capri0mni | Entries tagged with geek

1) A thought which came to me, recently, about why sports fan enthusiasms are publicly celebrated and applauded (stripping off all your shirt in February, and painting your torso in your team's colors is terrific and will get your mug on TV, and the local paper!) but geeky enthusiasms are publicly derided (dressing up in a Third Doctor costume, accurate to a specific episode, and being able to name the costume designer who came up with it and why means you must be psychologically broken, and you probably still live in your parents' basement) --

"Geek," at root, originally meant "village idiot." Thus, it's someone who does not understand, nor values, the commonly held biases of the overarching culture. This makes "Geeks" suspect, especially by those who have a vested interest in maintaining the social status quo.

But Sports act as a proxy for society -- loyalty to "your team" equates to loyalty to your city (or high school, writes she who is currently living in the part of USA where high school football gets twenty minutes coverage on the news, every Friday night). And so this does not raise suspicion.

Geeky enthusiasms (gaming, comics, "genre" television and lit., etc) tend to be things where individual devotion and study yield as much or more satisfaction than organized group activities like sports.

Now, what this means in regards to Geek becoming "chic"... I don't know...

2) My cat Trixie has recently decided that my lap is the center of the universe, and she must be attached to it three-quarters of our mutually waking hours. As much as I love her, and enjoy having her flump over one forearm or the other... it does tend to slow down my typing...

3) Speaking of which, June and Camp!NaNoWriMo is coming, sooner than I was expecting... But I did buy a box of mini-bunny shaped cookies in preparation (to have on hand to give myself rewards for reaching word goals).

4) Semi-randomly: here's an eleven minute video on YouTube that made me so happy this week, I almost cried: Trevor Nunn Coaches David Suchet on Shakespeare's Sonnet #138 (Thank the gods and muses for unscrupulous publishers who want to profit off a playwright's fame!)

5) Regarding the Steven Moffat & Mark Gatiss reboot of Sherlock Holmes: The problem with being familiar with the source material is that the titles alone can be spoilers... So -- does anyone know if there will be a third season?

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/655260.html

The Nerdiest bathrooms:

(What ASL I understand -- NB: or misunderstand): Guy is talking about how he likes to go traveling, and when he finds pictures of the nerdiest bathrooms, he collects pictures of them. He's got 8, and then he found a funny video the other day, and thought it would be cool to put everything into one video and share it -- in between the pictures and the video, he pauses to explain that it's about action video games that work through peeing into a urinal, and that's it's got English speaking) Anyway, knowing the taste of my circles, I figured this would inspire at least one Bwa-ha-ha:

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/651264.html

Such a variety of things I meant to post today. But this is what my mind kept returning to.

Still reading... still seeing links between Monster Theory and Disability ... Something.

Today's half-paragraph:

(Quote)

Similarly, Cohen has argued that the monster refuses “to participate in the classificatory “order of things”” and provides a significant challenge to binary systems of hierarchy, creating a need to re-evaluate concepts of order. He states that “the monster’s destructiveness is really a deconstructiveness: it threatens to reveal that difference originates in process, rather than in fact (and that “fact” is subject to constant reconstruction and change)” A keyword in this quotation, however, is ‘threatens’, since a monster such as the medieval dragon maiden may point towards artificial boundaries and ideas of order but she is never allowed to break them down. This limitation on her monstrous character is brought on by the context in which she features, as some medieval thinkers may have doubted the waythe world was ordered but they did not doubt that there was an order to the world. The truth was, as it were, out there and it was up to the human to try and understand it.

(Unquote)

{Meanwhile: the Chorus in my Head makes the following comment}

Of course the Human is the only one allowed to decide what Right and Proper Order is: It's whichever Order that puts that Human on Top.

(In the meantime, I'll be in the back, rooting for the monster. One of these days, she's bound to break through!

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/648205.html

(embedded image, for those viewing on LiveJournal):

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Text description for those using screen readers (or who have misplaced their glasses):

Text-based icon in various fonts (pale yellow and orange on dark blue field):

(quote) "I Know Where my Towel is. But I can't find anything else." (unquote)

This is so true, in fact, that I'm thinking of making it my default icon...

Yes? No?

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/647905.html

As I was snacking on an apple, the other day (Yesterday? The day before?), I realized that the tiny, dried, green leaves at the apple's blossom end were the dried remains of the calyx, which, when the apple was still a flower, had hugged and protected the ovules.

