The Lowell Bacchanalia

is a festive occasion marked by revelry and merriment. Also, for unknown reasons, formal dress and melty ice sculptures.

           

Filed under  //  activities   dancing   formal   Scott  
Comments (0)
Posted 9 months ago

The MIT Admissions Website

is a great place for aspiring MIT freshmen to learn more about the institute.
...
Wait a minute! That's not the MIT admissions website! What have those prefrosh been up to, anyways?

     

Filed under  //  current   hack   MIT  
Comments (0)
Posted 9 months ago

"The Valmadonna Trust

is the finest private collection of Hebrew books and manuscripts in the world (according to Sotheby's). Amassed over the past century, the group of 11,000 works is significant as a primary source on both world  and literary history and Jewish life and culture. The auction house (Sotheby's) is seeking a buyer for what's considered the greatest collection of Judaica in private hands." ULA ILNYTZKY, Associated Press Writer

             

AP Photos

Filed under  //  current   jewish   judaica  
Comments (0)
Posted 9 months ago

Frozen yogurt

is delicious. And self-serve froyo is scrummilicious. QED.

               

Filed under  //  current   food  
Comment (1)
Posted 9 months ago

Toy Stores

are fabulous places for people of any age.

     

Filed under  //  current   stuffed animals  
Comment (1)
Posted 9 months ago

A Seder

for Tu B'Shevat sounds like a good idea. The cantor certainly thinks so and, seriously, there's a crazy etrog! What's not to like?

       

Filed under  //  activities   current   etrog   jewish   tu b'shvat  
Comment (1)
Posted 9 months ago

A Clapperless Bell

lurks randomly on the sidewalk. I have no idea why it's there.

   

Filed under  //  bell   current   unusual  
Comments (0)
Posted 9 months ago

A trebuchet

is a medieval siege weapon. It's also a fun summer camp project. Unfortunately, these were the only two pictures of the one that I helped build in summer '03 at the NYSC - and both of them are cropped out from the background of an ultimate frisbee game, so the trebuchet detail isn't really there. In the last two images I've labeled the different parts of the trebuchet, hopefully that will give you some idea of how it worked.

       

Filed under  //  project   trebuchet  
Comments (0)
Posted 9 months ago

Zometool

is a building system consisting of a variety or rods that can be slotted into balls at a variety of angles. It provides much more construction flexibility than the building toys you may have encountered as a child. For example, the structure in the first image is a projection onto three dimensions of a truncated 600-cell. I helped build these models in January 2004.

   

(The second picture is much better quality on my computer, but for some reason seems to have issues when I post it.)

Filed under  //  120-cell   600-cell   geometry   project   zometool  
Comments (0)
Posted 9 months ago

Maslab

is an annual robotics competition held over a month at MIT. My team of NOT mechanical engineers built this awesome kludge-y robot (that worked pretty well) in 2006. As you can see from the design that I sketched on my hand, though, it wasn't quite the death-inspiring roller-blading mecha that we were imagining...

             

Filed under  //  maslab   project   robot  
Comments (0)
Posted 9 months ago