“Mother, I know you can hear me. Mother, you were wrong! And now that I have your attention, can I stop eating my broccoli, please?” Donald L. Unger raised his hands in mock rebellion. He had defied his mother’s words for three quarters of his life systematically cracking the knuckles on his left hand and leaving his right knuckles free for 60 years, demonstrating (if only anecdotally) that knuckle cracking does not cause arthritis. For this achievement, he won himself the Ig Nobel Award in Medicine, presented last night at the 19th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony yesterday evening.

Elections for the UA Senate and 2013 Freshman Class Council have been ongoing this week and end today.

Construction of the new Media Lab is on track to finish in November, according to Arne Abramson, who is managing the project.

MIT President Susan J. Hockfield delivered a 20-minute overview of the Institute’s financial climate in front of several hundred staff and a few students at the State of the Institute forum on Wednesday. Hockfield noted an intent to finish MIT’s $150 million in budget cuts in two years, rather than the three years initially proposed by the administration in 2008. Following this speech, administrators answered both pre-submitted and impromptu questions from the audience (select questions, p.13).