Showing posts with label Nerd Exposed. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nerd Exposed. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Wish List: paJAMAs
When they start making flannel JAMA PAJAMAS, please tell me so I can get me one'a'those. Brillz.
Friday, August 08, 2008
satire on intellectual pretension
NYT yesterday, the most amusing, hilarious, mockingly pseudo-intellectual satire that I've read in a while. There are some valid points...have we become a society that values the aggregator over the creator? Is the mode of information delivery more important or prestigious than the information itself?
Lord of the Memes
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: August 7, 2008
Dear Dr. Kierkegaard,
All my life I’ve been a successful pseudo-intellectual, sprinkling quotations from Kafka, Epictetus and Derrida into my conversations, impressing dates and making my friends feel mentally inferior. But over the last few years, it’s stopped working. People just look at me blankly. My artificially inflated self-esteem is on the wane. What happened?
Existential in Exeter
Dear Existential,
It pains me to see so many people being pseudo-intellectual in the wrong way. It desecrates the memory of the great poseurs of the past. And it is all the more frustrating because your error is so simple and yet so fundamental.
You have failed to keep pace with the current code of intellectual one-upsmanship. You have failed to appreciate that over the past few years, there has been a tectonic shift in the basis of good taste.
You must remember that there have been three epochs of intellectual affectation. The first, lasting from approximately 1400 to 1965, was the great age of snobbery. Cultural artifacts existed in a hierarchy, with opera and fine art at the top, and stripping at the bottom. The social climbing pseud merely had to familiarize himself with the forms at the top of the hierarchy and febrile acolytes would perch at his feet.
In 1960, for example, he merely had to follow the code of high modernism. He would master some impenetrably difficult work of art from T.S. Eliot or Ezra Pound and then brood contemplatively at parties about Lionel Trilling’s misinterpretation of it. A successful date might consist of going to a reading of “The Waste Land,” contemplating the hollowness of the human condition and then going home to drink Russian vodka and suck on the gas pipe.
This code died sometime in the late 1960s and was replaced by the code of the Higher Eclectica. The old hierarchy of the arts was dismissed as hopelessly reactionary. Instead, any cultural artifact produced by a member of a colonially oppressed out-group was deemed artistically and intellectually superior.
During this period, status rewards went to the ostentatious cultural omnivores — those who could publicly savor an infinite range of historically hegemonized cultural products. It was necessary to have a record collection that contained “a little bit of everything” (except heavy metal): bluegrass, rap, world music, salsa and Gregorian chant. It was useful to decorate one’s living room with African or Thai religious totems — any religion so long as it was one you could not conceivably believe in.
But on or about June 29, 2007, human character changed. That, of course, was the release date of the first iPhone.
On that date, media displaced culture. As commenters on The American Scene blog have pointed out, the means of transmission replaced the content of culture as the center of historical excitement and as the marker of social status.
Now the global thought-leader is defined less by what culture he enjoys than by the smartphone, social bookmarking site, social network and e-mail provider he uses to store and transmit it. (In this era, MySpace is the new leisure suit and an AOL e-mail address is a scarlet letter of techno-shame.)
Today, Kindle can change the world, but nobody expects much from a mere novel. The brain overshadows the mind. Design overshadows art.
This transition has produced some new status rules. In the first place, prestige has shifted from the producer of art to the aggregator and the appraiser. Inventors, artists and writers come and go, but buzz is forever. Maximum status goes to the Gladwellian heroes who occupy the convergence points of the Internet infosystem — Web sites like Pitchfork for music, Gizmodo for gadgets, Bookforum for ideas, etc.
These tastemakers surf the obscure niches of the culture market bringing back fashion-forward nuggets of coolness for their throngs of grateful disciples.
Second, in order to cement your status in the cultural elite, you want to be already sick of everything no one else has even heard of.
