Saturday Morning Breakfast at the ’Tute
Applause erupted in the standing-room-only 6-120 yesterday at 3:58 p.m. as Zachary A. Weiner, creator of popular webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC), entered the room for a Q&A session packed with questions touching on topics from fellow web comic artists to the merits of Star Wars vs. Star Trek (for the record, Weiner prefers Star Wars). The free event, sponsored by the MIT Lecture Series Committee, concluded with a signing session of the new SMBC compilation, Save Yourself, Mammal!: A Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal Collection, and went an hour over its anticipated 4–6 p.m. runtime.
News Briefs
The start of 2011 Freshman Orientation and Residential Exploration (REX) marks the third year in a row that a REX/Rush/Recruitment agreement between the Dormitory Council (DormCon), the Interfraternity Council (IFC), the Panhellenic Council (Panhel), and the Living Group Council (LGC) has not been signed.
Class of 2015 invades campus… early
Every year, freshmen flock to campus early to explore engineering, play with physics, go hiking, become leaders, observe the stars and — most importantly — bond with their fellow classmates. These Freshman Pre-Orientation Programs (FPOPs) have brought the Class of 2015 on campus a week early to get a brief introduction to one aspect of the Institute.
Next, New Houses see renovations
Even for students who will not be moving into Maseeh Hall, coming back from summer vacation might mean returning to a new and improved dorm space. Both Next House and New House saw major changes over the summer while other dorms, both undergraduate and graduate, have been subject to other smaller improvements.
Stata café wormhole creates portal to Palo Alto
Getting to Stanford is as easy as walking to the Stata Center, thanks to the Institute’s newly installed “wormhole.”
No East Campus roller coaster this year
There will be no East Campus roller coaster this year, revealed Mike T. Nawrot ’12, EC rush chair, in a video released last week. The City of Cambridge required the dormitory to obtain building permits for their coaster, but the process was not completed in time.
Freshman admissions website gets a facelift
Potential members of the MIT Class of 2016 are surfing through a vastly different MIT Admissions website (http://www.mitadmissions.org). The site, launched in 2004, underwent its first major upgrade on July 11. The process involved simplifying access to links formerly hidden on the admissions site and launching the new MIT Wiki (http://www.mitadmissions.org/wiki), which can be edited by any user with an mit.edu email address.
Maseeh to hold in-house lottery mixer
Tired of the same old floor and wing rush in every other dormitory? How about a mixer instead? After much debate over how the Maseeh Hall in-house readjustment lottery will work, a deal was reached between the Maseeh housing advisors and the house government. On Aug. 30, the house government will hold a mixer for all those who have entered the lottery. Immediately after the mixer, attendees must fill out a form indicating with whom and where they would like to live. On the next day, the new roommates move in.
A PEEK OFF-CAMPUS Tropical diseases infect powerless
Every year, 13 diseases that affect a fifth of the world’s population are responsible for the loss of 56.6 million disability-adjusted life years and 534,000 deaths. But because these diseases only afflict the world’s most impoverished and powerless people, the international community has forgotten about them.
Hurricane Irene safety tips
The massive Hurricane Irene — with wind speeds around 120 mph as of last night — is predicted to hit New England Monday morning, and it could be the largest storm the area has seen for years. The last hurricane to pass within 75 miles of Boston was Hurricane Bob 20 years ago. New York, New Jersey, Virginia, and North Carolina have already declared a state of emergency in anticipation for the arrival of Irene, which could slam New England with winds above 60 mph.
New Mass. lottery restrictions in place
State Treasurer Steven Grossman severely restricted yesterday the number of Cash WinFall lottery tickets any store can sell in a day, closing a loophole that has allowed a handful of high-stakes gamblers to win most of the prizes.
Barbecue gathers prefrosh, alums
A range of generations of the MIT community gathered at Sidney-Pacific for the annual barbecue of the MIT Club of Boston this past Sunday. Alumni, their children, current students, and incoming freshmen mingled amid food and activities under the hot summer sun. The club sponsored the event for prefrosh and MIT affiliates in the greater Boston area, providing activities for children as well as opportunities for alumni to reconnect with each other and to meet current students.
Massachusetts lottery woes
SUNDERLAND — Billy’s Beer and Wine sold exactly $47 worth of lottery tickets the day before Marjorie Selbee arrived, just another sleepy day for the liquor store in this tiny Western Massachusetts town. But from the moment the 70-something woman from Michigan entered the store early July 12, Billy’s wasn’t sleepy anymore.
Swartz indicted for JSTOR theft
Aaron H. Swartz is an accomplished 24-year-old by anyone’s standards. He co-authored the now widely-used RSS 1.0 specification at age 14, was one of three owners of the massively popular social news site Reddit, and recently completed a fellowship at the Harvard Ethics Center Lab on Institutional Corruption.
NEWS ANALYSIS Court rules for NIH in stem cell case
The latest battle over human embryonic stem cell research is over, and the National Institutes of Health has won — the research can continue. The war can still go on with appeals, potentially as high as the Supreme Court, but researchers are unlikely to face court-ordered prohibitions on research as that multi-year process continues.