So: does that mean we could say that the apple's blossom end is its belly button?

Why yes, I am easily amused. Why are you looking at me funny?

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/641351.html

( Lyrics to a song (an *educational* song) that have been stuck in my head for 5 whole days... almost non-stop! )

Send help.
___
( Idea I had for a Disabled Character-Centric TV show that I think would be awesome )

And all the disabled characters on the show would be played by disabled actors, rather tha TABS in cripface -- and yes, even actors with CP, who have funky posture, and trouble speaking, maybe... Hey, a girl can dream.
___
( I realized, either last night or this morning, that the definition of the word 'geek' has *not* changed all that much, since the 1510s )

...And 'round and round it goes... This last cut brought to you by a word-geek.

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/593426.html

Questions that have been rolling around in my head since the end of the American Spring Television Season*:

Why do mass media cater to hipsters, and treat geeks as second-class citizens, especially in entertainment (my working definitions of those two terms, for those who missed 'em)? And is the Hipster class, in part, created by mass media?

My thought -- and I admit this may be nothing more than "pretty to think so" -- is that yes, mass media, and particularly television, help to craft the hipster class, and that's why they cater to them -- as a sort of domesticated consumer pet. But here's why I think that:

Both Geeks and Hipsters value the intellect, and eschew the popular trends of the culture. However, hipsters have an active scorn for popular culture as "beneath them" (Judging by the hipster-written definitions of "hipster" at UrbanDictionary.com, anyway). And geeks don't care much for popular culture simply because they're so engrossed by their own favorite things to notice what's popular and what's not.

And that's why I think media, and in particular, television, promotes the hipster class: They need a class of young, stylish, people who see themselves as the avant-garde so they can sell their eyeballs to advertisers, to be "early adopters" for a continual stream of new things to buy. So intellectual curiousity is valued -- the media and the marketplace need at least some people who are not afraid of new ideas. Both Geeks and hipsters have that curiosity.

What sets hipsters apart from geeks (and why the television industry loves them) is that scorn. Because as soon as something goes from being avant garde to popular, you need to have people who declare it "Soo last year (month, week, yesterday)!" The problem with geeks is: they fall in love with something, and they tend to stay in love it. They might, indeed, be young men between the ages of 18 and 34, but their trend-setting habits align them more with the 50-year olds.

Think of the most common jokes (in television sitcoms and romcom movies, particularly) mocking the geek for geek stereotypes: a man in his 30s or 40s who still has his Star Wars action figures from when he was 12.

That's why I think of CBS's The Big Bang Theory as a hipster show masquerading as a 'geek pride' show. Yes, all the four male leads are framed as highly intellectual, geeky, scientists... But all the laugh lines basically boil down to: "oh, my god! How ridiculously geeky is that?!"

And the one male lead who is paired with the only female lead** (who happens to be blonde and thin, and speaks with a piping girl voice, and is framed by the narrative as "The object of desire"), is the one who rolls his eyes at the others.

...Either that, or I'm still judging the show for that one line in its theme song: "The autotrophs began to drool." I mean, if that's not geek-science-biology fail, I don't know what is!*** It's like someone just scanned the Internet for cool sounding science words, and put them together into a song, without caring if it makes any sense or not. And it's that aloof not-caring that flagged the show as 'hipster,' to me.

I was going to go on, and write further about geekery and disability. But this has taken up too much space-time already.

*Summer, in American television, is when the regular primetime shows go into hiatus and/or reruns, and stations bring out all their "reality" programs to fill the airwaves -- like Fear Factor, Big Brother, Wipe-Out, and the like, and I find myself scrambling to do anything but watch television. So, since I'm not watching ... not caught up wondering what will happen in the next episode ... I find myself reflecting on the season just past. So, specifically, this question popped into my head at the end of Chuck, which, I think, is quintescentially "Geek vs. Hipster"

**Oh, how TBBT fails at the Bechdel test, let me count the ways ... eh... never mind.

*** "Auto" means 'self' "Troph" means 'food.' So Autotrophs are .... plants. And I've never seen a drooling geranium. Have you?

