Mm, and in that picture you can see the giant swarm of mosquitoes he was letting out? You have better eyes than me. See also this. At most it was one. Just opening an empty jar while you have another jar with bugs in it can be an effective stunt.

My boss was at his talk. He did not release the mosquitos. He did have a vial of them there and threatened to, as a joke (boss-man actually said his whole talk was pretty entertaining). So all of you yammering about suing and crap can calm down.

I'm a girl, asshole, just with crazy parents. Feel free to google me.

Come on people. Look at the stuff in here. I am an engineer who loves what she does (I build robots!) and I have the good fortune to work in Cambridge, Mass, where women engineers are often no big deal... and yet if I knew I was in a room with all of you, thinking that my brain is different and I'm just not meant for this stuff, and if I *am* good/interested in this it's just because I'm "weird" and going against my gender norms... well, I'd hightail it out of here, too.

And in other countries there are many female engineers. My mother worked with a Ukranian woman who thought it odd that engineering was considered a "male" profession here, rather than a female profession as it was back home. Most of the women I do see in engineering are of Asian descent. You don't think, just maybe, that we're doing a crappy job as a culture of encouraging American kids (not just girls, but even boys too) to get excited about and be interested in this stuff?

I don't deny that women think differently from men. But I do question the suggestion that this means women can't or won't do engineering or science. I question why engineering or science can't handle the way women think. It's not a matter of dumbing it down; it's a matter of figuring out how to leverage diverse ways of thinking about a problem. A group of people looking at a problem in different ways is more beneficial than one geek sitting in a cube doing what he thinks is best. A group of men is good. A group of men and women is better.

Olin was started by a Babson alum with funds that originated with another Babson alum, on Babson's campus.

Actually, the funds came from the F. W. Olin Foundation, originally from funds left by Franklin W. Olin after his death. He got the money by starting the Olin Corporation which among other things owned Remington rifles and did a lot of chemical engineering. Olin himself was a Cornell graduate.

Background- first year engineering student. I don't have one mostly because I find that I'm taking my laptop with me to meetings or other times when I would need the calendaring, contact list, or task list features. (I suppose that might make me a nerd). This is partly because it's just useful to have for taking notes, or a quick email followup to someone not at the meeting (actually, for getting people not at student government meetings to volunteer for tasks, IM is great), and partly b/c if the meeting's boring, I like to have something else to do (email, read news). For the times when I'm not carrying my laptop, it isn't that bad to just go and write something down or put a phone number in my cell phone. What would make me get a PDA is a decently priced ($450) PDA Phone with reasonable data input and battery life, as well as 802.11b support. It's getting close- there's the Smart phone (Kyocera, I think...), Audiovox Thera, and Tmobile Pocket PC phone edition, Handspring Treo, but there still isn't the "right" one. I need something that will replace my phone (with the same, or close to the same, talk and standby time and not too much bigger) and would mean that I don't have to carry my laptop around quite as much. I'm hoping they get there within a year, 18 months is probably more reasonable.

Speaking as an Olin student, I have to correct some of your points. #1: We have a student-faculty ratio of about 3:1 right now, which is one of the best anywhere (these are faculty that actually teach, as opposed to only doing research.) #2: We don't offer chemical engineering as a major; if we did, we'd have more faculty devoted to it. In Mech. E, which we do offer as a major, we have 3 full-time professors. For ECE, the figure is even higher. #3: Olin won't require its students to take a separate chemistry class, since most engineers don't end up using it anyway. It'll be combined with Materials Science, which is useful.

ok, here's the deal. you take Apollo 13, Contact, and 2001: A Space Odyssey [some would even dare to add a little Stand by Me], cram it all together and stamp a huge disney logo on it to get Mission to Mars.

Contact:
Mathematical patterns hidden in sounds. Contact with friendly aliens. Aliens want us to join them so they can explain crap, etc. etc.

Apollo 13:
Gas leak, explosion, crippled spacecraft, had to abandon it...

2001:
the spacesuits. completely ripped off of 2001. the spinning spacecraft. the monolyth-shape that they entered.

stand by me:
This was the most enjoyable reference to another movie. The guy from Sliders, who played Verno in Stand By Me, was a whiney loser who constantly ate. There would be this intense moment with everyone standing around watching a screen, and he'd be sitting there with a pack of food. They'd leave the room, and he'd be standing there with a whiney look on his face. He constantly said stupid things. HE MADE A DOUBLE HELIX OUT OF M&MS. Every time he did something goofy or stupid or whiney or food-related, I yelled (to myself, so as not to be rude) "Verrrrnoooo", which was more often than you might think! It was hilarious.

plot was depressingly predictable. Obvious foreshadowing, irony, and stupid conversation to give away plot elements: Here's the virtual opening of the movie:
"Too bad your wife, who was a Mars expert, died and now you won't get to go to Mars, ever."
"Yea, it's too bad but I bet nothing will ever happen to you up there anyway and I'll never get to go to Mars."

"There's probably some real intelligent life on Mars"
"No way, you're drunk."
Maybe she's right.

"Because we have landed on the Martian surface and are now millions of miles away from you, there is nothing you can do to stop us from celebrating a birthday."
Oh, so that's where there are. Wow I hope this moment of happiness won't soon be contrasted with a disaster. Or will it?

being a disney movie, there was no nudity, cursing, or guns (except for a grappling-hook type thing). only 2 people were seen to have died, one being violently torn apart by a tornado (PG!?!), the other freezing.

Corporate promotion: It seems the producer sold advertising space in the movie to make up for the forthcoming lack of ticket sales. Among names displayed in prominence, Kawasaki, Penzoil, M&Ms, Isuzu, SGI. If Disney had just gone ahead and used MTM to promote some upcoming film, by having the characters of the future refer to how good it was or something, it wouldn't have surprised me at all.

Howabout the lack of technical advances in the year 2020: We saw one futuristic object, a car from Isuzu no less, while everything else appears to be from 1999, I wonder when they started filming. The scientific jargon typical of NASA has been toned by substantially by the apparant 20 years of advances. Astronauts are visually informed when they have reached "the point of no return." Spacecraft are named Mars-1 Mars-2 and Mars-Supply. Also, it appears that in a disaster situation everyone is supposed to panic and deviate from procedure by trying untested methods of recovery.

The computer that controlled everything on the spaceship seems very easily crashed -- easier than a windows machine. also when the spaceship was losing air, it seemed to be killing the computer too. as the computer died its voice started cracking like an adolescent teenager. it was great.

special effects were pretty good in general with some wacky camera motions that were kinda odd, but the CGI sucked bigtime. the thing i enjoyed the most was the ease of fun-making ala MST3k. that movie was a goldmine for funny commentary; i might go see it again just to make sure i didn't miss any.

aside from all that i mentioned, i'm glad i went. i needed the laugh. go to the matinee but don't spend $8 on it.