In case you missed the news, the Engineering Department got a generous donation of $44 million. The University is probably going to be spending it on boring practical things, like infrastructure, but Blog would like to remind the Corporation that this is Brown—incubator of crazy, innovative, and not-necessarily-feasible ideas. Thus, we present a list of suggestions of what we’d do with $44 million and faculty doing awesome research.

1. Martian Housing

I mean, we already have professors who send robots to Mars. How hard could building a new dorm on the Red Planet be? This could be for the students who really, really want to study abroad. Besides, it couldn’t be a worse trip than going to Perkins.

2. Weather Machine

Of course, there are the practical applications, such as global climate change, and professors here are doing really cool work on that. But really, that’s missing the bigger picture: Never a rainy Spring Weekend ever again. Spontaneous snowball fights in spring. No more freak Halloween snowstorms.

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Everyone knows the internet is a scary place where it becomes frighteningly easy to do slightly awkward things, like when you “Like” a mupload of someone you’ve never spoken to (stupid Facebook for iPhone), or Reply All when you REALLY did not want to.

To accidentally link the @BrownUAdmission Twitter to your private Facebook account is kind-of on another level.

Yes, it seems that someone working for our Admissions office—hopefully in an attempt to link the Admissions Twitter with the Admissions Facebook page—somehow managed to send all his/her private status updates as tweets to Brown alumni, students, and whoever else follows @BrownUAdmission.

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I began this post as a warning of sorts. Men and women of Brown who care about your fantasy football teams (I realize this may be a very small demographic), SET YOUR LINEUPS EARLY THIS WEEK. Why? Last Sunday, millions of fantasy football slackers were shocked to find that Yahoo! Sports was down in the precious hours before kickoff at 1 p.m. Because of Yahoo!’s technical difficulties, lineups were left unchanged, players with bye weeks were in starting positions, and approximately 1.2 million pounds of hair was torn out nationwide. As often occurs these days, there was a decent-sized Internet riot in response (thank you Twitter). Last week’s debacle got me thinking, what Internet disasters would garner similar rage—most likely as measured by prevalence of clever hashtags—at Brown?

1. G-Chat fails. Again. Ffffffuuuuuu how am I supposed to procrastinate now in a way that even looks like I’m being productive? Let me take to another procrastination web site like Twitter to communally gripe!

2. BCA Spring Weekend Tickets. Too real, I guess this one is kind of inevitable. Until they book the “John Schnatter and Grover Norquist old-time string band” to headline Spring Weekend, that site is going to go down, and people are going to complain.

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To my fellow Brunonians:

Recently, I’ve come to a sobering realization. I’m writing today to confess something: I have a dark secret. It’s taken me four semesters to admit it, but I have a serious problem.

I didn’t recognize it for what it was at first. Sure, it was eating up my time, my money, but goddamnit I can stop whenever I want to!

It starts with a couple beers. A shot of tequila or vodka, maybe. Perhaps some mixed drinks. Seems pretty harmless. You’ve actually dressed up and put some makeup on. You go out. Drink some jungle juice. Now you’re bored, so you go home. Alone. Suddenly, you’re online. You can’t stop browsing. Click click click.

Before you know it, it’s 7 a.m. and the athletes are rising for practice.

No, my addiction is not porn. It’s much more sinister than your weekly boner jams. My porn is Amazon.com, eBay, Macy’s and Forever21.com. I am a Drunk Shopaholic, and PayPal is my enabler.

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There’s a scary presence on Brown’s campus. It’s up in your dorm room interrupting your study time. It attacks classes by the dozens. It’s stretching its gangrenous arms into your daily conversations, your romantic life, your Facebook news feed. Try as hard you can, you can’t escape…

…from The Huffington Post. That’s right, HuffPost: Brown’s lowest common denominator. Its obnoxious green banner is ubiquitous — if you don’t believe me, just sit in the back row of Intro IR sometime. But why do we settle for HuffPost? Why do we put up with the sensational and bewildering headlines? How do we live with ourselves, seeing that right sidebar populated with such well-researched stories as “The Shortest Shorts You’ve Ever Seen“; “Verdict Handed Down in Pooper-Scooper Trial“; and “Pumpkin Bump” (yeah, click that one)? And those stories are all from Wednesday, by the way.

There must be a better way. There are. Check out these alternative default pages for news:

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Courtesy of Shuttervoice

BBC News reports that Internet behemoths Facebook and Skype are about to strike a massive deal that will integrate the two, making it easier to make Skype calls via your Facebook friends list.

The partnership will mean Skype users can update their statuses and interact with News Feed via the Skype platform. You’ll also be able to use Facebook as a contact directory for your Skype account, make free Skype-to-Skype phone calls with Facebook friends who use Skype, and “call and text Facebook friends directly on their mobile phones and landlines.”

Hmm…isn’t that last one already the function of a regular phone? Regardless, this partnership will be one to keep an eye on in the days to come, even if it ultimately is just a glorified address book adaptation. Rumor has it that Facebook’s using the deal to pave the way for plans of a Facebook phone, which hopefully won’t end up following the same trajectory as the unfortunately short-lived Microsoft Kin…

So a day after Google unveiled a super cool new logo, they managed to once again blow the internet’s mind by introducing Google Instant.  Literally, woah.

For those of you still paying attention to Brown’s various online communities (do they actually serve a purpose when it’s not reading period?), a new one seems to have surfaced: iheardyoubrown.com.

“Holy shit, the Ratty has ice cream sundays–and it’s Sunday!”