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/593157.html

Okay. This is the first Monday since the last Chuck of this season. And after this, there are, according to most sources I've come across, thirteen episodes for next seaon. And then, no more, don't even bother asking, etc., forever and ever, no backsies.*

However, I've learned (thanks to my experience of the Barren Years of Doctor Who on the Internet) that having fandom support in your friendship-circle is almost as good as having an actively running show to watch. 'Cause then, you can have fanfic, and inside jokes, and speculative conversations, and all that good stuff. So I am preparing now, and trying to nudge those who might already be so inclined to look it up, and maybe embrace it and fall in love with it. It's quirky enough not to be everyone's "cup of tea," and I'm not so mad as to believe that the whole world must love it, or else. But, you know... there are a few people on my f'list / in my dwircle who I think would really get a kick out of it. And it's to those folks I'm writing this post.

( So: Why I think you'd love <i>Chuck</i> if you tried it -- a bulleted list: )

A word of caution: Chuck's narrative style is a bit like a super-cool, vivid dream. You know the kind, where you're swept up by it and thoroughly entertained while you're sleeping, and you think: "This would make a great movie!" And then, when you wake up, you realize the plot doesn't really hold together: "Wait -- how did we get from point A to point B (or was that 'G')?" So if you're looking for a Spy-action thriller like you'd get from John le Carre, you'll be sorely disappointed, and I suggest you look elsewhere. But, like a dream, it holds together emotionally, and remains truthful and logical on that level.

In terms of style -- it actually kind of reminds me of the old Adam West Batman from 1960s TV -- but prettier. If we had TV-Mystery-Action-Drama Scale of one to ten, with Batman being a one, and ...oh, I don't know -- CSI: being a ten, then Chuck would be a three.

And finally, a fan-vid I found (from DVDs of seasons one and two, I think). I think it's telling that about half the clips in this vid (and many other fan vids I came across) are actually from the DVDs' blooper cuts.... just to show how much fun the cast has together, making the show.

*One source said there will be fifteen new episodes, every other source has said thirteen, so.

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/589612.html

A week ago tonight, I posted the following in this space:

(quote) Do you think Geek and Hipster make sense as "opposites"? It's an idea that's fermenting in m'head... (unquote)

And

clamnebula replied shortly after, that he thought that a lot of hipsters were geeks, once upon a time, and maybe many of them still are.

The comment took me back -- so much so, that I didn't even reply to that point at the time (sorry, Neb). And it got me thinking that maybe "hipster" doesn't mean what I think it means.

So I looked it up in that infallible* resource of cultural definition: Urban Dictionary (the "hipster"). And I was rather surprised (to put it mildly) that the top-rated listing was so glowing and appreciative of the hipster class (So no, I guess it didn't mean what I thought it meant to the people defining it). That top review concluded:

(Quote) Anti-hipster sentiment often comes from people who simply can't keep up with social change and are envious of those who can. (unquote)

I wasn't really aware that "hipster culture" was a thing, really, until the last few years, when I started reading the word in the context of disability-rights blogs written by friends and friends of friends. Going solely by the use of "hipster" in these contexts, I came to define the word like this:

Someone (usually young and privileged) who professes allegiance to progressive culture and politics, but really, for whom the highest value is irony. People who tell racist jokes, for example, and then defend themselves by saying that they're really just making fun of the racists. And if you get offended, it's just because you're not intelligent (or "hip") enough to understand the irony and subtlety.

In other words, the central attributes of (what I have been thinking of as) "Hipsterism" is aloofness, and irony -- playing it cool -- holding the world at arm's length, and therefore, believing you really are superior to everyone who disagrees with you.

And then, recently, I happened to flip to the very end of that new sitcom "Happy Endings" on ABC (American broadcast). And the main cast were just arriving at a party they thought was going to be a celebration of the 1980's... except, when they got there, it turned out the party was being thrown by hipsters, and all they really wanted to do was make fun of '80s fashion and music, not celebrate it (not sure which episode it was -- can't remember if there was a mention of zombies at the end?).

Anyway -- a little over a week ago, I defined "Geek" like this:

...[G]leeful enthusiasm is what makes a geek, imnsho. And so, our "rattling on" about whatever has sparked our imagination comes across to our "fellow villagers" as inane babbling.

.

So it's on that axis that I think of "Hipster" and "Geek" as opposites: The former is ironic and aloof (according to me) and the latter is gleeful and enthusiastic.

I can see how they're both on the same end of the cultural spectrum in terms of embracing intellectualism, though. But it's the attitude that sets the two groups apart.

Well?

Am I way off the mark, here, definitions-wise? Have I been misreading context?
*in an satirical meaning of "infallible"

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/589335.html

Personally, I prefer Geek to Nerd. "Geek" traces back to at least 16th Century English, and originally (before it meant "Side show 'freak') meant "Village idiot."

