For generations both societies lived apart from humanity, united in their common experience as outcasts. But as so often happens when downcast but fanatical groups find themselves in the ascendancy, today their factionalism is
exposed and the rivalry has erupted into
open conflict.
[more inside]
posted by GhostintheMachine
on Feb 28, 2013 -
25 comments
"The Big Bang Theory is the worst kind of bully – the one that pretends to be your friend and then takes the piss out of you behind your back. It will take your viewership, it will take your money and it will laugh in your face as it systematically puts you down."
The Problem with The Big Bang Theory.
posted by mippy
on Jan 9, 2013 -
262 comments
Is Everyone on the Spectrum? "In the nineties, clinicians began reconceptualizing autism from a singular disorder to a cluster of related conditions on a spectrum of severity; as the criteria broadened to encompass less acutely impaired people—such as the more verbal group diagnosed with Asperger’s—prevalence rose dramatically. Before 1980, one in 2,000 children was thought to be autistic. By 2007, the Centers for Disease Control were reporting that one in 152 American children had an autism-spectrum disorder. Two years later, the CDC updated the ratio to one in 110. This past March, the CDC revised the number upward again, to one in 88 (one in 54, if you just count boys, who are five times as likely to have one as girls). A South Korean study from last year put the number even higher, at one in 38. And in New Jersey, according to the latest numbers, an improbable one in 29 boys is on the spectrum."
posted by bookman117
on Nov 8, 2012 -
66 comments
OMNI Magazine delighted, informed, and even confused geeks of many flavours, and is now available to be
downloaded from the Internet Archive.
[previously]
posted by batmonkey
on Nov 1, 2012 -
86 comments
Isaac Butler’s excellent blog
Parabasis (previously noted in MeFi conversations about
Mike Daisey and
Spidermusicals) usually centers on issues in the US nonprofit theater. Occasionally, he takes on a different topic in depth with a series of guests. This past week, he hosted the
Fandom Issue:
I am less interested personally in whether the Rise of the Fan is good or bad for our culture, and much more interested in what it means. This week, we assay the Fan from a number of different angles. Who are these fans? And what does it mean to be one? What happens to love when it becomes a communal activity? And what happens to it when the beloved cannot or will not respond?
[more inside]
posted by HeroZero
on May 22, 2012 -
13 comments
If you've ever worked with the command prompt on a Unix-based computer, you're likely familiar with
SSH (Secure SHell), which is a program and a protocol that allows you (yes, you!) to securely access a remote system. While SSH has certainly earned the "Secure" portion of its namesake over the years, it's functionality as a shell has ironically received very little attention, and has begun to show signs of age and obsolescence: SSH doesn't work very well on mobile connections, and its support for
Unicode is buggy and incomplete. A group of MIT researchers think they've found solutions to these problems, and have created
Mosh as a potential successor to SSH, which fixes many of the old protocol's annoyances and shortcomings, while retaining all of SSH's security features.
posted by schmod
on Apr 12, 2012 -
77 comments
"Because of our mutant powers of obsession, it’s my guess that a lot of nerds suffer from addiction. Nerds get caught up in minutiae, because there is a tremendous and fulfilling sense of control in understanding every single detail of a thing more than any other living creature. But we also tend to have a very active internal monologue (in some cases, dialog). These are some delightful ingredients—mixed with a bit of genetic predisposition—for overdoing things that make us feel good in the moment."
Chris Hardwick offers "self-help for nerds."
posted by jbickers
on Nov 28, 2011 -
23 comments
“
...the Platonic nerd is invariably male. The stereotype is flexible to incorporate women and girls on an individual basis, but few people conjure up the image of a woman when they think about nerds.” Feminist blog Pandagon
reviews two books about nerdiness and geekery, Jason Tocci
addresses the question of why female involvement in geek culture seems to call for a special explanation, and two
feminist geeks set out in search of an egalitarian future.
posted by velvet winter
on Jun 26, 2009 -
142 comments
Given all the attention the new Star Trek movie is generating, it's not surprising that the porn industry is
attempting to cash in (SFW). What is surprising is that the production team
clearly knows their Star Trek (SFW). Hustler's
"This Ain't Star Trek XXX" appears to be a send-up of the classic Trek episode "
Space Seed," (heh... space seed). In addition to the reasonable-for-porn casting of Kirk, Spock, and Bones (heh... bones), Hustler takes the effort to be faithful to even the
minor characters and costumes (SFW).
posted by Jon_Evil
on Apr 28, 2009 -
56 comments
LugRadio is a fortnightly British radio show that takes a relaxed, humorous look at Linux and open source.
posted by finite
on Mar 11, 2008 -
2 comments
