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Country: United States
Birthday: 4/8/1983
Gender: Male
Interests: Fencing and Hockey.
Expertise: Try me. I'm a verifiable Renaissance man.
Occupation: Education/training
Industry: Other
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
11/17/2002
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| I'm only on here because LJ is currently being blocked by China's firewall. Me: "A new Chinese Curse: May your traditional cuisine be unrecognizably marred and sold in America in small white boxes." Wife: "Like that doesn't already happen with every culture." Me: "Ethiopia?" Wife: "Sure." Me: "Where?" Wife: "Kansas City." Me: "Nuh-uh." Wife: "Yup. Open up the phone book to Ethiopian Restaurants and just see." Me: "...I don't believe you." beat. beat. beat. Wife: "They don't have anything." I married her for a reason, you know. | | |
| I just saw an article on Slashdot about the status of geeks. Because of the nature of slashdot, I shall now cut and paste.
"Recently, I've been seeing more and more news stories about how 'geek' has gone mainstream. There have been a slew of articles with titles like Geek Pride and Geek Chic, which discuss how movies like 'The 40-Year Old Virgin' and 'Napoleon Dynamite', as well as television shows like 'Beauty and the Geek' have made it cool to be a geek. Two pinup calendars of geeks have been released this year, taking advantage of the new mainstream interest in all things geeky. These include the Geek Gorgeous Calendar, which features women who work in the hi-tech industry, and the Girls of Geekdom Calendar, which includes geeks like 'Art Geek' and 'Movie Geek'. So if being a geek has really become cool, why has interest in CS as a major dropped among incoming freshmen and women are still a minority in computer and engineering fields? Is it cooler to pretend to be a geek (wear 'Save Pedro' shirts, etc.) than to really be one?"
Now, let me just say right now that I hate Napoleon Dynamite. It is not a movie about how Geeks are cool. It is a movie that helps reinforce the attitude that geeks are to be laughed at, not with.
Why, then, is it so popular? Well, that's admittedly hard to explain. I suppose a large part of it comes from the fact that human beings like to laugh at other, pathetic human beings. And let's be honest. The characters in ND are quite easily the most pathetic, unworthy human beings that I've ever "met". Even geeks are able to look at them, laugh, and say "Oh, wow, I've done stuff like that, but I've never done anything as bad/socially stupid as that!" These people are not Wayne and Garth: Wayne and Garth were at least having fun on their own. Same with Bill and Ted. But Napoleon, that idiot brother of his, Pedro, even the background characters, they live lives of such utter abject desolation that any true man feels nothing but shame for them. Laughing at them is like laughing at the autistic kid down the street. Sure, you could do it. But you ought to feel ashamed of yourself for doing it.
Returning to the subject of the article, then, it's very easy to explain the lack of CS majors and women in C/E fields. This age of so-called "Geek Chic" is not telling us that geeks are cool, it's telling us that geeks are inhuman, worth nothing more than to be laughed at. Wearing 'Save Pedro' shirts is not showing support for geeks, it's about reinforcing the "you can laugh at them!" stereotype. It's telling a joke, the punchline of which, the butt, if you will, of which, are geeks. And who wants to be the intentional butt of any joke? | | |
| I have free photos? Eh, whatever.
I know I'm not on here often. Sorry. I often find, however, that things I might have posted here long ago, I no longer have the fight in my to post. Some people say that's part of growing old; you learn to choose your battles. I think, rather, that it's part of giving up: You grow too tired to fight those battles.
Anyway, I still check this occassionally, but ya know. Not very often.
Although the pie plate story below is freaking cool!
Herb out. | | |
| Unbelievably, I almost forgot to post this. Thanks to The Bailey for reminding me about it with her exploded car.
Every bit of the following is true.
DJ and I were making pot pies for lunch. I saved some old banquet pot pie aluminum trays, and we put home-made crust and soup in them. We then put them in the oven. For reference, the oven vents through the rear left stovetop burner.
On top of the stove are, in the rear left, the remains of the pot pie soup, still simmering, on the front right, a teflon frying pan with nothing in it (burner off), and kinda on the rear right, a pyrex glass pie plate.
Thus the stage is set.
Introducing the actors. DJ and I are in the "living room", looking at passport info on her computer. For those who have never been to the apartment, the kitchen and living room are really one room, seperated by a change in flooring (linoleum to carpet).
The glass pie plate exploded.
That was about it. Here we are, minding our own business and preparing for lunch, when the plate, not having been dropped or anything, explodes into literally hundreds of shards, fragments, and chunks. Glass shrapnal. We look up and into the kitchen, at first not comprehending 1. Why there was such a loud boom just then, and 2. Why our floor is covered in glass.
Here's the kicker. Apparently some of the glass shrapnal was so hot, it melted onto our kitchen floor. There are now several burned glass areas to our linoleum. You can see it if you come by.
On the up side, we get new linoleum, and the maintenance guy said if we burn up our countertops, we get new ones of those, too!
On the down side, we're out a pyrex pie plate.
On the up side, a glass bomb went off it our kitchen, and nobody was hurt.
Flying super-heated glass shrapnel...ouch.
Herb out. | | |
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