In this modern world, of the Internet and global mass media, I think of "village idiot" as the person or persons who have little knowledge of the "Water Cooler Chat" subjects such as which X celebrity has fallen off the A-list, or what sports season it is, or whatever else is the publicly endorsed subject of enthusiasm. So when we find ourselves standing near the water cooler, or waiting for the elevator, we really have nothing to add to the conversation, and so we appear idiotic.

Meanwhile, the things we are interested in? We love them unabashedly, and we want to share what we love with others, and we have no interest in playing the cynic or hipster in order to gain acceptance or avoid teasing. That gleeful enthusiasm is what makes a geek, imnsho. And so, our "rattling on" about whatever has sparked our imagination comes across to our "fellow villagers" as inane babbling.

But the truth is: The world is cool. And it's full of so many more things to be enthusiastic about besides the latest pretty body. And life is too short, and too full of real angst and anger and energy-wasting problems to willfully waste any more energy to pretend to be aloof to the things that are actually closest to our heart.

Today

meloukhia posted in her journal about making pie. And she decorated it with pi. And that reminded me of a video I found on YouTube, posted on Pi Day (March 14) about how "Pi is Wrong" (philosophically speaking, as a mathematical tool, not incorrect), and the vid-maker illustrated her points by baking pies. I went back to watch it again. It was amusing, but what really made me happy was this vid:

I'm sorry I don't have a transcript, yet, but she talks so fast, and she doodles so fast, it's hard for me to get my ears and head around it. But I hope to come up with something passable in the not-too-distant future.

And in the meantime, even though math is not "my thing," I can't help but find her glee contagious (and she's given me ART!Ideas). And that's the way it is with all geeks, I think.

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/587065.html

A thought experiment, with the same premise as Jane Elliott's "eye-color racism experiment, to illustrate how society's ableism bias creates disability out of difference:

( I elaborate behind here )
A startling thinky-think sentence from the introduction to Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of Strangers:*

"The population of classical Athens when Socrates died, at the end of the fifth century BC, could have lived in a few large skyscrapers."
Remember my entry, here, about how "Monster" comes from a Latin word for offspring born with missing, or extra, limbs? I wonder if that's why so many 'monsters' have "Fish Tails." Where normal two hind legs would be, you have the two fused together, instead...
I love Geeks. I even enjoy, for the most part, hanging out with geeks who have a different flavor of geekiness than I do -- math geeks, or comic book geeks, for example. I think what makes someone geeky, and what makes geeky people so much fun, is that they refuse to develop a vaneer of cool cynicism: They remain enthusiastic about the things they love, and want to share it with others, regardless of whether or not others will think them silly for it. In this sense, I think, Geek is a better word than "nerd" because "geek" originally meant "village idiot" -- someone who knows a lot about their favorite subject, but doesn't really care for the fads and fashions valued by her fellow villagers.
This last weekend, I lost contact with the Internet, and so I resorted to reading an actually printed book to pass the time (the one I quote from above). And I realized one reason why I prefer to read from the computer screen. When I'm reading from a paper book, I have to hold it horizontally, so the light will shine on the pages, and that means, to read the pages, I have to bend my neck to look down at them, and that leads to strain, after a while... either that, or I have to hold the book up in front of my face, and that leads to arm strain. Whereas, when I'm reading on my monitor, my hands are resting on my desk, and my back and neck are straight, and I'm looking straight ahead. So my body's attention span doesn't give out before my mind's does. I think that's why an e-reader doesn't (yet) (fully) appeal to me: a computer that you have to handle like a book misses the point. ... or, at least, my point.

*(Well-written and engaging -- mostly, until the casual ableism slips out at random spots. Still, I'm enjoying the general flow of it, regardless of ocassional winces)

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/582375.html

Sigh. For some reason, Youtube's embed codes no longer work on LJ or DW. Stuff on YT has been redone, and now, maybe they only want to embed on facebook, or something evil and monopolizing like that.

[edit: Thanks to

the_future_modernes for the heads-up regarding ticky-boxes under the embed button on YouTube. Here's the Vid. I've included "related videos" because they all lead to Henson stuff. and you can't go wrong with Henson stuff.]

But anyway, as of now, html links still work, so here's a vid that I saw last night and it cheered me up. It's a music vid from documentary clips, which is unusual in itself.

