Ah, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: that well-respected institution of higher learning within whose hallowed halls the world's best and brightest train their eager young minds to tackle the rigorous challenges of the high-tech industry. At least, that's what's in the brochures that get sent to Mom and Pop to justify the twenty-something grand a year. In reality, we're sure that each student's experience at the school is unique, but our own brush with the 'tute was primarily a four-year study in endurance ("How to stay up for forty-eight straight hours while keeping the hallucinations at bay") and philosophy ("Why am I staying up for forty-eight straight hours when I never bother to go to class anyway?"). When you stick a large number of very young, very bright, and very sleep-deprived people together in an environment bearing only the faintest hint of "adult" supervision, a fair amount of weirdness can occur. If you've seen Real Genius, we should note that it wasn't that much of an exaggeration.

So while it's true that MIT is a fantastic place to learn about Fourier transforms, turbulent heat transfer, artificial intelligence theory, etc., it's also true that Mom and Pop are shelling out six figures for their kid's education so said kid can neglect his or her studies and build iMacs out of JELL-O instead. Oh, wait-- sorry, that was last year's contest. Faithful viewer Otter tells us that this year, the spirit of the event is the same (craft a representation of an Apple product out of some appropriate yet uncooperative medium), but the details are a lot less wiggly. This time around, MIT students are flexing their brains to build the most realistic Power Mac G4 Cube out of ice.

That's right-- the problem sets can wait, because whoever most faithfully represents the sleek coolness of Apple's Cube in solid-form H₂O wins a real Cube to display proudly on his or her desk (or sell for beer money). Second prize is almost as nifty: an iMac DV Special Edition, probably in "Snow" just to keep the theme going. Third prize is a Umax USB scanner which, at worst, could be hocked for a series of hot meals at Mary Chung's. So there's a lot at stake here. As such, presumably several MIT students are trying to figure out not only how to craft a great-looking replica, but also how to keep their ice sculptures from melting when the contest is judged outdoors on the Student Center steps on October 20th.

We can see it already: hours spent researching methods of synthesizing ice with maximum optical clarity, artificial pigments meant to freeze into Apple's translucent Graphite logo, elaborate battery-powered peltier cooling rigs designed to preserve the sculpture's physical integrity for up to three hours in an environment with an ambient temperature of 55° Fahrenheit. Or, depending on when midterms hit this semester, maybe the winning entry will be a block of ice with an Apple logo drawn on it with black magic marker. In any case, hopefully Apple will once again post a page of photos of the winning entries so we can all share in the love. And remember, kiddies-- they're just mold lines. Points off for actual cracks.