ED RENDELL, the former Pennsylvania Governor and current Philadelphia Daily News sports columnist, is a visiting fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics this semester, and the IOP was scheduled a while back to do an evening-with him. But with public interest over the Occupy movement growing, the Kennedy School put together WE ARE THE 99 PERCENT: FROM FRUSTRATION TO OCCUPATION, a quick panel that also featured '60s organizer (and HKS lecturer) MARSHALL GANZ, Columbia Journalism School bigwig, poet, and '60s organizer TODD GITLIN, and VANESSA WILLIAMSON, co-author of a book about the Tea Party.

Here's a campaign shocker: RACHEL MADDOW is still not running for Scott Brown's seat. Apparently that full page Globe ad last year wasn't enough for the Huffington Post, the Boston Herald, and eight zillion blogs. It wasn't really true until she showed up at Harvard on Sunday night and made an offhanded comment about it.

As our city girds itself for the tsunami of book boosterism that's about to sweep Copley Square this weekend (to refresh your memory on just how incredible last year's Boston Book Fest was, check out our 2009 podcast archives), it seems like this is the perfect opportunity to wax introspective on one of the greatest novels of all time.

The email didn't go out of its way to explain itself. ALEC BALDWIN, appearing at the fabled JFK Forum at Harvard University's storied Kennedy School of Government, as a guest of the Institute of Politics. In conversation with no less an interlocutor than New York Times National Editor RICK BERKE (who admitted to staying up late the night before to watch It's Complicated on DVD).

There was no ring, no swinging chairs or smashing tables, and his arch enemy, the ever-dastardly Vince McMahon, was some 3,000 miles away prepping for Sunday's WrestleMania. But even while completely out of his element, consummate badass Stone Cold Steve Austin managed to successfully open a can on the Harvard Lampoon during his Friday induction as an honorary member.

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.