One of my professors won a Pulitzer!!!!

I have generally liked all of my creative writing classes, mostly because the writing professors at MIT are awesome. Junot Diaz, whose writing class I took spring of my sophomore year, just won a Pulitzer for his novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao! I read his novel a little while after it came out, and loved it. The book's style might not be for everyone though--if you read normal fiction and hate anything that is eccentric and/or punk-style, or if you are faint-of-heart, it's probably not for you. But Diaz's book is a fun read for those who enjoy all genres, especially a mix of science fiction and normal life, so pick it up! The book is not science, but the main character enjoys science fiction, and the style reminds me of punk science fiction like Snow Crash. One of the reasons the book is so unique is that it takes all these crazy genres and melts them all together with a taste of Dominican Republic culture

Congrats to Professor Diaz, who I really hope returns next year to teach so that I can take another class from him before I graduate.

This is one of the reasons MIT is so cool. We have amazing, talented people here!

Read more here http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/diaz-pulitzer-0407.html

With all the recent financial aid statements by other colleges, MIT has followed suite!

MIT to be tuition-free for families earning less than $75,000 a year

Nearly 30 percent of MIT students to have all tuition charges covered!

That is big news!
Read all about it here:

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/tuition-0307.html

Super Smash Brothers Brawl Prank

To celebrate the release of Super Smash Brothers Brawl, a highly anticipated Nintendo Wii game (which I preordered :-), a few hackers put up some items from the game in Lobby 7. Below are pics of Mario's hat and mustache, a pokemon ball, a super smash crate, a banana, a Mario tomato, and a few other items. There was also a healing heart container (from the Zelda franchise), but I was not able to get a good picture of it. I'm excited to play the game when it arrives here from Amazon!

IAP 6.270 Autonomous Lego Robots!

Over IAP I built a Lego robot for the famous (or maybe infamous :-) 6.270 competition! I made a blog about our robot, Peg Leg, which you can check out at this link:
http://mit-6270-robot-pegleg.blogspot.com/

There are videos and pictures of Peg Leg, which are really cool. So go check it out! And if you are at MIT, do 6.270 before you graduate! It's just one of those things you HAVE to do.

My team had tons of fun over IAP, even though it was tons of work (we spent over 100 hours on our robot).