The latest individual selected for this star-crossed Just this past Saturday we joined a group of them in Although they made a an effort to keep the conversation But their sense of humor was obvious, despite the incomprehensibility Our infatuation with MIT Geeks is not new. When we moved One thing we discovered early back in the day So we applaud the election of a MIT man to head the At the very least, we may see a return of a sense of Maybe Brown, being a true son of the Lonestar State, from the Boston Globe<\/a><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After a search that has lasted most of a decade, Boston University has finally settled on a new Commandant, er, President, to replace Aram Chobanian, current interim president and somniferous presence, who replaced the stillborn presidency of ex-NASA Czar, Daniel … Continue reading ![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/robrown.jpg\")
After
\n a search that has lasted most of a decade, Boston University has finally
\n settled on a new Commandant, er, President, to
\n replace Aram Chobanian, current interim president and somniferous presence,
\n who replaced the stillborn presidency of ex-NASA Czar, Daniel
\n Goldin<\/a>, paid
\n over $2,000,000 to walk away from the job a few days before he was supposed
\n to start
\n (an employment strategy the Dowbrigade has been attempting to emulate,
\n unsuccessfully, ever since), who was hired to replace President Emeritus
\n and dominating presence John
\n Silber<\/a>, referred to by Goldin as a "Paranoid Megalomaniac".<\/p>\n
\n post is a lesser-known local luminary, Robert
\n A. Brown<\/a>, provost of the Massachusetts
\n Institute of Technology<\/a>, and the Dowbrigade is personally delighted.
\n We have always enjoyed Techies, and our forays into their territory rank
\n among the most interesting and bizarre experiences in our long anthropological
\n career.<\/p>\n
\n a ritual celebration in a nondescript Chinese restaurant near their natural
\n habitat in Central Square, Cambridge. They were dressed in all of their
\n socially significant plumage for the special occasion (it was the birth-anniversary
\n of one of the members of the tribe); carefully chosen counter-fashions
\n of drab polyester and worn flax, a multitude of pockets to hold icons,
\n charms and fetishes, and a ritualistic shunning of all body decoration
\n or accoutrements – no studs, earrings or body art visible.<\/p>\n
\n accessible to an outsider like the Dowbrigade, by mid-meal, as they feverishly
\n passed around exotic and ceremonial dishes with names like "Cabbage
\n Crud Capons" and "Spongeaform Squid Savories" they broke into a highly
\n stylized dialect of "Geek-Speak", their tribal language, utterly opaque
\n to uninitiated outsiders.<\/p>\n
\n of the actual jokes, through their harsh, hesitant laughter and their
\n drool-enhanced smiles, and the rain of tiny food particles filtering
\n down on the table as they enjoyed the good humor.<\/p>\n
\n to Cambridge to attend the "other" institution down Bullshit Boulevard,
\n we discovered that two members of our high school graduating class, the
\n REALLY smart kids, were there, and through them we gained entry to the
\n alien and fascinating world culture of the gear head nation.<\/p>\n
\n was that despite their almost total lack of social graces, those MIT
\n kids
\n really
\n knew
\n how to
\n party. No MIT get-together was complete without a large tank of Nitrous
\n Oxide and some weird science toy like a shrunken marmoset or an experimental
\n defibrillator, which the guests could play with in creative ways. There
\n was also always plenty of good booze and often a collection of weird
\n drugs no one else had ever heard of yet.<\/p>\n
\n institution where we spend some of our professional time. We expect great
\n things from President Brown, if he is anything like the MIT grads we
\n know. He will probably need an interpreter and an intensive session with
\n the Queer Eye crew if he hopes to cut a dashing figure at fundraising
\n soirees, but the intellectual tone on campus should be cranked up several
\n notches, and after five or ten years of serious, sober leadership maybe
\n BU will cease to the the laughingstock of American higher education it
\n is today.<\/p>\n
\n humor to the Charles River campus, still living a kind of cold war blend
\n of skepticism and cynicism after Silber’s reign of terror, which had
\n Soviet technocratic
\n overtones of secrecy, betrayal and revenge, and featured a wholesale
\n dismissal of faculty who dared to dream of organizing themselves in
\n resistance to
\n the regime. MITers are famous for their ingenious and sophisticated
\n pranks,<\/a> like
\n placing cop cars and bi-planes
\n on the roof<\/a> of their library. Let’s hope this catches on at BU.<\/p>\n
\n will bring back BU’s
\n lost but not forgotten football team<\/a>, eradicated
\n as being "off-mission" by Silber<\/a> the
\n year after winning the NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP (Div. II). After all, even
\n MIT has a football team<\/a>….<\/p>\n