When you first come across some obscure cultural artifact — an unknown indie band, organic skate sneakers or wireless headphones from Finland — you will want to erupt with ecstatic enthusiasm. This will highlight the importance of your cultural discovery, the fineness of your discerning taste, and your early adopter insiderness for having found it before anyone else.
Then, a few weeks later, after the object is slightly better known, you will dismiss all the hype with a gesture of putrid disgust. This will demonstrate your lofty superiority to the sluggish masses. It will show how far ahead of the crowd you are and how distantly you have already ventured into the future.
If you can do this, becoming not only an early adopter, but an early discarder, you will realize greater status rewards than you ever imagined. Remember, cultural epochs come and go, but one-upsmanship is forever.
Lord of the Memes
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: August 7, 2008
Dear Dr. Kierkegaard,
All my life I’ve been a successful pseudo-intellectual, sprinkling quotations from Kafka, Epictetus and Derrida into my conversations, impressing dates and making my friends feel mentally inferior. But over the last few years, it’s stopped working. People just look at me blankly. My artificially inflated self-esteem is on the wane. What happened?
Existential in Exeter
Dear Existential,
It pains me to see so many people being pseudo-intellectual in the wrong way. It desecrates the memory of the great poseurs of the past. And it is all the more frustrating because your error is so simple and yet so fundamental.
You have failed to keep pace with the current code of intellectual one-upsmanship. You have failed to appreciate that over the past few years, there has been a tectonic shift in the basis of good taste.
You must remember that there have been three epochs of intellectual affectation. The first, lasting from approximately 1400 to 1965, was the great age of snobbery. Cultural artifacts existed in a hierarchy, with opera and fine art at the top, and stripping at the bottom. The social climbing pseud merely had to familiarize himself with the forms at the top of the hierarchy and febrile acolytes would perch at his feet.
In 1960, for example, he merely had to follow the code of high modernism. He would master some impenetrably difficult work of art from T.S. Eliot or Ezra Pound and then brood contemplatively at parties about Lionel Trilling’s misinterpretation of it. A successful date might consist of going to a reading of “The Waste Land,” contemplating the hollowness of the human condition and then going home to drink Russian vodka and suck on the gas pipe.
This code died sometime in the late 1960s and was replaced by the code of the Higher Eclectica. The old hierarchy of the arts was dismissed as hopelessly reactionary. Instead, any cultural artifact produced by a member of a colonially oppressed out-group was deemed artistically and intellectually superior.
During this period, status rewards went to the ostentatious cultural omnivores — those who could publicly savor an infinite range of historically hegemonized cultural products. It was necessary to have a record collection that contained “a little bit of everything” (except heavy metal): bluegrass, rap, world music, salsa and Gregorian chant. It was useful to decorate one’s living room with African or Thai religious totems — any religion so long as it was one you could not conceivably believe in.
But on or about June 29, 2007, human character changed. That, of course, was the release date of the first iPhone.
On that date, media displaced culture. As commenters on The American Scene blog have pointed out, the means of transmission replaced the content of culture as the center of historical excitement and as the marker of social status.
Now the global thought-leader is defined less by what culture he enjoys than by the smartphone, social bookmarking site, social network and e-mail provider he uses to store and transmit it. (In this era, MySpace is the new leisure suit and an AOL e-mail address is a scarlet letter of techno-shame.)
Today, Kindle can change the world, but nobody expects much from a mere novel. The brain overshadows the mind. Design overshadows art.
This transition has produced some new status rules. In the first place, prestige has shifted from the producer of art to the aggregator and the appraiser. Inventors, artists and writers come and go, but buzz is forever. Maximum status goes to the Gladwellian heroes who occupy the convergence points of the Internet infosystem — Web sites like Pitchfork for music, Gizmodo for gadgets, Bookforum for ideas, etc.
These tastemakers surf the obscure niches of the culture market bringing back fashion-forward nuggets of coolness for their throngs of grateful disciples.
Second, in order to cement your status in the cultural elite, you want to be already sick of everything no one else has even heard of.