"Experimental Film" with Jim Henson and The Muppet Show.

(I was thinking of

gordon_r_d, especially, as I watched it; it's a bounce-in-your-spinny-chair kind of vid)

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/567204.html

This started in a comment thread on my LJ, which is friends-locked to reduce my exposure to Russian Phishing 'bots and random facebook linkage (facebook's nonchalant attitude toward privacy scares me).

This has been several days brewing (ever since Craig Ferguson mentioned it in his Monologue whenever-it-was) and include a hike down a trail of Wikipedia links. I wandered through:

Ophiuchus (constellation)

Ophiuchus (Astrology)

As I understand it (and I don't really understand it), the theory of how astrology effects personality is based on a geo-centric view of the universe, where the soul of each infant comes from God (who is outside the Universe) as a blank slate, and then drops down through the various celestial spheres, picking up influences of stars and planets as they pass, depending on which constellations intercept them in the journey. So that the attributes of each sphere "Stick to" the soul, and what started out as a blank slate ends up as a complex, multi-faceted person at the moment they emerge from the womb and take their first breath.

In more recent (aka 20th Century New Agey) interpretations, this has been translated to "The gravitational and magnetic influences on our sun from distant stars, and the changes in the sun effect the physical and emotional lives of everything on Earth, because it's all connected."

It's kind of messy, but the image in my head is of a person dropping down through a cosmic ice cream parfait, and getting bits of fudge sauce, marshmallow, jam, nuts and various flavors of ice cream stuck to her as she goes... Or maybe I'm just craving a sundae.

If you follow this school of thought, then, well: the actual stars that were dripping influences onto your soul had already changed between the first conception of the zodiac by the ancient Babylonians and the time you were born. It's just the labels and the names never kept up. So nothing has really changed.

But:

It could be that the power of the zodiac to influence our lives comes from the Mytho-Religious-Poetic stories we tell about them (Capricorn is the memorial Amalthea, the goat that fed the infant Zues while he was being kept hidden from Chronos, Taurus represents Zeus when he seduced Europa, etc.), and the magical energy attracted by those stories "sticks" to the child by association.

If you follow that school of thought, then, well: the stories told for you and about you in the past as you were growing up are the ones that mattered. At the time of your birth, you were born under sign ____; that's still your sign. So nothing has really changed.

Unless you want it to. If you want to reexamine the stories behind the zodiac, and decide whether or not to look at the course of your life though a slightly different lens, then this moment of heightened cultural awareness might be a good time to try that. But it's up to you.

BTW, Ophiuchus, mythologically and narratively-speaking (if you want to go that way), is linked to Asclepius -- the Greek god of medicine. According to one myth about him, he was struck down by Zeus because he accepted gold for bringing someone back to life, but put into heaven to honor the good he'd done to benefit humanity, in spite of his sins. Apparently, our complex relationship with Medicine, and the whole tangle of ethics and money that goes along with that, is nothing new.

*Eyes Andrew Wakefield on one side of the Atlantic, and Congress and the Health-care bill on the other side.*

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/566427.html

On January 6, Craig Ferguson Interviewed Alex Kingston. And, as part of that episode, he finally got a chance to air his Ode to the Legacy that is Doctor Who legally (yay!).

On January 8, I woke up wanting to write up my thoughts about the episode, and thoughts I've had about that ode since it aired in November.

But then, I got hit with the news of the violence and death and cynicism in Tucson, and it sucked all the squee out of my heart.

Today, I woke up and decided that this would be the day I made this post. So, here's a close approximation of what I would have written a week ago, colored by the fact that I am (actually) a week, and (legally) a year, older:

( He had Gary Sinise on first (this is a ranty-McRant-rant tangeant). )

Now, onto that "Summary of Doctor Who set to the Orbital Theme Remix" (We can't really call it "The lost cold open" anymore, can we?):

I disagree with the lyric: "He is a force for good
in an otherwise uncertain universe."

The Doctor is not a "force." He's an individual, endowed (blessed, cursed, what-have-you) with an immense intellect, an equal capacity for imagination, and a profoundly strong moral compass (and a kindness that he has grown into). But he is also flawed, and often mistaken, and that moral compass and intellect can sometimes get in the way, and his actions, as often as not, have unforseen consequences that unleash evil as well as good.

