Video of the day

Bridge to the Future was a 20 minute promotional film released in the early 1950's by Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The film tells the fictional story of Bob Lansford as he visits WPI, becomes a student, gets a loyal girlfriend, graduates, and then embarks on an exciting career in engineering. It is narrated by one of the characters who claims to be a WPI graduate, often repeats himself, doesn't reveal his name, and often repeats himself. In the early 1990s, members of LnL discovered some old 16mm prints of the film and began showing it before SocComm movies when a cartoon was unavailable. After cable television was installed in the campus residence halls during the summer of 1994, SocComm began showing movies at night on the campus TV channel 11. When a movie ran short, Bridge to the Future was often shown to fill time. A post on a WPI newsgroup suggested that someone should do an "MST3K version" of it. IMC employee Doug Thompson offered to produce it if someone wrote a script. In early 1996, Patrick Delahanty contacted Doug with a completed script. The film was shot in one day in early March 1996. There were two takes to record the entire video portion. All audio was dubbed in after. Original (1951) Bob Lansford Robert P. Hayward '50 Betty Mary Givens Narrator uncredited Spoof (1996) Same as original, plus: Patrick Delahanty '95 "Pat"/writer Tim Lewis '95 director/writer John Fournier '96 "John"/writer Kyle Warren '96 "Kyle"/writer Doug Thompson '78 producer Joe Kalinowski '99 stage crew Tara O'Keefe art director/props This version of the film was produced by Doug Thompson in the TV Studio run by the Instructional Media Center, known today as the Academic Technology Center.

These Babies Can Out-Climb Their Parents
Australian brush turkeys (Alectura lathami) are what biologists call "super precocial," says Ken Dial of the University of Montana Flight Lab. The birds fly the day they hatch, and hatchlings can climb vertical ledges better than adults, according to Dial's latest research.

Additional footage courtesy of University of Montana Flight Lab, Royal Society Publishing.