When you first come across some obscure cultural artifact — an unknown indie band, organic skate sneakers or wireless headphones from Finland — you will want to erupt with ecstatic enthusiasm. This will highlight the importance of your cultural discovery, the fineness of your discerning taste, and your early adopter insiderness for having found it before anyone else.
Then, a few weeks later, after the object is slightly better known, you will dismiss all the hype with a gesture of putrid disgust. This will demonstrate your lofty superiority to the sluggish masses. It will show how far ahead of the crowd you are and how distantly you have already ventured into the future.
If you can do this, becoming not only an early adopter, but an early discarder, you will realize greater status rewards than you ever imagined. Remember, cultural epochs come and go, but one-upsmanship is forever.
Monday, February 04, 2008
Words Only Dead People Should Know
"Don't laugh at me, okay?" I said, "I made up a story to help us memorize the urea cycle."
"Okay," said Paul, sitting down.
"It's sort of a mythological story of origin, okay? In the beginning, there was only CO2 and NH4+, but 2 ATP were invested to create the first man, named Carl (carbamoyl phosphate). Carl mated with a bird goddess, named Ornithine, and together they had a daughter named Citrulline who was actually an orange fruit. Citrulline was all happy and innocent until one day she was bitten by an ASP (aspartate), which turned her bad and sucky (argininosuccinate). Since she changed names to reflect her new identity, like J.Lo, Argininosuccinate started smoking (release fumarate, "fumar" means to smoke in Spanish). She quit smoking, however, and reformed like Lindsay Lohan (haha), changing her name to plain Arginine. Then Arginine drank some magic water (H20) and peed (urea), transforming Arginine into her mother, Ornithine."
There was a short silence. Then Paul said, "So man screws a bird --"
"Bird GODDESS."
"And the bird lays an orange. Then a...what is an ASP?"
"It's a poisonous snake, can't you see the drawing?"
"It sounds more like ASS to me, so a DONKEY bites the orange and turns it evil."
"Fine," I said, "A DONKEY bites the orange. Geez, you don't know what an ASP is?"
"No," Paul said.
"It's the snake that bit Cleopatra," I said.
"That's a COBRA," Paul replied.
"NO, it was an ASP," I insisted.
Later that week, I referred to Wikipedia to resolve the COBRA/ASP issue, and found that ASP is an ARCHAIC term for several poisonous snakes, and that it has fallen out of common usage. In fact, many believe that the "asp" mentioned in ancient and Elizabethan literature as the snake that killed Cleopatra is the COBRA.
I had to apologize to Paul and then reevaluate my vocabulary -- am I using words that only dead people should know? Outdated and antiquated words are charming when you know that they are actually dead, but it's another thing to run around saying a person with TB has "consumption" and believing that you're using modern terminology.
Now I just feel like an idiot in a time capsule. I would blame Harvard for this, because certainly there are many people there who relish learning dead tongues and forgotten customs (some of them in the English Department). In fact, there are a fair number of people there who would probably be better equipped to live in 12th century society, but I never suspected myself to be one of them.
"Okay," said Paul, sitting down.
"It's sort of a mythological story of origin, okay? In the beginning, there was only CO2 and NH4+, but 2 ATP were invested to create the first man, named Carl (carbamoyl phosphate). Carl mated with a bird goddess, named Ornithine, and together they had a daughter named Citrulline who was actually an orange fruit. Citrulline was all happy and innocent until one day she was bitten by an ASP (aspartate), which turned her bad and sucky (argininosuccinate). Since she changed names to reflect her new identity, like J.Lo, Argininosuccinate started smoking (release fumarate, "fumar" means to smoke in Spanish). She quit smoking, however, and reformed like Lindsay Lohan (haha), changing her name to plain Arginine. Then Arginine drank some magic water (H20) and peed (urea), transforming Arginine into her mother, Ornithine."
There was a short silence. Then Paul said, "So man screws a bird --"
"Bird GODDESS."
