Famous Nerds

The nerd was always an enigmatic organism. A being that lurked in the bedroom shadows of social acceptability, hiding his spotty face from the light with soft white fingers. To be a nerd was to condemn oneself to a life of unattractive stereotypes and ridicule. It meant hovering at the bottom of the abyss of cool and banishment from social nirvana. It heralded exile from the Olympus of golden teenage rock and jock gods. But the nerd ignored the hasty backpedaling of mainstream society - he was oblivious to the subconscious cultural fear that the highly intelligent had the ability to dominate. Now, that fear has come alive. We live in a world where geeks crawl through the streets in expensive black cars and suave dark suits. We are stranded in an alternate reality where polished loafers* reflect the unsuspecting faces of the masses. In our age of technology, the nerd is rubbing pale hands together over the fates of economy, ecology, technology and ultimately, the future.

Earlier I was blogging about sexy young nerds. Well, here are some young-ish, not very sexy, nerds, my subjective list of the top 5 nerds that control your life, now that your life is THE INTERNET.**

Larry Page & Sergey Brin
Profile: Co-founders of Google. Presidents of Products and Technology of Google.
Facts: Larry’s first computer was an Exidy Sorcerer. The Sorcerer boasted 2 MHz processor speed and 8K RAM. That's as fast as an old calculator. Sergey liked puzzles when he was a kid.
Ages: 36
Nerd Rating: *****
Product Addiction Rating: *****

Evan Williams
Profile: Founder of Twitter, Pyra Labs, Blogspot, Blogger.
Fact: Evan likes vegetables.
Age: 37
Nerd Rating: ****
Product Addiction Rating: ***


Tom Anderson
Profile: Co-founder of Myspace. Public relations invention. Not really Tom Anderson since News Corp took over his Myspace profile.
Fact: Tom was raided by the FBI for hacking into a bank in 1985.
Age: 30-something. Not as young as he'd like.
Nerd Rating: **
Product Addiction Rating: ****

Chad Hurley, Steve Chen & Jawed Karim
Profile: Co-founders of YouTube
Fact: The idea for YouTube was created at a dinner party.
Ages: 33, 31, 30
Nerd Rating: **
Product Addiction Rating: *****

Jimmy Wales
Profile: Co-founder of Wikipedia
Fact: Jimmy lives in a 'grandma' house.
Age: 43
Nerd Rating: ****
Product Addication Rating: *****

*Not all nerds wear loafers
**May not be entirely true

Sci-Fi Acting is Dreadful: Make Everything Animation

(Written for the rant column of io9: science fiction website)

One of the frustrating things about science fiction films and television shows is that they’re often accompanied by bad acting. You would think that someone who’s gone to enough trouble to creating aliens, new world, galaxies, (if they’re not dead and they’re wives haven’t taken to producing instead) can take the time to find decent actors to fill the important roles.

This is likely impossible, as the over-cooked performances of Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman (Star Wars), and the starry-eyed Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson (Harry Potter) can attest. There’s a simple solution: make everything into animation. It worked for the Clone Wars, it worked for Star Trek: The Animated Series, and it can work for all science fiction given a bad rep because of shoddy actors.

This isn’t saying that all sci-fi acting is crap; I could drool on about Ewan McGregor, Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner’s unacknowledged brilliance playing Data. It’s the big-budget movies that tend to draw in the bad with the good: we saw it in Star Wars I – III with a sulky representation of Anakin Skywalker by Christensen and a pouting Portman as the regal, sharp-shooting Padmé Amidala. George Lucas would have been much happier with Anakin and Padmé in the Clone Wars—there, at least you can expect stiff-lipped facial expressions and wooden love scenes.



While Daniel Radcliffe managed to pull of a wide-eyed Potter and Emma Watson a particularly haughty Hermione, it’s hard to think these two actors were the cream of UK’s young aspiring. With one movie to go, the Potter rep has already been concreted: yep, the movies weren’t as good as the books. An animated Potter series could turn this on-screen stagnancy around. Magic and adventure has always had a fantastic animated screen presence, think 1977 The Hobbit or the 1967 Disney take on King Arthur, The Sword in the Stone. Here’s to hoping the planned 2011 release of a filmed Hobbit, produced by Peter Jackson and directed by Pan’s Labyrinth Guillermo Del Toro, can live up to the animated 70s classic.

In spite of being declared anathema by trekkies worldwide, I’ll put it out there that the acting in Star Trek: The Original Series wasn’t particularly first-rate either. Will Shatner’s cowboy cock-ups and beetling brows had to be offset with the warmly chaotic Jackson DeForest Kelley and a smattering of great acting from Leonard Nemoy. Star Trek: TOS and the movies starring original cast could have been bypassed with an animated Star Trek right from the beginning; that would take care of those pesky low-budget sliding doors and shaky cameras. Star Trek: TAS offered the writers far greater creativity and opportunities than the original live-action series. You can imagine that getting an animated humpback whale on board the Enterprise could be more convincing than it appeared in The Voyage Home.



Animated series can be just as successful in creating a sci-fi multiverse as live films—they’re blessedly free from bad acting and give a badass panache to phasers and lightsabers. There are so many possibilities still waiting for the animate world: just imagine an animated Picard rolling his R’s and sipping Earl Grey, or a lithely caricature of Sarah Michelle Gellar plunging stakes into dusky vampires.

Nerds ARE Better in Bed

If you're offended by nerds, sex or biased opinions, switch off now.

Speaking of new and wonderful things, I'd like to talk about the nerd. The new nerd. The gen Y nerd born after 1981. The nerd that doesn't excrete grease, smell like garlic or have a nervous eye twitch.

The age-old myth that nerds don't get any is rubbish. I've noticed that all my best friends are in love with new-age nerds, have crushes on them or talk dreamily about how that guy can "Fix things! With his hands!". One of my friends is dating an audio technician, another an IT support guy, a sci-trance composer, a software developer. It leads me to the inevitable conclusion that new nerds must not only be better in bed, but better at keeping you satisfied for longer in other life departments.

There's a lot to be said for the new nerd, he can fix almost anything and is usually agreeable to do so because it sparks his recovery program. He never gets boring: he has ten thousand interests drawn from the deepest depths of the Internet. He's always up to date on news, has an opinion about everything technological, cracks all your favourite 1990s RPGs and presents you with an 80G hard drives because "everyone needs one". As my own new-age nerd boyfriend elaborates: "We know a lot more about sex than you think. We know how to use the Internet to search for anything and everything about sex. We got the theoretics down pat." Not commenting on my boyfriend's performance - we've been together three years - but what about the practical side to hanky panky?

Editor Emily from humour and lifestyle website Lemondrop has a four prong theory about nerds putting it into practice:

1. If you're ugly (and maybe nerds, both boys and girls, fall short on good looks, I dunno), you have to try harder in bed

2. Nerds have excessive hand-eye coordination from playing video games

3. Nerds have an understanding of complicated machinery, like, ahem, the "vaginal machinery"

4. Geeks love gadgets: they're more likely to employ sex toys in bed

If sex gadgets aren't your thing and you're unwilling to substitute muscles for cool machinery (hellooo Open Source router!), why not invest in one of the many nerds who actually go to the gym? I did a quick headcount of my geeky male friends and found that 70%, that's 7/10, work out at least three times a week.