Brouhaha Rhythm
I’ve never been very good at grocery shopping. For one thing, I’m constantly snacking, which means that walking down the chips and cookies aisle is just asking to load up on more munchies. For another, there’s so much variety in products that I can’t tell what’s inexpensive and what’s a ripoff. Music and movie shopping are easy by comparison — anything under fifteen dollars is a bargain (except perhaps <i>Plan 9 From Outer Space</i>), anything under five dollars is a steal — but groceries are a different beast altogether. Even considering that I’d watched <i>Supermarket Sweep </i>as a child, I was much more interested in the “run like a maniac around the supermarket” than the expected retail prices of anything. For instance, the Oreos at Shaw’s are in yellow-tag Purgatory, meaning that it’s always the same price every time I go, and seemingly have been for the past three years. Whether that means they’re actually never on sale or perpetually on sale, I leave to you to decide.
Brouhaha Rhythm
I’m not precisely sure when the word “awesome” was first used to describe something indefinably spectacular and/or amazing, but it seems as if in recent years, it’s gone from the upgraded, superlative version of “cool” (itself a reissue of “groovy”) to the heavily-used catch-all adjective of our generation. I don’t have anything against the word “awesome” in and of itself, but I do have to wonder at what point we stopped demanding more than “it’s awesome” as justification for holding something in high regard.
East Meets West
During the first week of January, a class of 90 MIT MBA students traveled to Silicon Valley as part of the annual MIT Sloan Entrepreneurship and Innovation Class Trek. Our purpose was to cast a deeper glance at the entrepreneurial ecosystem on the West Coast by engaging entrepreneurs and venture capitalists in the Valley. We met with successful companies such as Genentech and LinkedIn, hot Web 2.0 startups such as Aardvark and Yammer, and premier venture capital firms (VCs) from Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, Accel and more.
Brouhaha Rhythm
If you asked me what possibly could have compelled me to stay up until five in the morning to trudge through Cambridge for a Black Friday sale, I would have given you exactly two reasons. One is the age-old excuse, “my friends were doing it.” The other is that I managed to justify it to my nerd self by going to the electronics store first. A few DVDs, a set of Rock’em Sock’em Robots, and more self-restraint than any human should ever have to exercise later, here I am pondering the significance of the experience.
To Kill a Creative Bird
It’s 4 a.m. on a Wednesday morning, and I want to paint. I haven’t had an urge this strong to reach for my brush and palette in a long, long time. And I haven’t been this swamped with work in a long, long time. Psets, midterms, make-up midterms, quizzes, make-up quizzes (I was sick for a while), essentially make-up on all my to-do lists. Oh, and “e-mails requesting extensions.” My only concern (while rearranging items on my to-do list) is, when do I get to absorb all this new information and to let it really sink in? When and how do I reflect on my newly acquired knowledge and think of real world applications?
Evening Walk
Many students come to MIT Sloan not because of the business school itself, but because they want to be part of the MIT community at large. I was one of those students, and I wanted to apply what I learned in the classroom by working side by side with outstanding engineers on bringing new technologies to market. To me, that seemed like a great way to prepare for and anticipate the future evolution of business and society, as opposed to treating business school as just a springboard for a job.
Brouhaha Rhythm
In last week’s edition of “Frivolous Dissertations on Breakfast,” in which I discussed my thoughts on the ideal cereal shape, it occurred to me that one edition simply wasn’t big enough to contain the sheer mass of frivolity on the subject that I wanted to share. More than that, it seemed terribly prejudiced of me to assume that cereal was the only breakfast food worth talking about. After all, non-college students eat breakfast, too (I think) and if I expect to be taken seriously in debates on the subject of breakfast, I should have an informed opinion on more than just the issues that matter to me.
Ask SIPB
This week’s column covers the upgrade of Athena clusters to Debathena from Athena 9.4, and details some of the main new features that are now available.
Brouhaha Rhythm
The idea of the “frivolous conversation about everyday subjects”, experienced by all and popularized by sitcoms, remains one of the few ways in which we can connect with new acquaintances and sometimes complete strangers without being invasive or sketchy. Just yesterday, I briefly discussed Cheetos and dental hygiene with the lady next to me in line at the pizza parlor. Several months back, it was carbonated drinks with Ingrid the Shaw’s Cashier. Last week, the <i>pièce de résistance</i> was an interchange at length over bagels and cake on the subject of breakfast food, with cereal (specifically cold and served with milk) as the centerpiece.
