Plot of Ego Versus Number of Academics to Determine What to Call Yourself

Notice where MIT shows up on this plot in the new panel from PhD Comics. ;) I approve!

Score a Victory for Caltech

Apparently, a women wearing an 'MIT' shirt was barred from voting in Florida.

As a Caltech alum, I have mixed feelings about this. :)

It's bad for the country, but it's excellent ammunition against MIT. What a moral dilemma.

(Tip of the cap to Carlos Castillo-Chavez.)

Tetris on a Building (Again)

MIT students have pulled off a prank that has allowed them to play Tetris on the side of a building. This isn't very original at this point, but it is very cool, and the article has a video in which one can watch them playing suboptimal moves in their game. (I have chosen to blog about this for the simple reason that I have not previously encountered any videos in prior instances of Tetris-playing on the side of buildings.)

(Tip of the cap to Ravi Montenegro.)

Cornell's New Rivalry with MIT

The last time I checked, the rivalry with MIT was supposed to be with my other alma mater (i.e., Caltech). And what is this Ivy+ bullshit? (A bit of MIT and Stanford wannabe-ism, it seems to me.)

MIT Entrance Exam from 1869-70

Here is MIT's entrance exam from 1869-70. How well would you have done?

(Tip of the cap to Tim Chartier.)

BO at MIT

Here's the straight line (you provide the joke): "The student council has gotten money allocated to provide free sample sized toothpaste, soap, and deodorant [to combat student body odor] ..."



Also take a look at CNN's video report.

Comment: snicker

(Tip of the cap to Julius Su.)

(Note: This is blog post 1999.)

New Caltech Prank at MIT

There was recently a new Caltech prank at MIT, which wasn't particularly successful, according to an MIT student publication. Words from Caltech people suggest a somewhat higher level of success. We shall see.

Rickrolling Hack at MIT

A recent hack at MIT entailed putting the first 7 notes of Rick Astley's 'Never Gonna Give You Up' on a part of a building that looks like empty sheet music. The hack itself is pretty neat, but I especially love the nod to Rickrolling.

(Tip of the cap to Craig Montuori.)

Prank alert: The California Tech visits MIT

Well, this isn't much of an alert because the prank actually occurred on Friday. I'm just getting around to posting this entry now.

For April 1st, The California Tech decided to have a few fake pages in the style of MIT's school newspaper. There were some April Fools articles in the issue, but the plans expanded to writing an entire fake issue of the MIT paper and flying over to Boston to deliver it on their Campus Preview Weekend (what they call prefrosh weekend) in lieu of their regular paper. I approve!

I have only glanced through the actual articles -- one can find copies of the paper all over campus -- and they don't seem particularly funny (although a couple of things are amusing). However, the writing per se is far less important than the prank itself, which is awesome! (Autumn and I are definitely planning to have a story about this prank in Legends IV.)

One thing I don't know is whether our upcoming book helped motivate this prank. (An article about the book is going to be appearing in the next issue of The Tech, so such things had been stirring in the air around The Tech for a while now.) Naturally, one of the big motivations of the book is to encourage pranks, so hopefully that will happen. There have certainly been several encouraging signs over the past couple of years and some amount of money from each copy of our book that's sold will be going towards a prank fund, so there will be some money available for this stuff.