So I’m watching Daily Planet on the Discovery Channel and there’s a neat feature on these cool little microsatellites being developed at MIT’s Space Systems Lab under Dr. David Miller. Basically they’re like those little balls that float around space stations in Star Wars; very small and capable of highly precise motion. Anyway, they cut to the lead scientist, Alvar Saenz-Otero, and it caught my eye because he’s quite heavily pierced:

Among other things he’s got a bridge piercing, which is also known as the “Erl Piercing”, although that name is not that common these days. The name comes from the first person to popularize the piercing, Erl Van Aken, also known as one of the scientists that developed the lunar rover for NASA… Anyway, even if OfficeMax won’t hire visibly modified people, MIT and NASA (and in this case, DARPA) certainly don’t mind if you’re good at what you do. Personally I’d rather work for NASA than OfficeMax.

(My apologies for the terrible screenshots; I just took photos of my TV because I don’t have anything installed that can capture!)