutions they attended. (In the course of my research I interviewed 54 of the players who took the field on November 23, 1968.) As Publishers Weekly observed, “By humanizing the players, the accounts of each team’s amazing season and the four-chapter recap of their final, unbelievable game are elevated above entertaining sports reporting to thoughtful, emotional storytelling. This excellent history illustrates sport’s powerful role in American society.” The Wall Street Journal called it “the rare sports book that lives up to the claim of so many entrants in this genre: It is, in its way, the portrait of an era.”
I’ll talk about how I came to write the book, about the process of writing and editing it, and about the unexpected relevance readers have found in it.
Host: Alex Garnett
On November 23, 1968, there was a turbulent and memorable football game: the season-ending clash between Harvard and Yale. The final score was 29-29. To some of the players, it was a triumph; to others a tragedy. And to many, the reasons had as much to do with one side’s miraculous comeback in the game’s final forty-two seconds as it did with the months that preceded it, months that witnessed the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, police brutality at the Democratic National Convention, inner-city riots, campus takeovers, and, looming over everything, the war in Vietnam.
George Howe Colt’s The Game is the story of that iconic American year, as seen through the young men who lived it and were changed by it. One player had recently returned from Vietnam. Two were members of the radical antiwar group SDS. There was one NFL prospect who quit to devote his time to black altruism; another who went on to be Pro-Bowler Calvin Hill. There was a guard named Tommy Lee Jones, and fullback who dated a young Meryl Streep. They played side by side and together forged a moment of startling grace in the midst of the storm.
“Vibrant, energetic, and beautifully structured” (NPR), this magnificent and intimate work of history is the story of ordinary people in an extraordinary time, and of a country facing issues that we continue to wrestle with to this day. “The Game is the rare sports book that lives up to the claim of so many entrants in this genre: It is the portrait of an era” (The Wall Street Journal).
Video of his presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93l0d5gaNMA
2019 April Wandering
On Tuesday April 16, David Mace will lead our April Wandering.
The Wanderers will take the train on Tuesday morning to Grand Central Terminal — the 8:36 AM train from the Darien station, which is the 8:39 AM from Noroton Heights. Upon arrival, we all shall meet at the Upper Level Information Booth at GCT. Please bring your MetroCard for the subway or select the MetroCard included” option when you purchase your train tickets from the machines on the train station platforms.
We shall go by Subway to the Delancey Street neighborhood of lower Manhattan and from there stroll over the East River via the Williamsburg Bridge to the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. The tour will proceed past the historic Peter Lugar’s Restaurant and the architecturally acclaimed historic main branch of the Williamsburg Savings Bank, through a portion of Brooklyn’s Hasidic ethnic neighborhood, and past the northern part of the Brooklyn Navy Yard that has been converted into Steiner Studios, the largest motion picture lot outside of Hollywood. Lunch will be at an Italian Restaurant on the riverbank, with broad vistas of lower Manhattan. Then we shall return by ferry to the Wall Street Ferry Terminal,
and thence, via subway, back to Grand Central. We expect to return about 4:00 PM on the MetroNorth train then leaving Grand Central for Darien.
Hiking Devil’s Den Preserve
Tuesday, May 7, 2019, 10.00am
We will be hiking the trails at Devil’s Den Preserve in Weston on Tuesday, May 7, 2019 with a
10 am start. This is the largest nature preserve in SW Connecticut and extremely popular with
hikers.Owned by the Nature Conservancy, its has 1700 acres of woodlands,wetlands,ponds and
streams, and 20 miles of picturesque trails. It is home to 145 species of birds, 20 species of
mammals, and over 400 varieties of trees and wildflowers.
We will be hiking a loop of 4 miles.This trail has a moderate level of difficulty in that there are
places of gradual uphill, but these are usually followed by long stretches of flat trail. You do
need sturdy shoes as the trail is rocky in places.
After the hike, at about 12.30pm, we will head over to the Barn Door Restaurant for lunch. This
restaurant is located at 37 Ethan Allen Hwy (Rt 7), about a 10 minute drive from Devil’s Den.
As usual, we welcome spouses and significant others on our hikes. Newer members of DMA
are encouraged to join us.
Directions
Take Exit 42 off the north-bound Merritt Parkway and at the bottom of exit ramp make a right
turn onto Route 57 North towards Weston. After 3.8 miles, make a left and continue on Rt 57 for
another 1.3 miles. Turn right on Godfrey Road West and drive half a mile. Make left on to Pent
Road which ends in the parking lot for Devil’s Den.
On Google Maps use this destination address : 33 Pent Road, Weston
Contact : Sunil Saksena 203-561-8601 (cell) ssaksena44@gmail.com
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