MIT Talk

Posted byRandall 175 Comments on MIT Talk

(Note: Firefox crashed just as I was finishing this post. This is a terse recreation, as I’m about to collapse.)

I gave a talk at MIT yesterday (now the day before yesterday). It was wonderful. I had never really done this kind of thing before, but it went so much better than I expected. I had someone tell me afterward that my talk was better than the one by the Penny Arcade guys, and that I was funnier in real life than in the comic. It’s hard to imagine better praise than that.

The talk sold out early and the place was packed:

I was stalked by RoboRaptors and pelted with playpen balls (which fell from the ceiling in the middle of the talk, courtesy some mysterious party) :

Feeling a lot less tired than I look in this picture, I signed playpen balls (with jokes about spherical geometry), comic prints, tickets, and — at one point — breasts.

There are more pictures here.

Firefox keeps crashing. Here are some brief Things I Did:

– Made fun of audience member’s mom, said “fuck you” to some of the world’s top young computational linguists, and answered a question by whistling the “Katamari Damacy” theme.

– Finally managed to give davean credit for all his work, in public, in circumstances where he couldn’t escape. He pretended to be annoyed later, but only a little.

– Met lovely people who twirled burning things at high speeds out on the lawn at night.

Oh, and I don’t know of any video of the lecture yet, aside from one bit floating around. It should be out there somewhere. But hour-long videos with troubled audio are no fun — what I’d like to find is a transcript, like the one of the Penny Arcade talk (although those are a lot of work to create). But I’m content just remembering how cool it all was.

Thank you to everyone involved, and I’m sorry to everyone who I couldn’t give enough time to that night (after the lecture, I was meeting and talking to so many people that I had trouble keeping track of who was where and when, or who I was speaking with from one minute to the next). But it was a lot of fun. Let’s do this again sometime soon.

175 replies on “MIT Talk”

  1. I pretty much devoured your comics, though I’m sad to say I didn’t discover them recently. Please come to Nashville and give a talk? I’ll give you a polynomial ring for your finger? You can father an nth amount of my babies? Or, I could be a little less creepy and just invite you. Either/or.

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  3. Tim Wilson:

    They used to have course 6 classes in 10-250. That’s retro. Now we have our own building. Farther away though.

    The overheads aren’t so retro, they don’t project but record via a camera and then send the signal to the main projectors in the room.

    To anybody who said don’t blame firefox. Even if there’s a way to fix the problem doesn’t mean the problem’s okay.

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  4. That sounds awesome. If you’re ever around Albany, NY, I know a bunch of guys at RPI who would kill to have you speak there.

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  5. If you ever want sunshine and a small town, come to Florida Tech! You’ll be in the same county as the Kennedy Space Center, and I know you have quite a few fans here (I know your comics practically by heart.) Looks like you had an awesome time at MIT – can’t wait for video/transcript of the whole thing. 😀

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  7. I love the comic…. Come to Bryn Mawr! No, really. All these other people may try to lure you, but do they have a college exclusively composed of brilliant, beautiful, geeky women? I think not.

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  8. Next time come to [insert college name] in [insert city] because [insert reason why said college is superior] and [insert other random enticing reason]!

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  9. RPI! RPI! I went and saw you at MIT anyway but if you come visit us you’ll.. I don’t know. To be honest we would probably kidnap you and hold you hostage in one of the science buildings… aw man…

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  10. Wow, I’m totally in one of those pictures. :O

    Your talk was fabulous and awesome. We were pictochatting on our DSes in the middle of it in awe at how awesome your lecture was.

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  11. I’m surprised that nobody from UC Berkeley has posted a comment. That’s really too bad, because there are quite a few of us who would enjoy your company.

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  12. You should come to University of NV, Reno and talk in the next spring semester.

    Just a suggestion 😉

    (an aside: me and my friend religiously read your comics, and found another poor soul at UNR wearing your ‘usual approach’ tshirt. It literally made our day. We weren’t aware anyone else in Reno had found, much less understood, the comic.)

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  15. Since you’re ridiculously-popular with the science students, academics and non-academic staff at La Trobe Uni (http://latrobe.edu.au), how about a visit if you’re ever in Australia?

    There are the under-grad nanotech, Physics, space science, post-grad Physics and space science as well as general staff who love xkcd (there’s this guy on the second floor of the Physics building who’s pasted about 10 comics on his office door).

    Awesome comic, pity I couldn’t fly over to the US just for it.

    Hell, you know what? I’m gonna get a petition. Yeah, a petition should do it.

    Or a fundraiser.

    In base-13.

    A global one so everyone can contribute to some kind of… global talky trip.

    Still, great comic, great work, etc. 😀

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  16. Blah blah blah University of Florida blah blah blah national champions in basketball and football blah blah blah visit blah blah blah raptors blah blah blah blah blah hampster ball blah blah blah.

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  17. If you’re ever in Maryland, you should come visit the Roxbury prison in Maryland. We’ll fill a cell with playpen balls for you.

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  19. You should come over to Harvey Mudd next year. You’d get quite the reception I’d think…. 🙂

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  20. hahaha, love the spam protection. and also, thanks for coming! lsc loved to have you. and i sat next to your grandma during the talk!