He's not a superhero, to my mind, but he is a hero -- in the Joseph Campbell sense of the word. And if you're looking for a fictional character to be your role model, it would be hard to find a better one.
More lyrics: "One thing is consistent, though, / And this is why the show / Remains beloved by geeks and nerds: / It's all about the triumph of Intellect and Romance / Over Brute force and Cynicism."

Yes. THIS. ...And, sadly, I think this is one reason why Doctor Who has never really caught on in America, and remains a relatively small fandom even among the geeks (compared to Star Trek, mainly): there's always been a part of American culture that has embraced Brute Force and Cynicism, and looked askance at Intellect and Romance as "sissy."

If you want to get an idea of how far back into our culture this goes, just take a look at how Benjamin Franklin was treated, at the end of his life, and how low he is in the hierarchy of Heroic Founding Fathers, compared to the soldiers and generals.
I guessed right! re: which River Song clip they'd show before she came out, to introduce the character to first timers (It was the Fez killing scene on the rooftop). It was a brilliant choice: it showed all the main characters in a single shot (Amy, Rory, River and the Doctor), and it hinted at the wit of the dialog and the relationships between them. And it had a big shooty-gun bit, too (see above).

I think they made a really bad choice for a clip for Matt Smith's interview, btw (The one where he first encounters the vampire ladies in Venice). That's a great scene for those who already know the essence of the Doctor. But it's kind of hard to sell him as a main character-Hero, if your first impression of him is gleefully running away (I'd have loved it if they'd shown the clip of him riding a galloping horse, or [but it's too spoilery] when he introduces himself to the "Deathy aliens... of Death!" at the end of "Eleventh Hour").
I was bemused / amused when Alex Kingston compared American Who fans to the Zombie!Apocolypse. Do you think American fans really are more that much crazier than their British counterparts, or is it just that much harder to camouflage a television shoot in the open plains than it is in the hidey-holes and alleyways of Cardiff?
I've seen (via "Confidential" clips on YouTube) that this next season will reveal who River Song is. Do you think, if RTD were still in charge, he'd have the same answer as Stephen Moffat is dreaming (or has dreamt) up?

Okay, I think that just about covers all the rambling thoughts that have been rambling through my brain these last couple of weeks...

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/565035.html

Starting with the 40th season of Sesame Street, all new "Bert and Ernie" spots have been claymation adventures through dreamscapes, called "Bert and Ernie's Great Adventures." And it's after seeing a few of these spots, I realized: they have to be Bert's Dreams -- 'cause it's his bed that's flying.

Here's an example:

And in dreams, all the characters we meet are really different aspect of ourselves.

Seeing these new spots alongside the old, traditional foam-and-fleece ones made me realize: When Ernie's around, the likelihood that random, "impossible" (imaginary) things will start to happen skyrockets.

Let's take a journey back through the canon, shall we?

2003:

1986:

1969:

See what I mean?

Okay, okay... I admit it. This was just an excuse to spam you all with classic Henson/Oz humor. Can you forgive me?

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/562543.html

So -- remember my post, yesterday, squeeing about the discoveries of Exoplanets in the last decade, and how some of those scientists (notably Steve Vogt, et alia) now calculate the chance of a star having a life supporting planet to be in the range of one in a few tens, instead of one in a few millions?

Well, this morning, I woke up to hear this report coming at me through my radio:

Sci-Fi to fact: Planet Hunters find worlds like Earth (text transcript, with a link to the audio -- 4 min 43 sec).

Pay attention, Moffat, et alia: keep up with the ~~quarries~~ alien planets for stories. We wants them. Yes we do, Precious.

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/562161.html

This TimeLight Atomic Projection Clock with Color LCD from Oregon Scientific showed up in an email from Allegro Medical as a "daily living aid," presumably on the grounds that it's helpful for people who can't roll over in bed on their own, to check the time (even though it doesn't seem to have designed or marketed primarily as "assistive tech" by the manufacturer).

Meanwhile, Allegro Medical won't show the price of this item on their website until you place it in your cart. This is the reason they give:

(Begin quote)
Because our price on this item is lower than the manufacturer's suggested retail price, the manufacturer does not allow us to show you our price until you place the item in your shopping cart. Retailers like Allegro Medical have the legal right to sell products at prices we set. However, adding the item to your cart allows us to show you our lower price consistent with our promise of always offering you the lowest possible prices on the widest selection of medical supplies, medical equipment and life enhancing products.
(end quote)

Allegro's "Below Manufacturer's sugested retail" sale price? $97.99 (they claim the original list price is $145.99). The sale price offered on the manufacturer's own website? $59.95 (the actual original list price is $99.99).

