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Caltech Pranks MIT's Prefrosh Weekend
doughnuthole writes "Caltech students ventured to Massachusetts this past Wednesday to unleash a series of pranks at MIT's prefrosh weekend. They distributed shirts with MIT on the front and '...because not everyone can go to Caltech' on the back. They placed inflatable palm trees in the infamous Tomb of the Unknown Tool and around the great dome and floated Caltech balloons in building seven. A banner transformed Massachusetts Institute of Technology into That Other Institute of Technology. Saturday night a LASER spelling the letters C-A-L-T-E-C-H was directed at the top of the Green building. A full account of the pranks is located at www.caltechvsmit.com."
Being that caltech is so much better than MIT you would think that they could find a good spell checker...
Who's Caltech, by the way?
Get your Unix fortune now!
The following email went out on the MIT hacking mailing list:
>Someone apparently released a number of balloons in lobby 7 with
>CalTech written on them. There is also a much larger Mylar Balloon
>with C.I.T. My initial reaction, and the reaction of most people I
>talked to was "C.I.T, what's that?"
>
>Several suggestions were made on what to do about this since if we do
>nothing the balloons will float mockingly over lobby 7 for days:
>
>-Remove the balloons tonight (might be able to get a number of them
>with a needle on a stick from the intersticial space).
>
>-release a second large mylar balloon that says "SUCKS"
>
>-Hack Caltech.
>
>one friend I talked to commented that she was friends with the moles,
>the "legitamate" hackers at CalTech, and they claim to have no
>knowledge of this and are busy with some other project. It would be
>good if we could find out who did this. Could it have been an overzealous prefrosh?
>
>
>As I said my initial reaction was "what is C.I.T? I have drafted an
>article that I hope to send to the Tech Newspaper. Offering an
>alternate explanation.
>Comments, and suggestions are highly encouraged as this is a first draft.
>
>Amilio
>amilio@alum.mit.edu
>
>
>
>>>proposed tech article follows below>>
>
>
>C.I.T Looses BALLoonS
>
>The Center for Incompetent Technologies lost all of their display props
>on the way to the activities midway today. Representatives from the
>research group lost numerous small balloons and a larger one bearing
>the group's acronym while crossing lobby 7, "We thought slip knots
>would hold," said Ben Bitdiddle director of C.I.T.
>
>The Center for Incompetent Technologies is a newly formed nationwide
>research group interested in developing ineffective, arcane, and
>generally useless technologies. "So many companies and institutes are
>focused on doing 'good research' and developing 'useful technologies'"
>said Mr. Bitdiddle accenting his comments with air quotes, "we decided
>there was an untapped niche market for useless technologies." The
>group's motto is taken from an episode of The Simpsons: "Aim so low
>that even if you succeed, no one will care"
>
>The smaller balloons were apparently leftover from numerous C.I.T
>events at Caltech. The balloons were custom printed for the school
>where the group is apparently very popular. Many of the poorly made
>balloons have already popped and are littering the floor of lobby 7.
>"We probably should have had some new customized balloons made, but if
>we wanted to do things well, we wouldn't be CIT."
>
>The lost balloons were originally mistaken for a hack, but
>representatives for the hacking community quickly corrected the error,
>commenting "No, that was just a screw up, hacks are generally more
>interesting and creative," Jack Florey.
>
>>>>>
>
While I tend to understand the enthusiasm that each of these groups of students have towards their alma mater, I have to wonder if the Caltech kids are as smart as they think they are.
I'd much rather stay in warm CA during April than go to MA. Invite the MIT whiz kids down and haze them in the relative comfort of your own hometown. For chrissakes, what fun is it to freeze your ass off over there?
This is "Slashdot" news, you know news for nerds.
The topic is MIT and Caltech, not much nerdier than that!
Get your Unix fortune now!
They don't have girls at Caltech. (T-shirt picture.)
In response, MIT slashdotted a server carrying accounts of the pranks.
destroying CalTech's web servers...
