AOL joins MIT Media Lab consortium
Globe Staff – February 10, 2010

AOL Inc., the New York-based Web services company, said in a press release today that it has joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab as a consortium-level sponsor.

The media lab is a research community focused on the study, invention, and creative use of digital technologies. The lab is supported by more than 60 sponsors, including some of the world’s leading corporations.

Under the sponsorship, AOL said it will have the opportunity to collaborate on the media lab’s research, including rights to license work developed at the media lab during its sponsorship.

Group: Clerk’s wedding dough ‘doesn’t seem fair’
By Jessica Van Sack/Boston Herald – February 10, 2010

A leading Hub watchdog says City Hall weddings should be put up for public bid, a move that would require a change in state laws that allow the city clerk to be the sole officiant – and matrimonial money-maker.

“It seems you’d have plenty of people who’d be willing to share some of that income with the City of Boston,” said Matthew Cahill, executive director of the Boston Finance Commission, a public watchdog agency. Of the current arrangement he added, “It just doesn’t seem fair.”

The Herald reported yesterday that Hub City Clerk Rosaria Salerno pocketed $68,000 last year by performing 1,140 marriages at $60 a couple, on top of her roughly $100,000 salary, a lawful and longstanding practice that still raised eyebrows among several pols.

With state law deputizing all clerks as justices of the peace – and a state ethics commission ruling giving the side income a green light – Salerno, 74, is hardly the only clerk cashing in, but she performs more ceremonies than most clerks.

Salerno is a well-liked liberal activist and former nun who served as a city councilor and once ran for mayor. She views administering “I do’s” as a sacred duty and even learned to officiate at ceremonies in Spanish.

Sculptures, memorials provide artistic backdrop on campus
By Saba Hamedy/BU Daily Free Press – February 10, 2010

From the famous Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. monument in the center of Marsh Plaza to the “whale” sculpture on the Boston University Beach, art can be found in every niche on BU’s campus.

Sculptor Sergio Castillo created the “Free at Last” monument, located on Marsh, in honor of King in 1975. King’s famous quotations about peace and equality are engraved at the base of the sculpture.

“We must come to see that the end we seek is a society of peace,” the base on the west side of the monument reads. “That will be the day not of the black man, not of the white man. That will be the day of man as man.”

The 50 doves flying in formation represent the fifty states and peace, according to the Smithsonian Art Inventories Catalog website.

Castillo, originally from Chile, is the 1997 recipient of National Award in Art and creator of many popular sculptures from around the world, according to his biography on the Smithsonian Art Museum Website.

Students said they enjoy the monument’s appearance and what stands for.

“I can’t help but stare at the doves because they are so beautiful,” said College of Arts and Sciences freshman Elizabeth Rich.

School of Hospitality Administration freshman Eleanor Brink agreed.

“I love that they are there to remind us of Martin Luther King Jr. and his message of peace,” she said.

Just behind Marsh Plaza on the BU Beach is the famous sculpture “Point-Counterpoint,” known to many as the whale, made by BU alumnus Russell Jacques.