Sam Kornstein

More on Azadpur Mandi

Posted on January 10, 2012January 8, 2018 by Sam Kornstein in General, India Food Waste, Research, Television

Note: This blog post was originally published on the MIT Public Service Center website. It’s the second post in a blog series sharing findings from a research project I’m working on throughout the month of January. January 10, 2012 Paul Artiuch and Sam Kornstein are graduate students at the Sloan School of Management. Throughout the month of January they are researching market-oriented approaches to reducing agricultural food waste in India. They will be sharing their project scope and some of their findings in this blog series. Soon after arriving in Delhi, we took a walk over to a local market and spoke with a man who runs the community produce stand. We asked him where he buys his fruits and vegetables. “I

Delhi’s Azadpur Mandi Vegetable Market

Posted on January 10, 2012January 3, 2015 by Sam Kornstein in India Food Waste, Photography, Travel

Last week, my friend Paul and I explored Delhi’s Azadpur Mandi vegetable market. We were there gathering information for a food waste research project we’re working on, trying to understand where the food comes from, and what happens to it once it arrives. If you’re interested in learning more about our project, check out our recent blog posts on the MIT Public Service Center website. Azadpur is the largest wholesale vegetable market in all of Asia. It spans 80 acres in North Delhi, and receives over 700 truckloads of produce every day. We learned that the trucks come from all over India, with some trekking 72 hours from the south to drop off their shipments. It was chaotic. It was

Battling Food Waste in India

Posted on January 9, 2012January 3, 2015 by Sam Kornstein in India Food Waste, Research, Travel

Note: This blog post was originally published on the MIT Public Service Center website. It’s the first post in a blog series sharing findings from a research project I’m working on throughout the month of January. January 9, 2012 Paul Artiuch and Samuel Kornstein are graduate students at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Throughout the month of January they are in India researching market-oriented approaches to reducing agricultural food waste. Last fall, we each participated in the Development Ventures course in MIT’s Media Lab. The objective of the course was to identify ways to leverage for-profit business models to tackle some of the world’s most pressing international development challenges. As we both had an interest in finding ways to

The Japanese Doing Crazy Things With Quantum Levitation

Posted on January 7, 2012January 7, 2012 by Sam Kornstein in Current Events, Technology

Really crazy: One of the early quantum levitation experiments came out of Israel earlier this year. The video and website are worth checking out as well if you’re into this sort of thing.

Today in Delhi

Posted on January 5, 2012January 5, 2012 by Sam Kornstein in Current Events, Travel

New Delhi Weather Forecast: Smoke?

Posted on January 4, 2012January 4, 2012 by Sam Kornstein in Current Events, Travel

I arrived in India yesterday, and will be here for a few weeks working on an MIT research project. I’m in New Delhi at the moment, and am sad to say the pollution here appears to be pretty bad. There’s not a cloud in the sky, but it’s still not blue. Here’s a shot from my window: I decided to check to forecast to see how this sort of thing is accounted for, and was a bit shocked by the accuracy of weather.com. Today’s forecast – 68 degrees with Smoke: On the upside, the sunrise was spectacular through the haze. I’m slightly optimistic that isn’t isn’t typical, as the 5-day forecast doesn’t show any smoke on the horizon. And when

The Markets, Beautiful Girls, and Iowa

Posted on January 3, 2012January 15, 2018 by Sam Kornstein in Current Events

Via Ezra Klein: “John Maynard Keynes famously likened playing the stock market to judging a beauty contest where, rather than choosing the most beautiful girl, you had to choose the girl you thought everyone else would choose as most beautiful. “We devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be,” wrote Keynes. This is, with some minor modifications, true for judging the results in Iowa, too.”

Things to Read

Posted on January 2, 2012January 2, 2012 by Sam Kornstein in General

I’m in an airport, and thought I’d share some links I found to be interesting while I’ve been waiting around: 1. Not Your Typical Tech Guy’s 2012 Wish List 2. The Big Picture on Free Online Classes at MIT 3. Barry Ritholtz: Get Ahead of the Forecaster Folly 4. Still Looking For A New Year’s Resolution? How About Learning To Code … 5. Those Awkwardly Placed Headshots Work: Wikimedia Foundation Raises $20 Million From 1 Million+ Donors 6. China Launches 3D TV Channel

2012

Posted on January 2, 2012January 2, 2012 by Sam Kornstein in General

Via xkcd:

Happy New Year

Posted on December 31, 2011December 31, 2011 by Sam Kornstein in General

Happy new year! Thanks to everyone who reads this blog, encouraged me to keep writing it, or provided feedback and comments on my posts throughout the past year. I’ve had much more fun with this site than I ever imagined when I first put it together last December. So thank you. I’ll be traveling for an MIT research project with my classmate, Paul Artiuch, for the next few weeks. Blogging will likely be less frequent, but if all goes to plan we’ll have some interesting observations and experiences to share. I might also experiment with using the blog as a medium to document and publicize some of our findings, but I’m still trying to work out how this would look. More on