Tin Foil

Telling you explicitly what this was all about would be far too easy. So what do you think it was?

How Not to Flirt #1

Failing to wear pants will likely result in an eyeful of mace or a police report.

Trepanation 2.0

Figure A: Trepanation. I almost laughed at the expressions on their faces, until I realized that these grimaces were likely due to strokes, hematomas, or hydrocephaly.

So I asked how you all perceive yourselves, your mental selves, and promised my own response later. This is that.

As far back as I am able to remember, I have had difficulty thinking in a linear fashion. My mind has always seemed to move in more of a swarm, thinking several thoughts and juggling lots and lots of things at the same time. This isn't to say that I cannot focus upon one consideration, but that absolute concentration is rather rare* and there are usually several things going on in the back on my mind at any given point. However, this doesn't usually prevent me from entering the flow state of creativity and/or knowledge synthesis.

I have not been able to fathom the shape of a container for my mind because that would give it a finite volume (and Klein bottles aren't big enough). But I do think of it on an x-y-z axis plan with core autonomic functions at the origin (e.g., my hypothalamus shouting "Feed me, you bastard!" would be at [0,0,0]) in a sort of "tip of the tongue" vs. "back of my mind" vs. "top of my head" dialectic gadget. In practice, this translates to the wheeling jabber of the swarm occupying the backchannels of my mind while I speak, write, and am generally intelligible at the front of my mind as a sort of command line function. Memories seem to be stored farther back, behind the swarming backchannels but these also frequently interact. I perceive short-term thoughts and memories as being stuck to the "ceiling" as it were where I can conveniently access them.

From what little I've read, it seems that I dwell more or less continuously within a cognitive map of my own devising and frequent editting. From what I understand, cognitive mapping can be consciously learned and taught.

I asked the question because I am curious as to how others experience their mental selves.

*Needs very powerful or engaging stimuli to happen.

Trepanation

I am curious about this, but to try to answer this one with a scalpel or welding torch would be deeply unethical and terribly illegal. I mean, unless you like trepanation...

How do you perceive yourself?

Not you yourself your physical self and fleshy presence. I mean, how do you perceive of your own consciousness(and/or/)sentience? Not so much in the sense of "I think, therefore I am", but more of where your thoughts are thought and your memories are stored, how the stream of your consciousness moves, if it moves, or the shape of the container thereof.

I've given a lot of thought to this, but I'm not going to reveal how I perceive myself right now lest I bias your responses.

It's a Holiday! Where's Toaster?

As the higher-ranking nerds among you may know, today is a Very Special Holiday in The Nerdness. For the rest of you more sensible people, it should be clarified that today, May 2nd, is Free Comic Book Day.

Free Comic Book Day began in 2002 as an effort by all the major North American comic book publishers to introduce comics to new markets, promote new titles that we otherwise wouldn't hear about*, and thank the die-hard comic book readers. It falls on the first Saturday of May after the release of a major film adaptation of a comic book (this year's being the Wolverine** X-Men movie) to ride with the heavy film marketing. It is currently being celebrated at Toaster's awesome local comic book shop (they're by the robot part supply store downtown), and Toaster is not there.

Why not?

Because upon every occasion that I go to the comic book store I wind up spending more money than I should. And even though today is Free Comic Book Day, that doesn't mean that every comic is free or reduced in price. I'd wind up walking in, being disappointed with the free comics (usually 8-page promos from Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, and IDW; not much of substance or maybe I've always gotten there too late), picking up my subscriptions (Hoxford and Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse [below]), and then wind up buying TPBs and HCs trying in vain to complete the Hellboy, Fell: Feral City, and Neil Gaiman's Sandman series as well as resisting the urge to begin collecting The Walking Dead, Y: The Last Man, or Frank Miller stuff.



This would not be conducive to paying other things, such as rent. And high-ranking nerds, lest ye deem me of lesser street cred because of my non-attendance, let it be noted that without paying rent Toaster would have no shelter and therefore all of the comics and video games he has collected would ruin out in the rain. Also, dearest Amazon, could you please possibly hurry up and ship me the copy of Zombies vs. Robots vs. Amazons that I bought back in February? Zombies vs. Robots is looking kind of lonely.

*Contrary to what one might expect, Battlepope is actually a well-established title.
**On this note: if any of you lived in the X-Men universe (any of them), which character would you want to be? You may not choose a Skrull.