It's this kind of thing that makes me suspicious of the argument that because the Disabled are such a small, isolated, "niche" market, we have to expect and meekly accept the high costs of everything we need.

The criminal thing (ethically, if not legally) is that this same group has, on average, a 66% unemployment rate (largely due to the bigotry of many employers), and increased daily living expenses for things like medicines and medical procedures, and they just don't have that much money to pay.

...

Okay, so maybe that was more than a smidge of anger.

Let me go back to the geek!squee: "ooooh! Atomic clock! With a changing color light display! And predicts the weather 12-24 hours in advance!"

My friends, we are living in the Future!

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/560217.html

I made this icon, the other day, inspired by a comment from

trouble, talking about writing her thesis. I used it, in the wee hours of the morning, in a response to the latest xkcd comic (Rss feed), and someone said they wanted it, so I gave permission to snag it.

I'm rather proud of that.

I found this meme via

linda_joyce

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

( These are the words that went with the picture (trigger warning: ableism and condescention), and my response: )

Speaking of geek memes -- the one I snagged from

snowgrouse the other day finished with the ticky-box set "I can think of things to include on this test," or something similarly worded. And the meme writer included five ticky boxes for ticking. I clicked all five, mostly out of pique at its horribly math-and-tech centrism, and short-shifting all the Humanities geeks out here.

Then, I have myself the challenge of actually coming up with five new questions to add to a geek test, all indicators of Humanities-centric geekery.

( Here's what I came up with: )

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/560068.html

It was snowing this morning. It's dropping a cold rain down, now. And I can't decide if the dripping I'm hearing is falling inside the house, or outside (no matter where I go in the house, the sound seems to be coming from "over there," which is worrying. OTOH, I can't see any wet spots or puddles, inside, so... maybe I'm hearing rain dripping from one of the eaves, just outside a window).

Anyway, if I catalog my woes, I'll only be giving them more power.

So that means it's Doctor Who Tiem, Boys and Girls!

Ever since I posted this clip, from An Unearthly Child, to commemorate Doctor Who's 47th, it's been rattling around in my brain.

The only other time (I know of) where the Doctor explicitely mentions his past or his family, the way he did in the first ep., was when he consoled Victoria in Tomb of the Cybermen when she worries that she'll never get the image of her father being killed by the daleks out of her mind.

[insert a long passage of time, where I try to find a clip of that scene, on YouTube, fail, and get sucked into watching long stretches of the whole story via someone's playlist, realize I'm hungry, and my feet are cold, so I go eat some reheated pizza, and heat water for tea, and come back to finish this entry while the tea is steeping]

(My icon is cut from that scene, anyway).

Anyway, from that first clip, (viewed through the instant hindsight of watching it after seeing later stories first, which is, I admit, probably unfair. Except that All's Fair in Love, War and Fanon) I got the impression that at that point in time, (From the Doctor's P.O.V.), he and Susan were newly on the run, and that he still feared that those who were the cause of their exile were still hot on their trail. Of course, what may be a short time to a grandfather could very well be a lifetime to the granddaughter, and she's tired of running and hiding with only him for companionship, so she pressures him to let her go to school there when they land on Earth, etc.. And in that first serial, he's willing to kill a wounded man, just to prevent their getting captured -- in that story (and for several others to follow?) it's Ian who represents the powers of Intellect and Romance over Brute Force and Cynicism, rather than the Doctor. The Doctor is just a bundle of mistrust and anger in that story. That's what makes me think the Exile he speaks of is relatively recent in his personal timeline.

Replaying those two scenes in my memory, superimposed over one another the way you can with memory, and I can't help but wonder what happened that drove him into exile -- especially when he says he has to "really want to" in order to remember them. Did his family turn against him, or did they, like Victoria's father, die horribly, and that's why the Doctor lets their memory sleep?

[aha! I just remembered a different set of keywords to use, to search for the second Doctor's scene. here it is.]

I know the Doctor's family and their fate is a subject for a metric buttload of fan speculation and bickering. But pondering his family's fate has got me wondering more about the wider society the Doctor comes from. You can't be exiled without a wider society to be exiled from.

Also, I'm sticking with my private fanon that Susan is the reason Earth is his favorite planet. It was the planet she chose to make home, and for the Doctor, "Home is Wherever Susan Is (or was)".

