U. Chicago's Epic Scavenger Hunt Is Back For 2012 56
gotfork writes "The world's largest scavenger hunt, covered in previous years on Slashdot, is now taking place at the University of Chicago. The competition is fierce: in 1999 one team build a working breeder reactor in the quad, but only won second place. Items on this year's list include your appendix in a jar (210), a disappearing spoon made of metal (105), a chromatic typewriter (216), a xyloexplosive (33) and a weaponized Xerox machine (83). Check out the full list here (PDF). Not bad for the school where 'where fun comes to die.'" Does your school have any equivalent annual hijinks?
MIT (Score:1)
See Mystery Hunt, the Bad Ideas Competition, anything that happens in the East Campus courtyard during rush.
No one has 'build' a working slashdot editor.. (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe they could add that to the list?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Editor is wrong word. (Score:2)
I ain't completely sure what to call them, but they do not function as an editor.
They may approve submissions, but they don't edit them or even check the links.
I'd like to see what the Xerox machine uses (Score:5, Funny)
...for toner.
Anthrax?
Re: (Score:2)
How weaponized are they talking about? There are lots of highly toxic substances that exist in a powder or crystalline form and would kill you if you breathed in enough of them. Or, for that matter, simply removing the air filter from a laser printer could potentially put enough toner into the air to pose a fire risk in a small enough enclosed space....
Re:I'd like to see what the Xerox machine uses (Score:4, Interesting)
Hmm. I was going to weaponize it in a much more mundane fashion: Balance it on a windowsill.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, well heck. That's bloody easy. Step 1. Build a trebuchet. Step 2. Load the Xerox machine into the trebuchet. Step 3. There's no step 3!
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::ducks as tracer rounds fly over his head followed by lawyers::
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Re:Better person, eh? (Score:5)
Find a way to turn that into a scavenger hunt and you may have a point, otherwise, shove it up your ass.
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I haven't done any of those things, but the Lions Club I'm in had its major annual fundraiser last night. We spent Monday and Tuesday evenings setting up chairs and tables, then worked our asses off last night. Most of the money we raised will probably go to dog guides [dogguides.com] and/or a camp for dialysis patients [lionscampdorset.on.ca].
Am I allowed to use my Arduino now?
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We Christians like to do stuff like that too. We call it Jesus juking. For example, "It'd be great if people had as much excitement about sharing the Gospel as they do the scavenger hunt..." Judas (the guy who betrayed Jesus) was great at this sort of thing, too! "Why did you pour that expensive perfume when we could have used it on the poor?"
Naked Mile (Score:4, Interesting)
The U of Michigan used to have a "naked mile" at the end of each school year. I seem to recall it was mostly the Crew team that started it but everyone was welcome to join in on the run. It was fun to watch and used to have a huge crowd turnout, but the school and city shut it down for some reason - liability? exploitation? I dunno, this sounds a lot more fun than a scavenger hunt.
But being that the school year ends at the end of April and Michigan's been known to have April snow showers, sometimes the turnout is on the smaller side. [youtube.com] [mostly SFW]
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The still shots for the related videos, however, are a bit less work safe.
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Sorry, you're completely right. How DID I miss that? : )
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we had something similar in finland, after one year the route was altered to not go to the police academy anymore though... unisex saunas too, so screw you michigan.
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Penn State still has such a "race".
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Extra Points! (Score:1)
If the students can find the Second Amendment hidden somewhere in the city.
Rule number 7 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
You know you're a geek when you get the joke immediately because you recognize the number.
For a couple of days after we change the clocks in the spring and fall, the usual minute-long recorded message at the USNO Master Clock is shortened to thirty seconds, presumably because they are essentially getting slashdotted at those times.
There is no spoon (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
Yeah, sure. Go ahead and get me some, if it's so easy.
347. A sonnet composed in C (Score:1)
347. A sonnet composed in C that, when compiled and run, prints a haiku to the standard output. Just as no great poet would ever write an unnecessary word, every variable and expression in your code must be essential to the program’s proper functioning. [10 points
Voter (Score:2)
Not on the list, but you know what is?:
91. A card-carrying Republican faculty member of the Humanities Division. [5 points]
I knew it! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm pretty certain that's a rule.
include your appendix in a jar (Score:2)
No one's going to get that one, my appendix is still in my thorax, I'm going into hiding, and I'm armed.
Bah! Scavenger Hunt and Kuviasungnerk (Score:1)
Both the Scavenger Hunt and Kuviasungnerk, the "awesome" winter festival, are constructs, complete fictions created by the University of Chicago marketing droids so they have something to put in prospectuses for applying students. During all my time there, six years for undergrad and master's, I neither knew nor heard of (remember, it's a small school with very few degrees of separation) even 1 human who participated in the Scavenger Hunt and only 1 human who did Kuviasungnerk. (Kuviasungnerk, btw, is whe
You missed out, man. (Score:2)
Yes, I know, the saying that U of C is "Where the squirrels are more aggressive (and better looking) than the women!" and all of the other T-Shirts, but I've not been to a more fun campus since.
Where else can you walk out across the quads at 4:00 a.m. on a major university campus after a night of hard research work and stumble into the middle of a medieval melee with swords and armor being carried out in a language that you don't understand, complete with torches? (Old English? High German? Didn't know, did
I did scav hunt in 2004 (Score:2)
as a graduate student at U of C. It was madness. We hit 10+ states in a borrowed truck. There were drunkenness, nudity, minor violations of the law, vandalism to competing ivy-league campuses, elaborate ruses to move large crowds, a statue of elvis, and and any number of other things involved over (IIRC) just the course of a wild, no-sleep-possible weekend, and all in pursuit of items on the list (i.e. it wasn't just random debauchery, though the nature of the list started to make it feel that way).
It was o