Comments on: The Six Thousand

The Six Thousand

exlotuseater — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 21:13:10 -0800

The Six Thousand: 6000 [well, at least twenty or so right now] intriguing people you want to meet online before you die, edited by Cliff Pickover. My fave right now? Asya Schween.

By: HTuttle

HTuttle — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 21:26:49 -0800

Who the hell wants to met anyone they admire online?

By: epugachev

epugachev — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 21:41:46 -0800

Agoraphobes? The socially anxious?

By: carsonb

carsonb — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 21:42:08 -0800

I think I'll start with the Mencken bio, then the one on ayahuasca, then...and my 'to read' list goes through the roof. thanks a lot!

By: epugachev

epugachev — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 21:59:13 -0800

Plus, arranging face-to-face meetings with 6000 people would be a logistical nightmare. You'd have to do it online.

By: archae

archae — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 22:06:27 -0800

Is it just me or are eccentric-PhD-wielding-but-hot-women a little overrepresented on the list so far? Also there seems to be a slight bias towards DMT...

By: delmoi

delmoi — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 22:09:19 -0800

Hmm... 80% good looking academic women. By far the best type of academic women.

By: carsonb

carsonb — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 22:14:37 -0800

I love that Asya wished Gary a happy birthday. and I'm in love with her.

By: blacklite

blacklite — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 22:18:07 -0800

A lot of these people don't actually interest me that much. There are only so many "I'm smart, really, I have these awesome ideas and I love to talk about them and write about them and I'm right. Also, my social skills are kind of mostly-lacking and I have ridiculous hair" people you need to meet before it gets kind of old.

By: bunglin jones

bunglin jones — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 22:20:41 -0800

What about the people you want to meet after you die?

By: chasing

chasing — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 23:04:43 -0800

He doesn't want to meet me? I'm offended.

By: basicchannel

basicchannel — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 23:09:32 -0800

archae: I started to get that feeling as well, especially after his Pepsi Blue™-ism: I discuss this further in my own book Sex, Drugs, Einstein, and Elves.

By: basicchannel

basicchannel — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 23:11:28 -0800

Also, I wish that sinus-less, peroxide nincompoop, Jenny Gardener... err, "Xeni Jardin", would eat a lethal dose of DMT and leave my NPR alone :(.

By: bobo123

bobo123 — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 23:22:08 -0800

Is it just me or are eccentric-PhD-wielding-but-hot-women a little overrepresented on the list so far? Photoshop does wonders. Anyway, it's refreshing for a change to have a list of intellectuals where women are overrepresented.

By: gsteff

gsteff — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 23:25:18 -0800

Is it just me or are eccentric-PhD-wielding-but-hot-women a little overrepresented on the list so far? Was curious, just crunched the numbers. Of the 37 entries, 25 (67%) are female. Of the males, 5 (41%) are academics (either currently a professor or clearly is best known for publishing in academic journals) and of females, 9 (35%) are. Regardless, yeah, my to-read list just exploded as well.

By: thedailygrowl

thedailygrowl — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 00:10:08 -0800

Could have sworn I surfed into Clifford Pickovers version of AM I HOT or not.

By: dsword

dsword — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 00:23:34 -0800

Freeman Dyson is the only person I readily recognize from that list, but he is certainly worth meeting. I saw a talk he gave several years ago, and then I had the great privilege of having lunch with him and a bunch of other people. I remember we all seemed to be mesmerized by him. We could have just sat and listened to him tell stories for hours and hours. That all too brief encounter will definitely be in my heart forever. Every time I see his name printed I want to shake his hand and thank him. He began his talk basically by saying, "I'm just going to tell you five stories I've come across..." and after that, an auditorium full of students, from physics majors to humanities and cultural studies majors, sat silently--awestruck--as he told his five stories. It was beautiful.

By: kenaman

kenaman — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 00:35:29 -0800

Asya Schween - "I'm Asya Schween, age 24. Immersed in incarnadine-hued twilight of my mind. Alone. I read no poetry but mathematical manuscripts and the Holy Bible. I'm a good girl. I will perish" intriguing??!! She probably just suffers from low self-esteem. See her contort her face in a cry for attention here. Her blurb above reads like a bad personal ad.

