Every year during MIT’s Independent Activities Period (IAP), Professor Patrick Winston gives a wonderfully reflexive and recursive talk about giving talks titled How to Speak. This lecture provides some useful speaking heuristics, especially if you’re in the business of helping people learn. This year the talk will be given Friday, Feburary 1 at 11am inContinue reading “Patrick Winston – How to Speak”
Category Archives: MIT
MIT 9/11 Hack
The fifth anniversary of September 11, 2001 was much more respectful than I expected. It seemed that most people remembered the day with a somber reverence that was personal to their experience. One memorial that struck a chord in me took place at MIT: MIT 9/11 Hack: fire truck on the Great Dome (photo FrançoisContinue reading “MIT 9/11 Hack”
Media Lab reunion
After only a few weeks in my new job I have the opportunity to head back to my alma mater. As it would turn out, the Media Laboratory is having its 20th anniversary, and that, of course, is time for celebration! I’m sure that in the past month they have invented 2.5 new ways ofContinue reading “Media Lab reunion”
Stata Flood
There’s a funny joke about buildings designed by Frank Gehry. It goes something like this: first you pay millions of dollars to erect the thing, then you spend millions over many years to stop it from leaking. Having friends in the Ray and Maria Stata Center here at MIT, I’ve heard of a fair numberContinue reading “Stata Flood”
MIT power outage
At about 1pm this afternoon, the entire MIT campus suffered a complete power outage, the first time such an event has occured in my 5-year tenure here. I was in the lab at when the power cut, and I was lucky enough to catch the sound of some 50 computers just outside my office spinningContinue reading “MIT power outage”
Harvard sucks!
One of the wonderful things about being an MIT student is witnessing all of the nerd pride and anti-Harvard sentiment. Like this beautiful piece of hackdom: Harvard Bridge construction sign (photo by Johnathan Wang) Apparently the photo was edited and a 4-letter word removed from the third line of the sign. I guess us MITContinue reading “Harvard sucks!”
Unit of measurement elected head of standards board
Oliver Smoot is one of the quintessential pieces of MIT folklore: in 1962 as a pledge of Lambda Chi Alpha Mr. Smoot was flipped over 365 times to measure the Harvard bridge while his fraternity brothers marked off important milestones along the way. Smoot was deemed a unit of measurement, and the Harvard bridge listedContinue reading “Unit of measurement elected head of standards board”
Power Laws: Hype or Revelation
Over the MIT Independent Activities Period (IAP) I’ll be teaching a course about the recent trend of power laws in various academic disciplines and applications, from disease propogation to weblogs. The course will be held over the month of January and include a few guest lecutures by researchers doing some of the most important workContinue reading “Power Laws: Hype or Revelation”
Become a millionaire, get straight A’s
A team of MIT students under the direction of a quirky math professor moonlight as blackjack sharks, pulling a profit for investors by academically outwitting casinos. This has been a rumor I’ve heard on and off for the past three years; sometimes rumors are true, and they turn out to be bigger than you everContinue reading “Become a millionaire, get straight A’s”
overstated 