oh, no...i shouldn't have gone and done that. i went and poked around more, seeing which connections i could find. and mit/boston/etc is apparently just one clusterfuck of a black-hole of a social network. everything gets sucked in and smushed together by its inescapable gravity. arghh!
(like i said, some days this entertains me. today it makes me want to go hide in a cave in bhutan for the next six years. i hear they've got yaks.)