Metaboston

Detainee Horror in Vermont and Rhode Island

A heartbreaking story about Hiu Lui Ng whose cruel and nightmarish treatment by the US Government took him through detention facilities in Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, and finally to Rhode Island where he died of cancer that had been untreated for months.

"He was 17 when he came to New York from Hong Kong in 1992 with his parents and younger sister, eyeing the skyline like any newcomer. Fifteen years later, Hiu Lui Ng was a New Yorker: a computer engineer with a job in the Empire State Building, a house in Queens, a wife who is a United States citizen and two American-born sons.

But when Mr. Ng, who had overstayed a visa years earlier, went to immigration headquarters in Manhattan last summer for his final interview for a green card, he was swept into immigration detention and shuttled through jails and detention centers in three New England states.

In April, Mr. Ng began complaining of excruciating back pain. By mid-July, he could no longer walk or stand. And last Wednesday, two days after his 34th birthday, he died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a Rhode Island hospital, his spine fractured and his body riddled with cancer that had gone undiagnosed and untreated for months.

On Tuesday, with an autopsy by the Rhode Island medical examiner under way, his lawyers demanded a criminal investigation in a letter to federal and state prosecutors in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont, and the Department of Homeland Security which runs the detention system."

Campus Competitions Lead Collegiate Startup Competition

Companies started by Yale and Harvard undergrads are rivals in developing campus-based games of Risk.  The games played with teams of students who compete to capture territory on campus maps.

"[T]wo separate Internet companies, GoCrossCampus and Kirkland North, ... have sprung up to commercialize the concept behind Old Campus Tree Risk, a team-based online strategy game staged by a group of Yale undergrads in early 2007.

Both companies’ systems help college groups and other organizations mount simulated, massively multiplayer campaigns to conquer “territory” such as the campus green—or the entire Northeast, in the case of an Ivy League championship run by GoCrossCampus last fall. The games resemble the classic board games Risk or Diplomacy, but with the board transposed onto online maps representing real geographies inhabited by the players, and with the action coordinated in a combination of online sessions and real-world team meetings."

There have been suggestions of anger between the two start-ups but they seem to be overblown.

Quirks and odd traditions of the Harvard-Yale game

Quirks and odd traditions of the Harvard-Yale game that overwhelm who wins (Harvard this year).

New York Observer visits New Haven for Harvard-Yale Game

New York Observer visits New Haven for Harvard-Yale game in search of snark

New England States Pretty Healthy, Vermont Number 1 in New Research

New England states pretty healthy according to new research.  The New England states rankings:  Vermont (1); New Hampshire (4); Connecticut (5); Maine (7); Massachusetts (9).

Urban Bears: West Hartford, CT

In another in our continuing series of posts on unusual New England wildlife events, the growing Connecticut bear population has been moving south running into residents in non-rural locations like West Hartford and the New Haven suburb of Hamden.  Nice video of the bear up a tree.