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Here’s one I’m pretty sure every MIT student has had to endure at some point. It goes like this:
Non-MIT person: Hey, do you know how to deal with (random computer problem)?
MIT student: Uh, no…sorry.
Non-MIT person: What? You go to MIT, don’t you? And you can’t fix a COMPUTER?!?
The way I fix a computer is I buy a new one. The perception that MIT students are all computer geniuses is based on ignorance and stereotypes. True, a lot of people at MIT major in computer science, and a lot of technological work is done with computers, but just because everyone eats food doesn’t mean they all know how to cook.
And another one:
Non-MIT person: Do you know what the answer to (random question) is?
MIT student: Uh, no…sorry.
Non-MIT Person: Ha, MIT Boy here doesn’t even know how to solve it!
Ok, Tardtastic. Just because I did well enough in high school to get into MIT and somehow managed to fool my department into admitting me for MIT grad school does NOT mean I can solve every single problem ever conceived. I can barely even solve the problems in my own field of study. If I knew so much, do you think I’d be talking to you? No, I’d be thuggin’ with Stephen Hawking.
I think people from “prestigious” schools like MIT are automatically put at a disadvantage due to this amazing ability that everyone thinks they have. If people have few expectations of you, it’s easy to surprise and impress them. But if expectations are always high, disappointment is a single mistake away. It’s gotten to the point where I’m reluctant to tell people I go to MIT because I’m afraid of what they’ll automatically assume.
On the social front, though, the MIT reputation can work to our advantage. If you have the ability to converse with other humans and have a good time with minimal awkwardness, people will often say, “You don’t seem like you go to MIT!” Their expectations were so low that just being able to act somewhat normally impressed them. And it really makes you feel good, until a minute later when you’re talking to a hot girl and you knock over the punch bowl.
I’m surprised I haven’t been almost-run over by an MIT quidditch player by now. Can you imagine being the snitch?
http://tinyurl.com/muggle-quidditch
Excerpt from the article:
“So how exactly does one play the Muggle version of Quidditch? As in the book, each team has seven players, but earthly competitors must get used to the difficulty of running with a broom between their legs (as well as throwing and catching one-handed). There are three chasers who toss around a quaffle (a deflated volleyball) trying to score into three elevated (hula) hoops which the opposing keeper defends. Then, there are two beaters who throw bludgers (deflated dogdeballs) at opposing team members; if players are knocked down, they must drop any ball in hand and run around to their goal area and back to account for the time that would be lost in falling from the sky. Lastly, there is one seeker per team (the position of HP himself), whose job it is to catch the snitch, ending the game.
Now, this is where you’ll find earthbound Quidditch at its most creative: An actual person embodies the snitch, which is a malevolent, flying, golden ball in Rowling’s version. This player, typically a lanky and nimble cross-country runner clad head-to-toe in yellow garb, has full domain of the campus, darting on and off the playing field as he or she chooses. The snitch has arguably become the most humorous part of the game, making a point to taunt other players and pull off various hijinks come gameday. Snitches have been known to tackle, do handstands, climb onto dormitory balconies, go on bagel runs (only to return to the field and peg players with the breakfast food) and even jump into nearby ponds in order to evade seekers trying to snatch the tennis-ball-in-sock hanging from their backsides.”
In case you’ve been living under a rock encased in lead inside the Fortress of Solitude on the far side of Borneo, the sixth film in J.K. Rowling’s inconceivably lucrative series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, came out this week. I saw it at a midnight premier on Tuesday, and as a person who did not read the books but is following the movies, I was unimpressed.
The movie suffered from what one friend called Pirates-of-the-Caribbean-2-Syndrome, a condition in which a movie lacks sufficient self-contained action and functions chiefly as a bridge between two other movies. Put simply, not very much happened in the movie.
“But Brandon!” you exclaim, “this is the movie where [spoiler] Snape kills Dumbledore! How could you say not much happened?!?”
Easy there fanboy. Yes, something major happens late in the movie, but it’s like getting one notecard on your third try at passing quals; it’s too little too late.
The same is true of the time spent on Voldemort’s back story, showing glimpses of his childhood when he was probably called Tommy and enjoyed wholesome activities like quidditch and pulling the limbs off of small animals. As played out as the whole “he-had-a-rough-childhood-and-was-an-orphan-and-nobody-hugged-him-so-now-he-kills-people” shtick is, it can still work if it’s done right. At its best, it adds nuance and depth to the villain and encourages asking tough questions about the nature of mankind and morality and other topics that seem oddly pertinent at 1am in The Thirsty Ear while playing Connect Four (or maybe that’s just me). At its worst, which it pretty much is in HP6, this sort of thing is just annoying. You’ve spent 5 movies and >3000 pages convincing everyone that Voldemort is more evil than Hitler mind-melded with Cthulu and drinking a smoothie of newborn tears, and now you’d like me to understand him? No thanks, I’d rather just see him impaled on a quidditch broom.
