First off, you gotta know that I've been trying to reclaim the word nerd as something positive for years. One of my favorite bands in the 80s was The Roches. The refrain in their song Nurds has the line "Nurds, I'm so glad I am one!" And googling got me this charming link for a radio show about nerds.
Maria Andersen just posted this Calculus Rhapsody video on her blog, and I'm still giggling! (I've linked to YouTube. If that's blocked where you are, check out Maria's embed.)
So are there any fun, complimentary words for us nerds? (None found in the online thesaurus I just checked. In fact, nerd is connected to stupid person and fool there more often than anything else.) Our culture clearly has issues with the power of intelligence...
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Geek and nerd are complimentary when you're specific. If you're a math nerd or math geek--you love, live and breathe it--that's a good thing to be known as I think.
ReplyDeleteTwo blogs you'd love:
1. Wired's GeekDad blog
2. The Mental Floss blog
wizards.
ReplyDeleteOMG - this brings back memories. I was good friends with one of my chem professors in college. We used to make mixed tapes. I was a bit of a punk rock girl at the time so you can imagine what I would put on mine. My professor friend used to put The Roches on his tapes which I thought was hilarious. In time, I came to appreciate The Roches music (probably coincides with my migration to the nerdy side).
ReplyDeletetoby radloff.
ReplyDeleteamerican splendor (the movie;
toby had his first exposure in the comic)
had some
buttons made up when it opened
and one fell in my hand...
don't remember the exact wording
but it had the title on it of course
and something about nerd pride.
sure enough one of the other teachers
up in the walkin freezer there
wanted to know where to get one
(for his [grown] son... so he *said*...).
@vlorbik, wizard's a good one, except wouldn't I be a witch? (And that's quite a bit different.)
ReplyDelete@Mr.D, the Mental Floss one seems to be about trivia, definitely not my thing. GeekDad is better, but... too much TV stuff. (I don't own a TV, unless you count the one in the laundry room, waiting to be sold on Craigslist for 5 or 10 bucks.)