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  21. Hey-

    LSC did get an official copy of most, but not all (they ran out of battery) of your talk. I imagine they’d be able to provide you with a copy if you ask. Contact me in private if you want me to give you the contact information of the person who was taping for LSC.

    –Quentin

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  22. silly me and my having to give a final presentation for a class at the same time as the lecture! I heard it was absolutely amazing, though, and I am really jealous of all of my friends who got to go. come back soon! and also, I am really happy about daily updates this week. thank you for making finals week bearable!

    -erica

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  25. Next time come to [insert college name] in [insert city] because [insert reason why said college is superior] and [insert other random enticing reason]!

    Next time come to University of Washington in Seattle because we’re smart and it rains a lot!
    (Thanks for the format.) 😛

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  26. Wow! This is just like the time(s) I missed Chuck Norris at 3 different sites in Western Iraq by approximately 24 hours each time!

    Only, I’m in DC. And it’s the 25th of May. And I just now realised the awful connection (roughly 24 seconds ago!).

    Creepy.

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  28. Next time come to [UT-Austin] in [Austin] because [you get to come to Austin] and [I’ll get you some BBQ, take you to ACL to see Bjork and won’t let you leave until you get to sign a woman’s uterus (forget breasts)]!

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  29. thanks for updating every day this week. I graduate high school on saturday, and between that and the Heroes season finale today, I didn’t think it could get much better… but it did.

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  30. Thanks for coming, Randall! It was awesome, accept for all the (I’d say Geeky, but they were THERE so that goes without saying) arogant guys who kept feeling the need to stroke their own egos by shouting out their ‘ever so witty’ comments of obnoxisity (yeah, made up word and I’m stickin’ to it).

    I know those who did it the most personally. They do it all the time, interupting others conversations and such, and it’s annoying. You know who you are, and though the wee geeky freshman girls titter, the rest of us don’t think it’s cute anymore.

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  31. HOLA!

    Nice shading on today’s comic! hahaha, you won’t read this.
    .

    ADIOS!~K~

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  33. Okay, I know I shouldn’t but I’m saying it anyways:

    Next time come to Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETHZ) because I study there and really want to attend one of your talks!

    On another note: Is there really no recording of the talk? No transcript? Nothing? (apart form the one video posted somwhere above)

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  35. I got ~28.5% c …

    x’/t’ = g(x – Bct)/(g(t – Bx/c))
    u’ = (u – Bc)/(1 – Bu/c)

    The relative velocity between our frame and the ball’s is .2c = v, .2 = B
    The velocity of the spaceship in our frame is -.2c = u

    u’ = (-.2c – .2c)/(1+.2*.2) = -2c/7 ~ -.285c

    Poor spaceship needs its sensors fixed.

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  36. I showed up for tickets waaay too late, they had sold out a while before. I should have frickin’ known better. Well, I’m moving to NYC in the fall…maybe you’ll speak at the…United Nations, or something then. Wow, I really wish I’d snatched tickets earlier, that talk sounds incredible.

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  37. I also waited for too long to get tickets. Eit. I also wasn’t able to get a hominid-scale gerbil ball on short notice, so I couldn’t have attended in style anyway.

    You should totally go on tour. We’ll follow you on said tour and be the geekiest people ever.

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  38. Why don’t you just go all out and visit ALL universities! You should probably do it internationally too cause I know we’d love to have you up in Canada.

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  39. I go to McMaster in Canada, which is mostly health science/biology oriented (that’s okay, it’s my thing), but we have a nerd-iversity an hour away at Waterloo. I promise to reward you handsomely for any Canadian visits you may make.

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  41. Totally hit up Stanford if possible! Gah. I’m jealous of MIT now (I’ll have to see if my friends made it to your talk!); I love the supreme sense of geeky satisfaction I get when I understand the references in this comic! And just think–good weather, good food, smart nerdy people! What more could one want? Mmmhmm. Think Stanford.

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  42. As long as people are asking you to now embark on a speaking tour, I think the University of Washington is still hunting for a guest speaker for commencement. I’m sure they’d find you worthy of $10,000.

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  44. I’m going to fourth the comment to come to Canada!

    I’m sure you’d be more than welcomed at any university, but Waterloo would work best (imo). 🙂

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  45. So if you went to MIT, you really should go to RHIT (Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology) since it is said to have the “Best Undergraduate Engineering Programs” for the past 8 years*. I’m sure there isn’t a better place in the world to visit besides Terre Haute, Indiana… I mean even Letterman had nice things to say about the Haute.

    *For those universities whose highest degree is a Master’s. Don’t you just love clauses…

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  46. You’re very good-looking. Seriously good-looking.

    It’s a shame that you’re (presumably) not into guys.

    Just thought I’d . . . you know, let you know.

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  49. Yes, we MUST make a petition, in base 13 etc etc.
    XKCD truly is the funniest and best comic ever, and Randall MUST tour the world
    *Is from Australia.*

    Also, asking for the “sum of 2 + 3” in the spam protection. Isn’t that tautology?

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  50. Oh man, I don’t usually say this but..
    i think I love you

    Is there more of you around?

    (Kites? Seriously? How come that never works when I try it? Maybe I need a cooler kite.)

    Like

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