Published January 7, 2011

To mark MIT’s 150th anniversary, the MIT Museum exhibits 150 objects — many of them voted in by the community — that tell the story of world-changing and quirky innovation over the years.

I was lucky enough to be the first reporter to see the new exhibit on Wednesday, as the staff raced to finish the installations. It was a lot of fun.

The “MIT 150″ exhibition opens to the general public Saturday, Jan. 8. I’ll talked more about this story on Radio Boston.

My thanks to Josie Patterson at the MIT Museum for her help with this story.

Published January 7, 2011

Beth Israel's Paul Levy, in WBUR Studio 3 (Andrew Phelps/WBUR)

Paul Levy, the CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, is resigning.

The hospital leader sent an e-mail to his staff Friday, outlining his reasons for the move:

… I felt some ambivalence as I was writing yesterday’s blog post entitled “Resolve.” I realized that my own place here at BIDMC in the role I outlined in that blog post had run its course. While I remain strongly committed to the fight for patient quality and safety, worker-led process improvement, and transparency, our organization needs a fresh perspective to reach new heights in these arenas. …

Reached by WBUR, Levy cited his desire for new challenges.

“I realized that I don’t currently have the level of enthusiasm I need to continue in the job, that I had accomplished what I wanted to and it was time to move on. Simple as that,” Levy said.

Levy has led Beth Israel for nine years. He’s known for turning around the hospital’s finances and implementing greater transparency.

“I tend to get energized in a turnaround situation when the business is facing tough issues and hard choices,” he said. “And the hospital is now quite successful. It’s more in a maintenance kind of mode, and I decided it’s time to move on.”

The state’s largest health care workers union last year called for Levy’s ouster after the Beth Israel board fined him $50,000 for “judgment mistakes” in regard to a personal relationship he had with a female employee.

On Friday, Service Employees International Union spokesman Jeff Hall said Levy’s resignation is a positive step, and good for workers and patients to have a fresh start.

“There were many troubling issues under his tenure and really what’s important is that the board make the right decision and that’s for Levy to leave without any additional compensation,” Hall said.

Levy told WBUR the relationship controversy is behind him and did not play a role in his resignation decision.

“That really wasn’t part of it,” he said. “What it is is that I’ve accomplished what I want to. It’s time for someone with a fresh perspective to take over and lead the place on to its new heights.”

Levy says he will leave in the next few weeks.

Our CommonHealth blog has more coverage and is rounding up reaction.

Published January 6, 2011

Paul Cellucci (AP)

On the day Massachusetts’ 71st governor is inaugurated, sad news about the health of the 69th governor.

Paul Cellucci has been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. The Associated Press reports:

The 62-year-old told The Associated Press on Thursday he has a relatively slow case of the illness. […]

The disease progressively attacks the brain and spine and leads to complete paralysis. It is incurable and fatal.

Cellucci said he’s experiencing some weakness but otherwise feeling well. He’s maintaining a full work schedule as an attorney in Boston.

Cellucci resigned in 2001 to be President George W. Bush’s ambassador to Canada.

Published January 5, 2011

A Newport ad from the 1970s appeared to target young, black smokers.

The Lorillard tobacco company — bruised by its losses from a major civil case in Boston — is ready for its next battle.

The FDA is considering a ban on menthol, the minty ingredient in Newport and other cigarettes. The Wall Street Journal reports menthol cigarettes account for 90 percent of the company sales.

Lorillard is trying to own the message before anyone else can, having purchased the domain names MentholKillsMinorities.com, MentholAddictsYouth.com and FDAMustBanMenthol.com.

From the WSJ:

Keeping those names out of the hands of critics is just one part of Lorillard’s multimedia campaign to thwart a possible ban. The fight’s next round is scheduled for next week, when a special FDA tobacco advisory committee is scheduled to meet to review data regarding menthol products. In March, the panel will recommend whether to extinguish menthol cigarettes altogether—including Lorillard’s top-selling Newport brand.

The plaintiffs in the case of Marie Evans, who died of lung cancer in 2002, argued Lorillard targeted young, black children in Roxbury with free cigaretts and advertising.

In that case, Lorrilard was ordered to pay a total of $152 million, thought to be the largest-ever award from a tobacco company in a wrongful death suit.

Published January 4, 2011

Patriots nose tackle Vince Wilfork appears on the cover of next week's Sports Illustrated.

The Globe reports:

In this issue, NFL writer Peter King says the Patriots look “like a better team than the 2007 team that entered the Super Bowl 18–0.” He goes on to predict the Patriots will beat the Green Bay Packers 30-24 in the Super Bowl.

This is either good news or bad news, depending on how much you believe in the SI cover jinx, which holds that teams or athletes featured on Sports Illustrated’s cover are destined to fail.

Published January 4, 2011

Army veteran Tyler Vinci, 27, is disabled and unemployed. In this August 2010 photo, Vinci and his girlfriend, Fionna Bynres, wait for unemployment counseling in Glendale, Calif. (Damian Dovarganes/AP)

Tori Baird still remembers the knock at her door, back in 2004, when she lived next to Camp Pendleton in California.

“He said, ‘Hi, I know you’ve met my wife, but I need to make some money and get the lights turned on in my house,'” Baird recalled.

It was her neighbor, a badly injured veteran with a crutch under his arm.

“We were pretty shocked. We said, ‘Aren’t you that Marine who got injured?'”

“He said, ‘Yes I am, ma’am, but that just doesn’t matter. Is your husband home?'”

The man’s pickup truck had been repossessed, Baird said, and his wife had run out of money while he was fighting overseas. The Bairds helped the man out that night, and Tori’s husband, Mark, promised to find a solution so that no service member would be begging for work again.

They created HirePatriots.com, a bulletin board for people to post odd jobs for vets. In the first month, Baird said, there were 500 postings.

[pullquote author=”Tori Baird”]”The injured guys really find that it really helps them with their recovery. … Some of these guys are going through 10, 15 operations, and they get a little depressed.”[/pullquote]

Today it’s the Bairds’ full-time job, funded in part by advertising, and the site is expanding — including here, in Massachusetts.

Plymouth native Michael O’Rourke, an Army lieutenant now training in the National Guard, has volunteered to run the local chapter. Now he’s trying to recuit people to post jobs — a room needs painting, papers need filing. (At the moment, only one job is posted on the Massachusetts site.)

“We see a lot of veterans out there that are coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan … really struggling out there, especially in this economy, trying to find employment, trying to make ends meet,” O’Rourke told me.

It’s true. Last month the federal government reported 10 percent unemployment among veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan — compared to 9.1 percent among the non-veteran population.

The Washington Post covered unemployed veterans in a story last week:

While their nonmilitary contemporaries were launching careers during the nearly 10 years the nation has been at war, troops were repeatedly deployed to desolate war zones. And on their return to civilian life, these veterans are forced to find their way in a bleak economy where the skills they learned at war have little value.

That’s how HirePatriots.com hopes to help. Get jobs for vets working in the margins, trying to build a career.

“The injured guys really find that it really helps them with their recovery,” Tori Baird told me. “Some of these guys are going through 10, 15 operations, and they get a little depressed.”

If a vet can make a little bit of money, he or she feels useful again. He might buy flowers for his spouse, toys for his kids — with money he earned.

“It makes them believe that they’re going to work again and function again,” Baird said. “It’s all part of the recuperative process.”