Slashdot Mirror
U. Chicago's Epic Scavenger Hunt Is Back For 2012
gotfork writes "The world's largest scavenger hunt, covered in previous years on Slashdot, is now taking place at the University of Chicago. The competition is fierce: in 1999 one team build a working breeder reactor in the quad, but only won second place. Items on this year's list include your appendix in a jar (210), a disappearing spoon made of metal (105), a chromatic typewriter (216), a xyloexplosive (33) and a weaponized Xerox machine (83). Check out the full list here (PDF). Not bad for the school where 'where fun comes to die.'" Does your school have any equivalent annual hijinks?
See Mystery Hunt, the Bad Ideas Competition, anything that happens in the East Campus courtyard during rush.
Maybe they could add that to the list?
...for toner.
Anthrax?
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
The U of Michigan used to have a "naked mile" at the end of each school year. I seem to recall it was mostly the Crew team that started it but everyone was welcome to join in on the run. It was fun to watch and used to have a huge crowd turnout, but the school and city shut it down for some reason - liability? exploitation? I dunno, this sounds a lot more fun than a scavenger hunt.
But being that the school year ends at the end of April and Michigan's been known to have April snow showers, sometimes the turnout is on the smaller side. [mostly SFW]
If the students can find the Second Amendment hidden somewhere in the city.
Find a way to turn that into a scavenger hunt and you may have a point, otherwise, shove it up your ass.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
From the rules: "7. A Good Time. For a good time call (202) 762-1401." ...Did we just Slashdot the Navy?
Never underestimate the potential of Human stupidity. -Heinlein
I ain't completely sure what to call them, but they do not function as an editor.
They may approve submissions, but they don't edit them or even check the links.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
The disappearing spoon should be easy, there's a classic prank of making a teaspoon out of gallium (or a gallium-tin or gallium-indium-tin alloy) where if you put the offered spoon (which is solid at room temperature) into your tea, it melts.
347. A sonnet composed in C that, when compiled and run, prints a haiku to the standard output. Just as no great poet would ever write an unnecessary word, every variable and expression in your code must be essential to the program’s proper functioning. [10 points
I haven't done any of those things, but the Lions Club I'm in had its major annual fundraiser last night. We spent Monday and Tuesday evenings setting up chairs and tables, then worked our asses off last night. Most of the money we raised will probably go to dog guides and/or a camp for dialysis patients.
Am I allowed to use my Arduino now?
And people said I was crazy for holding on to an old AOL disk. If someone needs it for the hunt, I will provide it ... for a nominal fee, of course.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Not on the list, but you know what is?:
91. A card-carrying Republican faculty member of the Humanities Division. [5 points]
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
I'm pretty certain that's a rule.
No one's going to get that one, my appendix is still in my thorax, I'm going into hiding, and I'm armed.
Nate
We Christians like to do stuff like that too. We call it Jesus juking. For example, "It'd be great if people had as much excitement about sharing the Gospel as they do the scavenger hunt..." Judas (the guy who betrayed Jesus) was great at this sort of thing, too! "Why did you pour that expensive perfume when we could have used it on the poor?"
Both the Scavenger Hunt and Kuviasungnerk, the "awesome" winter festival, are constructs, complete fictions created by the University of Chicago marketing droids so they have something to put in prospectuses for applying students. During all my time there, six years for undergrad and master's, I neither knew nor heard of (remember, it's a small school with very few degrees of separation) even 1 human who participated in the Scavenger Hunt and only 1 human who did Kuviasungnerk. (Kuviasungnerk, btw, is where you get up at 5am in the depths of January to run to the shores of Lake Michigan and do calisthenics. I mean, who wouldn't be all over fun like that?)
There were only two events with even a soupcon of fun in them, and those were Sleepout and the Lascivious Ball. Sleepout was where people pitched tents on the main quad in order to be present when they announced registration for hard to get classes via the shoutout system. The Lascivious Ball was a dance where you went dressed in lingerie, skivvies, or basically as little as possible. The university killed Sleepout, claiming it was a fire hazard, and the Lascivious Ball after rumors leaked out of professors hooking up with students.
And that was why fun died at the University of Chicago.
If not us, who? If not now, when?
as a graduate student at U of C. It was madness. We hit 10+ states in a borrowed truck. There were drunkenness, nudity, minor violations of the law, vandalism to competing ivy-league campuses, elaborate ruses to move large crowds, a statue of elvis, and and any number of other things involved over (IIRC) just the course of a wild, no-sleep-possible weekend, and all in pursuit of items on the list (i.e. it wasn't just random debauchery, though the nature of the list started to make it feel that way).
It was one of the better (and more exhausting, and more risky) moments in my life. The sort of thing bound to make parents and administrators talk about the need for a ban, and the sort of thing that alums are likely to use to encourage their friends and family to attend U of C if they get the chance.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Yes, I know, the saying that U of C is "Where the squirrels are more aggressive (and better looking) than the women!" and all of the other T-Shirts, but I've not been to a more fun campus since.
Where else can you walk out across the quads at 4:00 a.m. on a major university campus after a night of hard research work and stumble into the middle of a medieval melee with swords and armor being carried out in a language that you don't understand, complete with torches? (Old English? High German? Didn't know, didn't speak it.)
Where else can you spend a weekend with fellow students driving around America like maniacs (driver's seat) while doing research through piles of travel guides and almanacs to find the random stuff on the scav list (passenger seats)?
Where else can you expect the barista at the campus coffee shop to know more about Sartre, Gadamer, and Hegel than the philosophy Ph.D. candidates and more about applied linear dynamics and combinatorics than the math majors?
Where else can you get drunk with the major authors of major monographs at a bar *under the campus* with an on-the-wagon bartender serving over a hundred beers and ridiculous prices ($2.00 a bottle for things that cost $12.00 a bottle int the store when I was there), and ultimately take them home crying on your shoulder after you've argued about the finer points of their research for several hours?
On the other hand, at its worst it's also a stuffy, pompous, judgmental, hyper-competitive place.
But I can say that if you thought it was boring or unfun, you just weren't trying. I had a blast at U of C, and that was as a stuffy old graduate student!
STOP . AMERICA . NOW