*nods*

Also, after seeing some of the clips of Eleven, it's really easy for me to go from Two straight to Eleven, and skip all the in between steps (maybe it's the whole Hobo-Raggedy vibe). So if all of his companions are surrogates for his granddaughter (more or less), it puts a whole new spin on that scene from the season 5 dvd people have been posting -- the extra scene between "Beast Below" and "Vampires of Venice."

Oh, and while I was searching for that Tomb of the Cybermen clip, I found this Patrick Troughton Interview on NJN (NJN was the local pbs station that aired Doctor Who when I lived back in New York).

Enjoy!

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/559359.html

(Snagged from

snowgrouse; the following commentary is a slightly edited reply I wrote to her post)

(Begin commentary)
I scored simple Geek: 21.40221%. But I wasn't sure how to catagorize my hosting of the Pro-Fun Troll Hoedowns, on Usenet, three years running -- that's got to be worth extra credit. I don't think they're quite the same as RPGs, so I clicked and unclicked that button. There were questions relating to reading and writing fanfic, but I didn't see any questions for collaborative writing (fanfic, or original)

And the subscription to magazines. If I had easy daily access to geeky magazines (ie access to the library), I'd read them every day. But I can't deal with all the extra clutter they'd cause by owning them for myself. So that's a whole 'nother set of buttons I clicked and then unclicked for honesty.

And I didn't see any questions for helping people with their English homework -- lots of questions about helping people with accounting, math, and computer programming -- but nothing for helping people interpret a poem or Shakespeare passage for their homework. And I actually earned scholarship in college for that good deed in College, and was given a "medal" when I gaduated. Both the fact that I got the medal (and kept it) should be worth extra credit, too, right?

I probably would have scored higher, too, if I were still in school, and had the stuff I learned still fresh in my brain.
(End commentary)

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/558661.html

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Five... Five? Five! 5 five
Even though this video-maker uses ASL the video needs no (or little) translation
Another quote from "When a Knight meets a Dragon Maiden"
G.I.P. I made this icon 'cause TRUFAX!
A recent thought which amuses me:
Random post is random -- or: "A Braindump in Three Cut-tags."
More "Geek Pride" geekery...
This is where I try to nudge a few more folks into *Chuck* fandom.
"Hipster" vs. "Geek" as attitudinal opposites -- what I mean by that:
This is why Geekery makes me happy, and why I want to fill my life with Geeks
What's been rattlin' 'round this old head o'mine:
I dare you to watch this and not be grinning by the end of it. DARE YOU!
So -- the "New Zodiac" question. (kind of long and musey)
It's my birthday week all the way till Tuesday. I'll squee out on Doctor Who, If I want to! PLFLTH!
"This *is* kinda kicky!" (the on-screen evidence for Ernie being a figment of Bert's imagination)
My radio gave me more to squee about, this morning:
OOOh! *Geekasm* (and just a smidge of anger @marketing to the disabled)
GIP, and other Geeky stuff:
The weather matches my mood today, and so I'm geeking out on Doctor Who.
The new version of the Geek Meme

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Notes, Notings, and Common Refrains

The songs that are stuck in my head

Entries tagged with geek

Five... Five? Five! 5 five

Even though this video-maker uses ASL the video needs no (or little) translation

Another quote from "When a Knight meets a Dragon Maiden"

G.I.P. I made this icon 'cause TRUFAX!

A recent thought which amuses me:

Random post is random -- or: "A Braindump in Three Cut-tags."

More "Geek Pride" geekery...

This is where I try to nudge a few more folks into Chuck fandom.

"Hipster" vs. "Geek" as attitudinal opposites -- what I mean by that:

This is why Geekery makes me happy, and why I want to fill my life with Geeks

What's been rattlin' 'round this old head o'mine:

I dare you to watch this and not be grinning by the end of it. DARE YOU!

So -- the "New Zodiac" question. (kind of long and musey)

It's my birthday week all the way till Tuesday. I'll squee out on Doctor Who, If I want to! PLFLTH!

"This is kinda kicky!" (the on-screen evidence for Ernie being a figment of Bert's imagination)

My radio gave me more to squee about, this morning:

OOOh! Geekasm (and just a smidge of anger @marketing to the disabled)

GIP, and other Geeky stuff:

The weather matches my mood today, and so I'm geeking out on Doctor Who.

The new version of the Geek Meme