Nerd Frame 2: The Continuance

7415 3n71r3 p057 w1ll b3 wr1773n 3n 13375p34|<.

4c7u4lly, 1 d0n'7 h4v3 7h3 p4t93nc3 70 d0 7h47, 7h3r34: 4p0l0G135

To those of you who could easily read the above 2 lines: congratulations, you're a nerd. That isn't to say that everyone else who couldn't read them isn't a nerd, just that they've different specialties.

One of the tensions between intellectuals and wider society is that society prescribes a single nerd frame to all nerds irrespective of our diversity. This allows society to get away with marginalizing us stereotypically as unhygienic, cerebral, and weak while we feel unfairly smashed into ill-fitting frames. This dysfunctional dynamic perpetuates nerd isolation and insulation.

In my previous post on this subject, the commentators suggested that nerds are socially isolated because we are unable to climb out of the deep wells of our minds.

But what if the problem is not internal with us, but rather external in that we have no where to climb to?

As nerds we are accused of being insular and having wolf-pack social dynamics (small groups of like-minded nerds with clear hierarchies [who's the PI? who's the most 1337?]). We're also accused of being aloof eggheads with no communication skills. Both of these are true to at least some extent.

Since society is depend upon us nerds for technology, science, medicine, and George Lucas' box office success, why is the onus upon us to make ourselves understandable? It it probably overly idealistic, but I don't think it's unreasonable for society to at least meet us halfway and learn some of our scientific dogma. We as scientists are charged with creating knowledge and disseminating it to the public (which we do to varying degrees of success), but there comes a point at which the knowledge we create simply cannot be watered down any more*. But when we fail to communicate the relevance of what we do to a lazy society, we're just labeled as nerds in the derogatory sense and written off to our labs and equipment.

This is frustrating, and I am frustrated. I want so badly to be able to educate the public, to inspire critical thinking, to share the depth with which I view the world**, at least see questions deeper than "Uh, like, boogers!". But in the end I can't escape my own nerdness. I lack a socially normal frame through which to communicate. I don't have a way to relate to wider society. Save a few well-placed strong blows to my head, I can't un-educate myself and that education has tempered my thinking.

But when coming back to whose frame is best, nerds' or society's, it now boils down to education. If more people were more educated, society's mean frame would move closer to the nerd frame. Then we, as nerds doing science, would be able to keep the flow of information and dialogue going less one-sidedly. It'd be a net bonus.

However, this brings up another question that I'm going to pose to you: does education increase nerdness or is nerdness an inherent and immutable personality trait?

*This is where alternative medicine pseudoscientific quackery is conceived and born.
**Or at least as I like to think so.

Nerd Frame 1

Do we, as science nerds, alienate others as a matter of course? If so, is this a defensive mechanism or a simple inability to climb out of our minds and relate to non-nerds?

I'm not trying to claim that all science nerds are awkward introverts, just some of us. There seem to be some scientists who are very very good at interacting with normal people, but there are just as many, if not more, who wander around public places looking either very confused or somewhat huddled into themselves.

Let's be honest: human social communication is so deep and complex and, frankly, damned weird that some of us will choose to immerse ourselves in protein interaction kinetics instead of going to parties.

What do you think?

(There's a point here that I'll get to later.)

Nerd

Those who know me in person harbor no doubts as to me being a complete and total nerd. Although my nerdiness stops short of D&D, I do play things like Laser Chess and Zombies. However, once in a while, I do something that I later notice as being particularly nerdy or indicative of my nerdiness. I was composing a hip-hop/dance anthem on my computer and built it all up to a very intense drum and bass breakdown. The nerdiness struck when it occurred to me to insert an accordian-driven breakdown into the other breakdown and I thought it sounds awesome. I'm leaving it in there.

Theorem

N = Xn * Ds

N is equal to the local perception of normalcy
Xn is equal to the number of nerds within that given locality
Ds is the degree of social deprivation of said nerds.

Basically, this postulates that the greater number of nerds present in a given area, the more distorted the normal-ness of the reality within that area will be. This postulate assumes no dichotomy between nerds, geeks, and dorks, but rather assumes all to be equal.

This postulate is empirical. It may be proved by gathering a massive number of nerds, all very socially deprived, into one area (must be well stocked with high-speed internet, soldering irons, and lots of chemicals) and seeing what happens.