Looks like they slashdotted http://caltechvsmit.com
Mmmm.. Donuts
What if the burger was made from the ground-up flesh of the Pope? It's newsworthy then, isn't it?
Caltech may have pranked MIT's prefrosh weekend, but MIT got the last laugh by having their puppet doughnuthole submit the story to Slashdot. Caltech is a small (no, tiny) campus, and that one server fire could take the entire place out by morning.
Newsflash: Dorkwads Prank Dickwads in Famous Wad Rivalry!
No you dolt, it's the nerd Super Bowl. Soon we will have collegiate teams of geeks that contest with each other in great fashion like the other college sports..betting on such, making regional trees, ranks, etc :p
Use Minidisc? Join the Minidisc.org forums.
Travel 4k+ miles to put balloons up and put on a laser show? When I was in college all we ever did was get drunk and have sex, I am glad I never turned in my app to CalTech.
A bunch of Yalies pulled a similar prank at this year's The Game, but there was no lock-picking or theft involved - just pure social engineering. They reconnoitered the Cantabs' stadium and designed their own card stunt. The day of the game, they dressed up as the "Harvard Pep Squad", and passed out their cards, without, apparently, raising an eyebrow. And not once, not twice, but three times (or more!), they got 1800 Havard students and alums to declare as one: "WE SUCK".
In their own words, or as told by the Yale Daily 'News'.
Also, nearly immediately after the banner was placed that read:
"That Other" Institute of Technology
"That Other" was changed to "The Only" by the M.I.T. kids.
And it looks like that is the film where they got their prank ideas from, the laser lights. Too bad they did not have the frozen ice that turns directly to gas... maybe... or kaboom. I couldn't finish the equations last night so I don't know how volatile it is.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
you'll hopefully have all heard of http://www.harvardsucks.org/. I bet their video will be slashdotted before morning though...
I remember meeting a kid from Cal-Tech, and to this day his impression remains with me. I have never met such a mix of intellect with insanity. He was working for the summer at Northwestern University, and I spent a couple days at his rented house (which a friend of mine from high school was renting with his girlfriend, there were 6 people living in this old house). Anyways, this guy had a pet spider, but not any spider, a black widow. And one night he wanted to cook for all of us. He boiled a big pot of water, Dropped in a head of chopped lettice, and two slices of american cheese. He then served it to us with so much pride. Later that night I broke out a huge jug of Vodka and a half gallon of OJ. We were making screwdrivers that were nearly see-through. After his first glass, he started crying about how he's never been with a woman. By his second glass, he was singing in chineese. He could not finish his third glass, he fell asleep on the floor right there. So the next morning we wake up, and I look in his fishtank, and the black widow is gone. I ask him what happened, and he said he felt bad for it and let it lose the night before. I asked where, and he said "I don't remember, maybe in your room" FUCK! I left that day, and never returned.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
one time, in middle school, some people let some pigs onto the campus. They painted on the pigs "1", "2", and "4". The faculty spent weeks looking for the third one.
http://www.bash.org/?482717
Caltech = balloons, a banner, and some t-shirts
MIT = a freaking huge droid
I don't know about you, but the winner is clear...
To: All Admissions Staff
From: Director of Admissions
In order to continue fundraising, we have to admit 40% legacies that are shit for brains. They can't read or write, but their fathers have us on an allowance, and we want the money. Plus, without legacies, there would be nobody there to say "You got me again, you silly nerd!". The other 60% will be merit admission, with 30% comming from India. Please be mindful that engish is their second language, and some of them might feel more at home taking baths in the Boston River. The other 30% are American Chinese students. Unlike the other 70%, they know american grammer and spelling.
But feel good, at least we are not Harvard. There legicies are dumber than our legacies.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Okay, someone is catching on that these are two different words. That's good, but "to loose" is a perfectly cromulent word, with its own meaning. It was properly used here. If you lose something, you no longer know where it is. If you loose something, you unleash it (generally against someone or something).
To use both in a sentence: If you lose your dictionary again, I will loose my wrath upon you!