By: 3.2.3

3.2.3 — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 01:06:00 -0800

Is it just me or are eccentric-PhD-wielding-but-hot-women a little overrepresented on the list so far? there's also the many entries or people with just one name trend. and those for whom the web page links to tribute pages "made by cliff pickover" in his inimitable and garish 1995 stylee. for eccentric-PhD-wielding-but-hot-women with no web skillz. pickover is the butt of merciless jokes within ibm. a shameless hack and self-promoter who would patent his new method for tying his shoelaces, for years he would corner anyone unfortunate enough not to know better and try to convince them that everything attributed to benoit mandelbrot was really his work. pickover is a "computer scientist" with a blog. on blogger. nuff said.

By: kmmontandon

kmmontandon — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 01:11:02 -0800

There don't seem to be very many people who lead interesting online lives. I mean, no Kibo? Seems more like a list of "intellectuals that interested this site's creator and who happen to have an online presence."

By: RokkitNite

RokkitNite — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 01:35:37 -0800

Ick. Now I have dork all over me.

By: Frasermoo

Frasermoo — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 02:25:51 -0800

Where is Wil Wheaton in his list?

By: sonofsamiam

sonofsamiam — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 03:36:45 -0800

I started to get that feeling as well, especially after his Pepsi Blue™-ism: Remember when Pickover joined here and self-linked years ago?

By: ParisParamus

ParisParamus — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 03:44:57 -0800

Some beautiful women in there...

By: substrate

substrate — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 04:16:05 -0800

Pickover is a shameless self-promoter. If he had an account he'd self link. Daily. I read a couple of his books in grad school and while they have a very breezy writing style they have no content, they sound like they should be interesting and challenging but really they're written for somebody with a grade school education. There's nothing wrong with the writing as such, but neither the writing nor Pickover live up to the hype.

By: substrate

substrate — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 04:16:35 -0800

Umm... and I did not notice sonofsamiam's comment before I posted!

By: 13twelve

13twelve — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 04:54:58 -0800

Why am I not on that site?

By: Otis

Otis — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 05:30:28 -0800

Frankly, I would prefer 1000 Bars.

By: tellurian

tellurian — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 05:31:01 -0800

Remember when Pickover joined here and self-linked years ago? posted by sonofsamiam Link please.

By: runkelfinker

runkelfinker — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 05:50:27 -0800

This whole thread has put me off my lunch... And I'm an ogrish regular

By: sonofsamiam

sonofsamiam — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 06:17:17 -0800

Link please. Sure. And remember Lashawn Barber? I get a little kick out of it when C-list celebrities trip over the local rules. (nothing against Pickover, really. I brought one of his books home from a recent thrift-store book-dig and it's got a lot of nice pictures and plenty of references for deeper reading. Sort of the contents of a geeky blog before blogs were around.)

By: Ethereal Bligh

Ethereal Bligh — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 06:59:32 -0800

Hmm. From what I've seen so far, if you've ever been around real scientists you'll know that the ones on this list are more likely known as The 3,000 Wankers Who Haven't Done Real Science In 10 Years, If Ever.

By: crunchland

crunchland — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 07:04:50 -0800

and EB knows a wanker when he sees one. He's practically a wanking expert.

By: Ethereal Bligh

Ethereal Bligh — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 07:12:15 -0800

Damn straight.

By: lalochezia

lalochezia — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 08:53:16 -0800

Does clifford pickover ever sleep? he's like a one-man timecube (with a *bit* more sense!). Some of these people have read way too much sci fi/cyberpunk and internalized it.

By: sonofsamiam

sonofsamiam — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 09:15:03 -0800

he's like a one-man timecube ...uh, how many people is Wisest Human Gene Ray?

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 11:11:31 -0800

Four, of course.

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 11:16:54 -0800

It must be said however, that Reality Carnival draws my attention to some rather neat stuff sometimes. I actually emailed Cliff to try and persuade him in creating a feed for it. He politely declined, citing a reason along the lines of not being able to stick the ad images for his books in the feed (although I believe something like that can be done, if he insists). Oddly enough, he also remarked that RC was manually updated every day in a text editor.

By: tellurian

tellurian — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 14:27:37 -0800

Thanks sonofsamiam. What a loss - great posts and comments.

By: obiwanwasabi

obiwanwasabi — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 18:48:49 -0800

Xeni Jardin (say: /SHEH-nee zhar-DAN/) Like fuck I will.

By: Miles Long

Miles Long — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 20:27:43 -0800

am i the only one getting tired of hearing about things i have to do before i die?

By: Smedleyman

Smedleyman — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 09:50:02 -0800

I'd like to meet myself online. This is very likely as I have a quantum computer. At least the other me does.