Mondays are for nerds

If you've been a long-time reader, or you've read the archives, you know that I find nerds irresistible. I read nerd romance novels, I observe nerds in their natural habitats, and I watch nerd TV.

Yes, nerd TV. It started with Beauty and the Geek (which I watched mostly for the eye candy, since I hated the premise). Then, I discovered Chuck and The Big Bang Theory. Of course, no "hot nerd" discussion is complete without the mention of Dr. Spencer Reid (from Criminal Minds), and the plethora of nerd eye candy from Heroes (keeping one specific, I-always-knew-he-was-just-misunderstood watchmaker in mind).

It's basically all nerd eye candy and nerd humor. Chuck is full of more common nerd pop culture references, where you need to be a hard-core geek to really enjoy the humor in Big Bang Theory. Like, speaking Klingon hard-core. (Qapla!)

So, Mondays are for nerds. The lineup is all there. Chuck, Big Bang Theory, and Heroes. I'm a sucker for a brilliant men in glasses. (Or Sheldon from Big Bang Theory. Apparently, brilliant and arrogant work, too. Does this sound oddly familiar to anyone?) Add socially awkward and that's a trifecta I can't resist.

Now, to get caught up on my nerditude...

So long, Blogdrive, hello Blogger!

That's right, readership!

After wrestling with the RSS feed issues, I've decided to migrate the blog over to Blogger. You can now find Better Than Yarn at:

http://betterthanyarn.blogspot.com

Now, there aren't e-mail notification options, but you can set up an RSS feed on your computer by doing the following:

1) Look at your address bar. It should look like this:

2) Click on the RSS button. It looks like this:

3) This should take you to a page with this as the header:

4) Click "Subscribe Now". It will ask you where you want the feed to appear. I have a "Blogs" folder.

Alternatively, you could also add me as a friend in Ravelry- I'm cuteknitter - and the RSS feed will pick up my blog posts.

Ravelry and RSS feeds

I don't speak much code, and the little code that I do know is stuff that I tripped over accident. So, after about 20 minutes of looking at other blogs' page source information, I managed to piece together an RSS feed for Better Than Yarn.

I think this is pretty cool, only because I did this on my own, and then asked Mike to take a look at it to see if it looked right. Ok, it does! But.

On Ravelry, apparently Blogdrive's RSS feed is too slow to be picked up. This is a major drag. At this point, I'm not really sure what my options are, other than moving my blog elsewhere- and the only real hesitation there is that I'm not certain that I'll be able to just migrate over all the old blog posts. I really don't want to cut-and-paste four hundred individual posts.

So, I turn to you, my readers. Any ideas? Solutions?

Geeking Out

The last month or so has taught me a lot about what kind of person I am. I joke that I'm not handy, or technically adept, with every passing day I'm doing something new that I never thought I could do.

Yesterday, we set up the TV. When we got the new TV, we talked about getting a new DVD player with an HD upconverter, but I wanted to make sure I could make it an all-regions DVD player. Mom's current favorite show is a BBC show, and she wanted to buy the first season as soon as we could get our hands on it- which we did, but it's a Region 2 DVD set.

I did a ton of research for that one, and it took me about a half hour to work out which hack would work. The second one that I hacked took about 30 seconds after setup.

I looked at Best Buy, wrote down the model number of the DVD player that I was looking at purchasing, and lo and behold- there were five websites that concurred that there (a) was a region-free hack and (b) all of them were identical. That was very encouraging for this fledgling geek.

I went to back my purse and go to BB, but Andrew suggested that I wait for Cynthia, since she's really into all this A/V stuff. I did. We loaded up the car and headed over to BB, I grabbed the DVD player, we admired Cynthia's next TV, and off we went.

While everyone was in the backyard, I rigged up power for the TV, hooked up the DVD player (with RCA cables, not the HDMI cable), and called Cynthia into the house. In 30 seconds, it was region-free, and we tested it.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that Robin Hood is silly, anachronistic, and not great television- but it's incredibly entertaining. Seeing the rich colors of Sherwood Forest on the screen was… an experience.

It turns out that I am a little savvier than I thought I was.

Rampant Cultural Imperialism- and Some Particularly Delectable Man-Candy

So, last night I watched Criminal Minds- my new favorite show (as of about 2 weeks ago, when I started watching/Tivoing it), and the rampant cultural imperialism that was embedded within the context of the episode was staggering.

"Machismo" (the name of the episode) takes place in Mexico, where there is a serial killer targeting elderly women. Now, besides the blatant mono-linguistic attitude that pervades the BAU [Behavioral Analysis Unit] team (excluding Elle's character)- where the only a grasp of basic high-school Spanish is found in one member of the team- Dr. Reid, who does a literal translation for the idiom "doghouse" [as in, "In the doghouse"] as "la casa del perro".

Since I only have a couple of years of high school Spanish and some minimal conversational skills (which I realized when I was having an actual conversations with people from Spain in the Tehran airport), I just about died laughing. First, because idioms rarely translate effectively (hence the need for multi-lingual environments, to better express oneself), second, because it was exactly the right thing for his character to say.

Now, Dr. Reid rocks my socks off in EVERY way. [The actor, Matthew Gray Gubler, is pretty awesome, too.] You could say that the character is an exact definition of what my nerd fetish is about. Now, having said that, there are some problems with how these characters are written. Dr. Reid has 3 Ph.D.s, according to the background given on the show. How can you have that much education and not understand that idioms don't translate? Or have more than a Sesame Street grasp of Spanish? Maybe it's because I've grown up in California. Who knows?