Or, to use some other tenses: Loosing her exquisite talent on me last night, she made it clear that she had long since lost her virginity.
There legicies are dumber than our legacies.
Ahem. "Their legacies". I take it you're not part of the American Chinese 30%.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Why does the person wearing the T-shirt in that photo has 2 lumps on his chest?
That would be a rare example of what is known as a FE-Male. Fulminate of Estrogen infused male. Handle with caution as they can be extremely volatile, but with proper care can be quite nice to have around.
IMHO, MIT's R2D2 Great Dome Hack was pretty cool, and that was just a few years ago.
At first, I thought that read "Involve a CowboyNeil"
Great story BTW.
I visited Caltech once.
... .
I was doing some work at the Pasadena Police Department for a few days.
While I was there, the traffic seargeant asked me if there was anything I'd like to see while I was there. He was obviously thinking Hollywood, Movie Studios, Disneyland, the beach,
I really surprised him when I said that I'd like a tour of JPL. It turned out that the father of one of the cops was a scientist at JPL so it might just be possible.
The next day he told me that they couldn't set up a tour of JPL at the last minute because some big project was going on. I think it was a Mars launch that week.
So he asked what else I'd like to see. Again, he was thinking of the standard tourist sites.
My second choice was Caltech. That kind of shook him up a bit.
The seargeant called the head of campus security for Caltech and asked him to arrange the tour. Since I'm a computer type, he called up the computer center and arranged for us to meet him to give me a tour that afternoon.
So the next day, we went over for the tour. One of the people with me grew up in Pasadena, knew exactly where Caltech was, but had never been on campus at all. I was a bit surprised to find out it was right around the corner from the motel I was staying at while in town.
We went to the security office and the head of security showed us over to the computer center for the tour. We were on time, but the student who was supposed to give us the tour didn't show up for about 45 minutes. When he arrived, he said "Nobody has ever called us up for a tour. I thought it was some kind of joke."
So we looked around the computer center a little while. Then we went over to see the seismographs. I wanted to walk through the physics building, but the security dude couldn't believe anyone would actually want to do that.
The tour was a bit disappointing.
An inspiring story from the pages of the Yale Daily News:
The "Harvard Pep Squad" ran up and down the aisles of Harvard Stadium at The Game [between the Harvard and Yale football teams] Nov. 20. They had megaphones in hand and their faces were painted as they encouraged the crowd to hold up the 1,800 red and white pieces of construction paper they had handed out. It would read "Go Harvard," they said.
But the 20 "Pep Squad" members were actually Yale students. And when the Harvard students, faculty and alumni held up their pieces of paper--over and over again--they spelled out "We Suck" in giant block letters the whole stadium could read.
Yalies Michael Kai and David Aulicino, both of whom are to graduate next year, had to overcome great adversity to realize their dream. They originally planned to do this a year ago, and rather than handing the pages out, they taped them to the seats. "The prank derailed when security guards, trying to clear the stadium out during a pre-game bomb scare, asked Kai, Aulicino and their cohorts to leave."
In the year since, they rethought their plan:
They created a system to have the Harvard crowd pass out the 1,800 cards themselves. The "Harvard Pep Squad" went to each row and handed out a pre-ordered stack of the red and white papers. In five minutes, Kai and Aulicino said, all the papers were passed out.
It took a great deal of planning, however, including a road trip to Boston. Kai and Aulicino attended the Oct. 9 Harvard-Cornell football game in Cambridge, simply to scout out the stadium and count the number of rows.
They also created "Harvard Pep Squad" T-shirts and even fake Harvard IDs. "It was almost sad," says Dylan Davey, another Yalie who joined in the gag. "There were all these grandfather and grandmother types--and they all had big smiles, saying, 'Oh you're so cute, I'm so glad you're doing this.' I felt bad for about two minutes. Then I got over it."
if messing with so many asian kids is considered a hate crime...
...but Feynman did his undergrad at MIT. MIT--building the future of Caltech, one undergrad at a time.
This was a quote of Kurt Vonnegut that didn't fit.