St. Stanislaus School benefit, 9 to 4 in Kolbe Hall, Adams. Bake sale, snack bar, games, Chinese auctions, money raffle, crafts, and pierogi.
Blackinton Union Church, 1373 Massachusetts Ave., North Adams; 10 to 2. Crafts table, bake sale, Chinese auction, the Christmas table, and kid's grab bag. Lunch $4, $2 kids.
First Congregational Church, North Adams, 9-2.
Nov. 28 Becket Federated Church, Route 8, holiday bazaar from 9-3. Lunch, crafts, baked goods, holiday and other items. Information: Mary Peltier, Parish House, 413-623-5217.
Dec. 5
Holiday Fair at First Congregational Church, 25 Park Place, Lee, from 10 to 3; handcrafted items, raffles, children's shop, bake sale, cut Christmas trees and lunch from 11 to 1. Includes angel-themed goods from SERRV. Information, 413-243-1033 or www.ucc-lee.org.
Dec. 12-13
North Adams Country Club, crafts 9-4; food from That's a Wrap from 11-2. Information: Sheryl Morehouse at 413-822-3329.
Planning a bazaar this season? Submit information to info@iberkshires.com to have it listed here.
We're trying out blogs to offer shorter, easy-to-find news. Let us know what you think.
Send press releases and announcements to info@iberkshires.com. Need to contact someone at iBerkshires? Here's how.
Mammography Dispute The government's issued controversial new guidelines stating that women shouldn't get annual mammograms until age 50, rather than age 40.
iBerkshires will be meeting with local medical experts Monday. Have a question you'd like answered on this issue? Send it info@iberkshires.com with "mammogram" in the subject line.
Williams College to Get a Look at New Voting Method "Majority Judgement"
09:11AM / Wednesday, October 01, 2008
WILLIAMSTOWN - The results of an election experiment run at Williams College and "The Failure of the United States Electoral System" will be discussed at a free public lecture on Monday, Oct. 6. The lecture is scheduled for 7 p.m. in The Science Center's Wege Auditorium.
Reacting to a growing concern that traditional electoral systems do not necessarily designate the candidates who truly represent the will of the electorates, Michel Balinski '54 of the Ecole Polytechnique and CNRS, Paris, is arguing for a new method of voting, "Majority Judgment."
"With today's electoral system a minority can elect a president (and has)," he says. "A tiny percentage of the population elects half of the members of the Senate, a minority of the electorate can elect a majority in the House of Representatives (an probably has), and the apportionment of Representatives to States is biased."
There is a system of electing one candidate among several - the "Majority Judgment" - that permits voters to express their opinions by evaluating all the candidates, and picks the one that is really designated by the majority of the voters.
In his lecture, Balinski will discuss the Majority Judgment for ranking all candidates and electing one and the results of the experimental vote in the Williams College community.
Students were asked to complete a simple survey to evaluate presidential candidates using "easy, common words, such as 'Excellent,' 'Very Good,' 'Good,' 'Acceptable,' 'Poor,' and 'Reject.'"
Balinski argues that in this way, voters could give their absolute opinions about all candidates, not rank them or choose just one. The final grade of each candidate is the median of all his/her "grades."
Balinski is the director of the Laboratory of Econometrics at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris and co-founder and co-director of "Optimization, games and modeling in economics" at the University of Paris.
He has taught mathematics and economics at Yale University and the Scientific and Medical University in Grenoble. Balinski is a member of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the Operations Research Society of America, and the Mathematical Programming Society. He received his B.A. in mathematics from Williams College and his Ph. D. in mathematics from Princeton University.
