Welcome to Two weeks ago!

already posted.

By Paul Pringle, Times Staff Writer
April 11, 2006

so Caltech and MIT is what were calling it now huh? \Damn the nerds and their nukes!

who has the smarter nerds? caltech or MIT? anyone?

In the battle of the nerds, there are no winners. Only LOSERS.

This was posted by someone from Caltech

/Unimpressed.

Didn't see the BBQ part in the last post of this. That is a nice touch. Note the lack of beer though and don't say well it was early in the day.

/nerds

what they need to do is kill the MIT mascot, make it into chili, and feed it to unsuspecting MIT students

that would teach them.

/oh, and make sure some caltech alumni are there to make fun of them for crying
//"gonna cry all day, crybaby?"
///and bombard them with slashies

NERDS!!

Why don't they just equate them out of existance or something?

remember 'Real Genius'?

They actually fired the thing which was pretty cool. It's loud as hell and usually (as it did yesterday) set off a number of car alarms in the adjacent parking structure.

plus, our president actually showed up just to check it out. i see him nearly as often as my advisor :)

/didn't RTFA, i was there

Caltech students had handed out to incoming MIT freshmen hundreds of T-shirts that said "MIT" on the front - and on the back, "... because not everyone can go to Caltech."

am i the only nerd that thought that was funny?

\caltech reject

MIT clearly won this round. They made fake work orders and outwitted the Caltech peeps.

Caltech was just desperate to get it back, so they used the good 'ol smash and grab technique.

which side would Feynman play for?

um how did this get greenlighted? old news travels fast

You know what would be a funny prank ? If they just hired Robert DeNiro to show up at the campus and smash one of the MIT students in the head with a brick until they voluntarily loaded the cannon on the flatbed for it's return trip. Take that, you stiffly stiffersons !

verbal711
which side would Feynman play for?

Feynman rocks! (well, rocked)

I think Feynman taught at Caltech, sure he'd get a kick out of helping prank them back...you know, if he was still alive.

/Feynman's the man

So basically, they flew out to MIT, and dragged their cannon home. What the hell kind of prank is that? Sounds like MIT owned them.

Yes, we did.

what they need to do is kill the MIT mascot, make it into chili, and feed it to unsuspecting MIT students

that would teach them.

We don't have a live mascot.

Meh, Harvey Mudd College did this a long time ago. Plus, they're smarter and less weird.

Sir Oinksalot is not amused.

I work at Caltech and I can tell you from first-hand experience that all stereotypes of Caltech students are 100% spot-on.

Aside from your usual social ineptitude and inability look presentable/clean (not unlike most farkers i'm sure), there are some really wacky undergrads here i.e. the guy that never takes off his helmet, the guy that wears the same green hoody (with the hood on) every single day, and the guy that wears ONE rollerblade on his left foot while he pushes himself off with his shoeless/sockless right foot.

MIT wins for sure.

I thought this said CallTech. Anybody else working at CallTech and Farking at work?

How can you tell if a Computer Science student is outgoing?

They look at your shoes instead of their ownk.

So when MIT went to Caltech they convinced the security
people to hand over the cannon and managed to get it back.
When the Caltech people came to MIT to "steal" it back
they were stopped by MIT security. . .

So they became lame and just took it back. . .

I hated physical plant and security while I was there but I
guess they did a good job.

I hope Caltech does something interesting to get us back.
Otherwise it's like kicking a puppy. War's only fun if
both sides can fight.

/M.I.T. 1, Cal Tech 0
//M.I.T. c/o 99

Caltech is now selling "MIT Cannon Hack" T-shirts in the bookstore. WTF is up with that? They've got a picture of the cannon in front of the Green Building (where it was displayed at MIT). $14.95 with $5 of that going to the revenge fund.

This, to me, indicates a serious misunderstanding of the idea of a hack. They'd been selling T-shirts from Caltech's hack on MIT for a while -- I thought it was a little wrong to be publicizing that so soon after the hack. These are not activities that are supposed to be openly encouraged by the institutions. But, at least in that case, since the hack was a T-shirt, it's kind of appropriate.

But in this case, wtf. Caltech were the victims of the hack. They shouldn't be trying to publicize it. And further, you don't post a big public note asking people to pitch in for the next hack. It undermines the whole secrecy / anti-establishment side of the practice.

So I think MIT wins extra points, given Caltech's poor hacksmanship.

/MIT Class of '99
//Caltech graduate student

I just had mental images of MIT building an ICBM with a working nuke warhead, and news reports of Pasadena being reduced to a glass parking lot, with much of the L.A. area rendered uninhabitable for centuries.

/"a terrorist attack?"
//"no, a college prank gone very wrong."
///"thanks guys."

MIT does have a nukular reactor.

/MIT student

I'm glad I go to a nerd school that isn't 100% nerdy. That way I can nerd it up when I want to but also not-nerd it up when appropriate.

/Lehigh University

jca02004:

I think Feynman taught at Caltech, sure he'd get a kick out of helping prank them back...

However, Feynman was also an MIT alum... hence the question, one of the great unknowables of the universe.

I went to Caltech in the 80's, and I can tell you, the inhabitants of Fleming house, The Flems (Phlegms?), principal forms of entertainment were sports and trying to annoy non-Flems. This is the jock house in the middle of an all-geek school, you can imagine how up in arms we were when their cannon got swiped by Mudd in '86. Not at all.

If things haven't changed much since the 80's the lameness reflects on Fleming, not 'Tech, as the rest of us would be laughing at them too.

Tim Broberg
Dabney Hovse, '90

likely next move:

this is a fun thread. After reading the description of the Cal-tech students I had to laugh. When at MIT, we had the same students. Sounds like very similar schools. Except I would have thought sunny souther CA would have gotten these guys out of their shell. At least at MIT, we have the excuse of 6 months of cold winter to keep cooped up :-).

/MIT '01

Time to git olde-skool on them! In one word - trebuchet!

Pity no one was selling Caltech cannon souvenirs at Sunday's MIT Flea.

Maybe next month?

jungtheengineer

Caltech students had handed out to incoming MIT freshmen hundreds of T-shirts that said "MIT" on the front - and on the back, "... because not everyone can go to Caltech."

am i the only nerd that thought that was funny?

\caltech reject

What made it much funnier was that they sold the shirts. The shirts were packaged so the backs weren't visible at the time of sale.

To me, that's a great social engineering prank.

Great, now the Flems have their giant metal penis back, so we can go back to not caring.

/Darb

Assorted smackdowns:

First of all to zeg: if you were canny enough to go into the bookstore or even look at the shirts, you'd see that they're still the original MIT/Not Everybody shirts. So... they're referencing the cannon heist, but it's not on the shirt. Douchebag.

grotto_man: not quite. They gave out the shirts for free after the big auditorium "Come to MIT" speech that every prefrosh went to (iirc, their president gave the stump speech). But, they were packaged so that you only saw the MIT on the front. The Real Genius was the timing--you couldn't dream of a better time to distribute these.

mikeysthewinner: you're just jealous you couldn't walk around barefoot for undergrad? No shoes = less clothes to throw back on after hot, sweaty, nerd sex. Besides... "work at"? What is that, a janitor? If you're not a grad student, postdoc, or undergrad, you must be kidding yourself.

brynthian: MIT convinced our rent-a-cops that the cannon, which was sitting on a couple plywood boards well away from anywhere students actually go, that they had a work order. Then, didn't leave a note claiming credit for the prank--this is the real kicker. When Caltech had to file a police report, the fun ended. I won't defend the flems for making a scene when they went to get it back, but there was no "getting caught" about it either.