In any case, each character has a specialty; but nobody does linguistics? Language and word choice/semantics are how people express themselves and can make a major difference in how things are interpreted. This has been further impressed upon me in the three episodes that I've watched; one specific thing that an "unsub" ("Unknown Subject of An Investigation", defined by Wikipedia) says often breaks the case. Not like the writers will ever read this, but in my opinion, adding a linguistics expert would be a great choice. Especially if she's 5' 1 ½", brunette with wildly curly hair, and is, well, me! (Hope springs eternal, I'm not holding my breath, but I think there should be more short people on television, and I could/should be one!) Or at least let me help write dialog. (Dialog is really difficult to write, but I have extensive experience speaking. I talk ALL THE TIME! I am so very qualified for this job!)

I've wandered off of my original issue with the episode- Cultural Imperialism. The writers seemed to not take notice of the fact that machismo and modesty go hand-in-hand, culturally. In a religious community, where virginity and purity are the measure of a woman's "goodness", women are discouraged from speaking out against rape, and discussing sexuality of any kind- consensual or not, would be very awkward. In this episode, the rape victims all came forward and appeared to be at complete ease describing their attacks to the mostly male BAU.

Stop for a minute and think about this; in America, women who are raped have a difficult time reporting and describing their attacks to the police officers who are supposed to be helping them. American culture is much more accepting of promiscuity, and part of the cultural method of dealing with the psychological damage caused by rape is to talk about it with a trained professional. In the US, the victim is also not considered somewhat responsible for her attack, which isn't necessarily the case in heavily patriarchal cultures. Women who were raised not to talk about sex would not be comfortable talking about it with another woman, never mind a man whom they have just met. Additionally, none of the BAU men speak Spanish! How would they effectively be understanding what is going on??!! Suspension of disbelief, yaadaa yaadaa. This isn't "Charmed" where you can make stuff up as you go, people!

The episode also portrayed the Mexican police as stupid and ineffective. I haven't had any personal experience with the Mexican police, but I found it more than a little improbable that a precinct that couldn't afford a crime lab (more than a fingerprinting kit from the '80s) could afford to have a BAU. Yes, profiling is important, but it's not exact or as easy to determine as DNA or fingerprints. It's like icing on the cake; that's why it appears that America has one BAU to the majillion crime labs across the country (take for example, the three different incarnations of CSI). When the DNA is wrong, you know you have the wrong suspect. When a profile is wrong, they stop and think more. Which doesn't solve cases quickly, except in the rapid-fire profiling on Criminal Minds.

Don't get me wrong, I get all flustered when they geek out, but the lack of cultural research and consideration was a bit bothersome. At the beginning of the episode, the main police officer tells Gideon that his lack of cultural knowledge made his profiling ineffective anywhere but the U.S.A. Then what happens? Everything falls together perfectly, the crime is solved and the BAU ride off into the sunset.

I truly do enjoy the show, I just feel like they should stick to domestic psychos. In their favor, with the package bomber episode, they didn't immediately jump on the "we hate towel-heads" bandwagon. Which is awesome.

And Matthew Gray Gubler is a stone cold FOX!

There is nothing like a nerd...

I'll admit; I have a serious nerd fetish. My first crush was Doogie Howser, M.D., and as far as TV crushes have ALWAYS been the nerdy type.

I love painfully smart men. Men so smart that they are socially inept. I find it charming.

When I was in high school, I would scope out the local drum corp boys (the Santa Clara Vanguard, if you're in the mood for the uber-band geeky type). My mother is of the opinion that I over fished that pond, since I had 3 successive boyfriends in a row from SCV… Does that make me a groupie? I don't care. Nerds are where it is AT!

I find their enthusiasm/ obsessing over something refreshing; it's great that they're interested in something, and they don't care if everyone knows it. Many of them have low self-esteem, but a clear idea of their personal identity.

At some point, they resign themselves to being nerds and become more comfortable in their skin. These are the guys who decided to be in choir, band and plays in high school. No matter how much teasing and taunting, they did what they wanted to do and had a great time doing it. They were smart; choir and plays are where the chicks are, and if you've seen American Pie, you know how those band girls are. [MOM: I was a nice girl in band. Additionally, I did not march flute. Those flute girls are sissies and whores.]

I'll take both the Reluctant Nerd and the Self-Aware Nerd. I don't want to make them over, I want to revel in their charming nerd-ness. This is why I enjoyed the Vicki Lewis Thompson "Nerd" series. These nerds were my friends, co-workers, and the men I actively lust after. (Passively lust after? It's a thin line.)

Which leads to my opinion on Beauty & the Geek. I liked that there were some genuine nerds getting some airtime. I did not like the "makeover" side of it for them. They didn't need to look like they were in a boy band; they won over all the superficial bimbos they were teamed with by being themselves. All of the throwaway popular culture stuff that they were expected to "learn" and embrace won't be remembered in a year. To be honest, the only popular culture knowledge I have is from reading magazines while I'm waiting for my hairdresser.

Smart men are where it's at. Joss Whedon put it very succinctly when he had Willow's character state the truest truism ever, "I'm not ashamed, It's the computer age, nerds are in."