Facebook Chat launched in beta earlier this week, available first to students at Harvard, Stanford, University of Chicago, Berkeley, Brown, Dartmouth and MIT— schools known for their brilliant graduates who go out and change the world. Or at least make a lot of money. Or write nasty things about the people who do. Also: Harvard, Stanford, University of Chicago, Berkeley, Brown, Dartmouth and MIT were the first schools to make Facebook popular, having been the first networks allowed access Mark Zuckerberg's creation. So we have that to thank them for too. Harvard's Alexander Konrad begins to earn our forgiveness, panning the new feature in the Crimson.

"Everything happens for a reason," MIT's Henry Jenkins tells Outside.in CEO Steven Johnson in a SXSW keynote conversation. Does that include Johnson's wardrobe? Suggest a better caption in the comments below.

Before Jakob and Julia, before Brett Petersel's wad of cash, before Jason Calacanis's roaringly single '90s, there was Ed Yourdon, a young geek in love and already connected to the social graph. In 1965. Yourdon, known for his innovations in structured programming, graduated MIT that year and soon after started up at a NYC-based consulting firm. There, he reunited with Toni, a friend from high school and Yourdon's future wife. They soon split again. That's when the proto-poking began. Social media minx Alisa Leonard hosts Yourdon's entire account on her Socialized blog. Here's the 100-word version to help you remember a more innocent time for nerd romance.

MIT is suing famed architect Frank Gehry, for negligence. Let's get this straight: The man designs his buildings by piling up cardboard and crumpled paper, and yet his customers expect sturdiness? Predictably, the $300 million Stata Center is not withstanding New England's weather. Cracks have emerged, leaks have sprung, drainage is faulty, mold is growing, and snow and ice fall dangerously from its many curved surfaces and sharp edges. Beacon Skanska Construction is also named in the suit, but it argues that Gehry ignored warnings that the design was flawed. What did the brainiacs at MIT expect?

Frank Gehry, whose daring and whimsical sheet-metal buildings all basically look the same, is being sued by MIT for flaws in his goofy $300-million design for their Stata Center. The center looks, in Gehry's words, "looks like a party of drunken robots," and MIT is apparently surprised that it might not have very good drainage or other things found on non-$300 million buildings that nonetheless have stood up quite well for some time without "masonry creaking" or what have you. Why did everything go wrong? Because fancy architecture is basically like extortion!

So the picture on the left is MIT student Star Simpson's attempt to win a Darwin Award. Obviously, a piece of socket board, a LED star, and a 9-volt battery aren't exactly threatening, though we can see how loose wires on a jacket could jar security guards with loose wires upstairs. A DIYer, Simpson fabricated the sweatshirt ornament in honor of an MIT electrical engineering course, inscribing on the back "Socket To Me / Course VI." One might conclude that security personnel at Boston's Logan International Airport may have overreacted — a bit. But even if she wore it out of habit, let us not forget that we can barely smuggle liquids onto planes these days.

Got a smug MIT grad in your engineering department? Here's a chance to gloat. MIT dropped from fourth to seventh place this year in US News & World Report's college ranking guide. Why? Not because the class of 2010 is dragging the rest of the school down, though class of '10 member Star Simpson's recent Logan airport bomb hoax might imply that. Turns out that MIT has been fudging their numbers for the last few years, by neglecting to include SAT scores from non-English speaking students and kids who scored higher on the ACT test, in violation of USN&WR rules. Oops. Of course, all of this happened during the reign of Marilee Jones, the admission head who doctored her own resume. That MIT degree gets more and more valuable everyday, doesn't it?

MIT student Star Simpson narrowly escaped death by submachine gun earlier this morning at Boston's Logan International Airport. What for? Why, sauntering about one of the terminals with a fake bomb strapped to her chest — a circuit board rigged up to a battery pack, allowing it to light up, with a ball of Play-doh in her hand — while, allegedly, awaiting an incoming passenger. She was apprehended, at gunpoint, on a traffic island outside the terminal. Her excuse? It was "art." Uh huh. At an airport? She's lucky she wasn't attacked by an angry mob of Bostonians on the spot. This is, after all, the same city ravaged by the Aqua Teen Hunger Force bomb scare/advertising campaign earlier this year. The main takeaway: They're letting anyone into MIT these days, aren't they?

Marilee Jones, the head of MIT's admissions, resigned today "after it was confirmed that she had misrepresented her academic degrees," according to an memo sent around MIT this morning. Gah! We hope she didn't actually go to Penn or something horrible like that. Weirdly, the dean has worked in MIT admissions since 1979. We salute her. And good to know—it takes them nearly 20 10 years to catch on to stuff!

Where did Tom's boys go? A reader at MIT says MySpace is a no-show (despite a Wednesday tip), but Facebook's shopping for CS majors.

MIT and Harvard grads, sick of Stanford kids getting all the offers? Polish the CV, says a reader, and keep an eye out for Tom's goons. Getting picked up on MySpace never felt so good.

An attendee from a November forum was unimpressed by Marissa Mayer. Granted, the tipster is betting on a Google stock loss.