Sometimes a website comes along that makes you run your laptop battery empty while hunched over at your bed/cubicle/lab bench, cackling like a reject extra from Young Frankenstein: The Musical. This hallowed honor in my life has previously been held by such memes as LOLcatz, FailBlog, FML, and Moronail. But this one tops them all.
A little background on me first, to appreciate this website. I text a lot, especially when I’m drinking. There used to be a beautiful self-limiting relationship in which BAC and texting ability were inversely correlated, so nothing bad ever came from texting at a less-than-sober moment except for a string of consonants. Then the iPhone came along, and its ridiculously accurate predictive text fully decoupled my texting ability from my general level of awareness of reality.
All of that to say: I’m 99% certain that I’m quoted somewhere on http://www.textsfromlastnight.com/
And no, I’m not telling you my area code.
For those of you who don’t know about him I encourage you to take some time, learn about his brilliant legacy, and absorb the genius of this great man on your own. For those of us fortunate enough to have learned from such an erudite individual I hope you find the following words helpful in your pursuit of enlightenment:
www.shaqquotes.com
The more you press the elevator button, the more it hates you. And that doesn’t make it arrive any more quickly.
A while back I was cooking dinner with some friends. We were casually chatting about labs and research and such as I was shucking corn to make chili-lime corn on the cob (fantastic and ridiculously easy, BTW).
Friend 1: What’d you do in lab today?
Me: I’m playing with Helicobacter pylori, the bacterium that causes stomach ulcers. It’s cool, but it’s been a while since I’ve been in a bio lab so my technique is still kinda sloppy.
Friend 2: That’s… comforting…
I wonder why no one ate my corn…
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and i raise you a SHOT of BRILLIANT and ADORABLE:
this and more available at:
http://ihasahotdog.com/
loldogs >> lolcats
I’ve been feeling the pressure from Alex Hamilton Chan (Mr. President, Sir!) to post something — anything! — on this blog. However, I’m afraid that my contribution to this blog will not be as profound or eloquent or thoughtfully constructed as some of the previous posts here. There will be no discussion of my extensive travels around the world (or really, in my case, the lack thereof) or a probing psychoanalysis of my colleagues. Instead, I’d like to introduce you to the wonderful world of lolcats.
(This particular one happens to be one of my favorite lolcats of all time.)
I discovered the joy of lolcats through a friend a little over a year ago, and since then I’ve been completely hooked. Maybe a tad obsessed… to the point where I try to incorporate lolspeak into my everyday conversations. Some people find it amusing. Most find it totally incomprehensible. But go ahead and judge me. I don’t care what you think. Now haz u seen mah bukkit? Nom nom nom nom nom…
I recently moved into a snazzy new corner room in Edgerton House, which is one of the unfurnished options on campus. So like many budget-conscious grad students before me, I made the trek to IKEA in Stoughton to pickup the necessities (bed, dresser, desk, bookcase, etc.). So far so good.
About halfway through assembling the dresser, my roommate and I discovered that I was missing 3 plastic “nails” (essentially plastic dowels with ridges) to hold the final drawer together. For those of you keeping score at home, yes the instructions told me to go through all the parts beforehand and no I didn’t do that. Ahem.
Now, anyone who’s purchased something from IKEA before knows that missing parts are an understood hazard of DIY furniture. So understood, in fact, that the instruction manual tells you precisely what to do, in the form of an adorable graphic featuring an androgynous stickperson looking forlorn because he/she can’t find his/her nuts. Said tragedy is swiftly rectified in the following panel by a simple phone call to the nearest IKEA showroom. So that’s what I did. Here’s a rough transcript of the ensuing conversation:
Menu: “For assistance assembling your purchase or to request replacement parts, press 5.”
Me: 5
Operator: “Thank you for calling IKEA, how may I help you today?”
Me: “Hi, I need to order a replacement part.”
Operator: “You’ll need to come into our store because we do not currently have a system for ordering replacement parts over the phone.”
Everybody out there catch that? Just in case, let me replay the pertinent part: we do not currently have a system for ordering replacement parts over the phone. What an amazing business model. I think I’m going to open a bar with the same theme: our special will be Jagerbombs, but you have to walk to the 7-11 to get the Red Bull. Seriously IKEA? That’s like Billy Mays not having a system to double your order if you call now (too soon?).
Perturbed but determined to have a place to put my socks that night, I took a trip to Economy Hardware in Central Square, partially assembled drawer in hand. Ten minutes later, the gentleman from the key grinding booth emerged from the stock room and dumped a pound of nuts, screws, anchors, nails, dowels, and doo-dads into my hands. “Something there should do the trick.” Total charge? $0.
One inch plastic nails are for pansies anyway. My socks are safe and sound, supported by 3″ masonry screws. Booyah.
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