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Craig Venter
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Wednesday, July 30, 2008
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The man who mapped the human genome has a new focus: using microbes to create alternative fuels. Craig Venter, maverick biologist, wants to cure our addiction to oil. To do so, he proposes creating a designer microbe -- the heart of a biological engine -- from scratch, then adding genes culled from the sea to turn crops such as switch grass and cornstalks into ethanol. This could prompt a major shift in the economics of the energy industry and in the process bring Venter to a secondary goal: showing the world he can be as successful as he was at sequencing human DNA.
Venter, a former surf-bum and Vietnam medic, brought about a paradigm shift in genomic sequencing that has entered him in the mythology of science. He wanted to play God, so he cracked the human genome. Now he wants to play Darwin and collect the DNA of everything on the planet. Venter has graced the covers of Time and BusinessWeek.
After antagonizing government scientists while racing them t (more...)
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Annual Debate - This House Believes that the U.N. is Irrelevant
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Tuesday, September 09, 2008
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This House Believes that the U.N. is Irrelevant Proposition Cyrus Habib - Is in his final year of law school at Yale, though this remains one of the best kept secrets on the Eastern Seaboard. In fact, his professors are often surprised to find him in New Haven. In addition to serving on the Oxonian Society's Board of Advisors, Cyrus has spent the past few years working at Google, Goldman Sachs and the law firm Perkins Coie. He is a strong advocate for making U.S. currency accessible to the blind, a goal he likes to call change we can believe in. He studied at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar.Daniel Raglan - His career at the Oxford Union started well but faded rapidly. Elected to the Secretary's Committee in his second semester at Oxford, he decided he had better things to do than clean up other students vomit on a Friday night. He resigned and disappeared, much like Bobby Fischer, into obscurity. He reemerged ten years later to debate Cambridge NYC at the O (more...)
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Ed Gillespie, White House Counselor
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Tuesday, September 30, 2008
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Ed Gillespie holds the distinguished and powerful position of White House counselor in the president's inner circle. President Bush said, He's (Gillespie) a seasoned hand. He's got excellent judgment. He's a strategic thinker.” As a former Republican National Committee chairman, Gillespie is one of the president’s most trusted advisers. Gillespie, funny and well-liked by reporters, has played many roles for President Bush, in addition to leading the party during the 2004 elections that sent President Bush back to the White House and retained GOP majorities in the House and Senate. He was a senior communications adviser to Mr. Bush's first campaign for president, spokesman during the 2000 recount in Florida and communications director for the 2001 inaugural. He was tapped to guide Samuel Alito through his confirmation to the Supreme Court. Gillespie made his name as a top aide to former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas. In that job, he was a principal drafter of the Con (more...)
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Tommy Lee Jones and Annual Gala
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Friday, October 03, 2008
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The Society’s is pleased to announce that its annual gala will be in honor of the legendary Tommy Lee Jones, who was nominated for two Oscars this year This year’s special evening will include an elegant three-course dinner with wine, and a conversational interview of Tommy Lee Jones. Early RSVPs are strongly suggested here for the limited number of single tickets. Table purchases are available – please email membership@oxoniansociety.com Previous Society galas have featured Conan O’Brien, Sir Roger Moore, Prime Minister John Major, and Her Royal Highness Princess Badiya of Jordan. The gala is the annual premier fundraising event to support the Society’s unique programming that provides the public low cost access to this and the next generation of leaders. A portion of the table and single ticket purchases are tax-deductible. Tommy Lee Jones emerged to become one of the most admired and respected film stars of his generation by winning the Oscar and receiving four Academy Awar (more...)
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Mike Leigh
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Monday, October 20, 2008
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One of contemporary Britain and World’s most renowned directors, Mike Leigh is known for his depictions of the dramas inherent in the everyday lives of regular people. He is known to focus on slice-of-life realism. Leigh is noted for his film style—in which the commonplace is often tinged with the extraordinary—has been dubbed social surrealism , or as he prefers to call it, heightened realism . Leigh makes films remarkable for their level-headed, unsensational portrayals of topics. Leigh's true international breakthrough came in 1993 with Naked. A disturbing, relentlessly bleak account of the misanthropic wanderings of a philosophy-spewing drifter, the film earned both raves from critics and rants from various feminist groups, who found it to be deeply misogynistic (a charge that Leigh would angrily refute) due to the violence carried out against some of its female characters. Naked was rewarded lavishly at the Cannes Festival, and Leigh was honored with the festival's Best D (more...)
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