"And the bird lays an orange. Then a...what is an ASP?"
"It's a poisonous snake, can't you see the drawing?"
"It sounds more like ASS to me, so a DONKEY bites the orange and turns it evil."
"Fine," I said, "A DONKEY bites the orange. Geez, you don't know what an ASP is?"
"No," Paul said.
"It's the snake that bit Cleopatra," I said.
"That's a COBRA," Paul replied.
"NO, it was an ASP," I insisted.
Later that week, I referred to Wikipedia to resolve the COBRA/ASP issue, and found that ASP is an ARCHAIC term for several poisonous snakes, and that it has fallen out of common usage. In fact, many believe that the "asp" mentioned in ancient and Elizabethan literature as the snake that killed Cleopatra is the COBRA.
I had to apologize to Paul and then reevaluate my vocabulary -- am I using words that only dead people should know? Outdated and antiquated words are charming when you know that they are actually dead, but it's another thing to run around saying a person with TB has "consumption" and believing that you're using modern terminology.
Now I just feel like an idiot in a time capsule. I would blame Harvard for this, because certainly there are many people there who relish learning dead tongues and forgotten customs (some of them in the English Department). In fact, there are a fair number of people there who would probably be better equipped to live in 12th century society, but I never suspected myself to be one of them.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Ode to PCR
Forwarded to the class by a schoolmate...for all you nerds and nerd-lovers...a song about PCR!
http://www.cnpg.com/video/redirect.aspx?redirectid=65
http://www.cnpg.com/video/redirect.aspx?redirectid=65
Sunday, December 30, 2007
PhD Comics
Wow...I'm glad someone finally modeled it. I would also multiply the numerator by "free time."
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Talk Nerdy to Me
Watch out! Jenny and I have clinical research on the brain...it's incurable.
We've begun using nerdy jokes related to biostatistics and clinical studies, and if you imagine two Star Trek fans giggling over obscure, inside jokes about the Starship Enterprise...then you've pretty much got us pegged.
Example #1: It all started with a cup of coffee...Jenny said, "I've started drinking double shot espresso instead of single shot, and I think that it makes me more buzzed."
"How do you know?" I said, "we should do a blinded study."
"Oh, yes, we can randomize the days when I get decaf, single, or double [assuming that you can keep the volume of coffee constant]," Jenny replied.
"Yeah, and I can administer the coffee [NB: the cashier should probably decide the coffee so that I can be blinded too]. We can also see if there's a dose response!"
Example #2: Editing an article for Synapse discussing how men and women have different points of view. Jenny said, "I don't quite know how to say this, but there's a poor concordance between men and women. I mean, the R squared is not very good."
"I totally get you," I said.
Example #3: Email correspondence from Jenny:
"cirque de soleil is so cool (p<.0000001)."
Is it just me, or are these comments hilarious?
We've begun using nerdy jokes related to biostatistics and clinical studies, and if you imagine two Star Trek fans giggling over obscure, inside jokes about the Starship Enterprise...then you've pretty much got us pegged.
Example #1: It all started with a cup of coffee...Jenny said, "I've started drinking double shot espresso instead of single shot, and I think that it makes me more buzzed."
"How do you know?" I said, "we should do a blinded study."
"Oh, yes, we can randomize the days when I get decaf, single, or double [assuming that you can keep the volume of coffee constant]," Jenny replied.
"Yeah, and I can administer the coffee [NB: the cashier should probably decide the coffee so that I can be blinded too]. We can also see if there's a dose response!"
Example #2: Editing an article for Synapse discussing how men and women have different points of view. Jenny said, "I don't quite know how to say this, but there's a poor concordance between men and women. I mean, the R squared is not very good."
"I totally get you," I said.
Example #3: Email correspondence from Jenny:
"cirque de soleil is so cool (p<.0000001)."
Is it just me, or are these comments hilarious?
Thursday, November 15, 2007
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