Brouhaha Rhythm
Halloween has always been my favorite holiday of the year. For one thing, it takes place during my favorite season — I grew up in a heavily forested area of Pennsylvania, and seeing entire mountainsides change color is pretty stunning for me now and positively mind–boggling to an eight–year–old. I also got to feed my hero complex, a long-standing tradition that continues even today in a manner that I suspect would be of some psychiatric interest. It started with a cowboy costume, presumably because I asked for it but likely influenced much less by Clint Eastwood and much more by the release of <i>An American Tail: Fievel Goes West</i>. From there, it alternated between “Robin Hood” and “Musketeer” (each with relevant movie releases, the more observant of you might notice) until I hit high school.
On Anal Virginity
Years ago, the fuss was over fellatio; nowadays, it’s everywhere. In a story on Duke University, <i>Rolling Stone</i> said, “oral sex [is] nearly ubiquitous, regarded as sort of a form of elaborate kissing that doesn’t really mean very much.” Likening oral sex to elaborate kissing might be extreme, but it isn’t extreme to say that oral sex has become a widely accepted practice.
My First Time
I was high and drunk and at a party and, against my better judgement, got in a cab with a Harvard student and went back to his apartment, where we fucked each other’s brains out. He was a good lay but boring to talk to. I bounced out of there early in the morning with the sex hair and the runny makeup, and got in the T and never spoke to him again.
For the Love of Lube!
Anyone who has ever taken basic Physics, which is a graduation requirement at MIT, can tell you that friction is the arch-nemesis of motion. Friction always opposes motion, and whenever bodies are in contact, a la intercourse, there will be friction. Some friction is a good thing, but too much can lead to painful consequences. When that happens, the result isn’t pleasant for either partner. Usually there’s a chain reaction: if a partner goes dry, the other partner goes soft. Many a virgin has botched an attempt at losing it because of too much friction.
Sex Toys: Your New Best Friend
I’m as big a fan of self-love as a newly sexually-awakened postpubescent, but sometimes a couple digits just won’t do. That’s when I reach for my favorite vibrator made by Fun Factory, a German sex toy company. Before I came across their nifty invention, I’d tried a lot of toys that left me feeling dissatisfied, so I resorted to masturbation without technological enhancements. Though it’s cheaper and equally pleasurable (especially if you’re familiar with your own body and nimble with your fingers), masturbation alone can get boring and sex toys can add variety to the bedroom. Some women have a difficult time reaching orgasm and can get closer to their goal with the aid of a toy. For me, finding the right vibrator made me realize that sex toy shopping is a little bit like playing Goldilocks. You have to find the toy that’s juuuust right and there are a lot of factors that come into play!
Brouhaha Rhythm
The other day, I had the unique experience of trying to open a coconut for personal consumption. It began with a butter knife and misplaced optimism. It ended with three sharp cooking knives, a multitool saw blade, a claw hammer, multiple nails of varying sizes, and one still-unrefreshed columnist. Oh, and a lounge so covered in coconut entrails that it could probably have been used as a set for a tropical-plant remake of <i>The Silence of the Lambs</i>.
Brouhaha Rhythm
I watched <i>Kill Bill</i> (parts 1 and 2) the other night with a few of my friends, and as impossible as I would have thought it, Quentin Tarantino’s movies have gotten more “out there” since <i>Pulp Fiction</i>. Granted, my experience with Tarantino films is only about as much as most (and not nearly as much as I’d like), but I imagine it doesn’t take too long to at least begin to grasp his particular film style. I’d wager that Tim Burton is the only director with a more distinctive stamp than Tarantino’s. The specifics are a little fuzzy, but I think if I were to draw a Venn Diagram with circles labeled “lack of color,” “Johnny Depp,” and “Helena Bonham Carter,” the intersections of two or more circles would get me pretty close.
Tech Review: iPod Nano
<b>WHAT IT IS: </b>The latest generation “iPod Nano” represents Apple Inc.’s contributions to the hot world of portable music and video players, currently a market dominated by Apple Inc.
Brouhaha Rhythm
Depending on who you ask, reactions to the idea of talking during a movie tend to be mixed. Some people feel like it’s perfectly fine, others feel there should be a special level of hell for violators of the “Silence is Golden” theatre policies. Some people don’t mind so long as what’s being said is funny or subtle, and some people prefer watching movies at home for the exact reason that they’re at greater liberty to speak/eat loud snacks/go to the bathroom, among other things. Ask me sometime about my idea of splitting movie theaters into “making out” and “non-making out” sections so that the lip aficionados don’t interfere with the film aficionados, and vice versa.
Trapped in Paradise
“I need to use the phone,” I told the man behind the front desk of the Havana hotel where I was staying. “Sir, it’s $2 a minute to call the U.S.” I had $5, enough for a 2.5 minute call home (or to eat that night). “This is an emergency!” I screamed, “Now let me use the fucking phone!”
Ask SIPB
This week’s column includes the annual cluster combo change, how to print to private printers, and some SIPB services — come to our cluedumps lectures and learn about various computing topics, and listen to free music on-demand through MIT cable.