What is a nerd?

Mary Bucholtz, a linguist at UCSB, has concluded that nerdiness is largely a matter of racially tinged behavior. People who are considered nerds tend to act in ways that are, as she puts it, “hyperwhite.”

The paper to read is, "The Whiteness of Nerds: Superstandard English and Racial Markedness", from 2001, when she was at Texas A&M.

This might be an interesting take on the difference between nerds and geeks. But perhaps it's not as simple as that:

Nerds are not simply victims of the prevailing social codes about what’s appropriate and what’s cool; they actively shape their own identities and put those codes in question.

Plenty of Defcon attendees (or WoW addicts, for that matter) would accept the "nerd" label but are a far cry from "hyperwhite". And she has apparently never hung out on IRC.

By cultivating an identity perceived as white to the point of excess, nerds deny themselves the aura of normality that is usually one of the perks of being white.

I'm sure the black nerd bloggers must be rising up, somewhere, in response to this article.

(See also, day-after coverage from NPR of the same story, including a 10-minute discussion with the researcher and the article's author.)

Who’s a Nerd, Anyway?

This workshop looks like it would have been interesting; held today in Boston. For now, you'll have trouble getting the papers unless you're a subscriber, but you can browse the agenda ...

You'll find more security vulnerability research from Google.

You'll also find "Billing Attacks on SIP-Based VoIP Systems", by a team from George Mason, including Xuxian Jiang and Xinyuan Wang.

First USENIX Workshop on Offensive Technologies (WOOT '07)

According to a 2005 report of the International Centre for Prison Studies in London, the United States—with five percent of the world’s population—houses 25 percent of the world’s inmates.

Why Are So Many Americans in Prison?

The author of Spook Country echoes my recommendation:

Q. What books have you read lately that you can recommend?

"The Ghost Map" by Steven Johnson, about a London cholera epidemic.

Futuristic fantasy lives now for author William Gibson

Henry Petroski:

In bridge design, as in all structural engineering, success can breed hubris and catastrophe, while failure nurtures humility and caution. Unfortunately, it does seem to take a collapse to re-sensitize inspectors and operators to the real dangers that lurk among rusting steel and cracking concrete. Let us hope that the lessons learned in Minneapolis are not forgotten once more.

Learning from bridge failure

Musharraf also had a complaint of his own: His leverage over the tribal militants had slipped because of the US-led war in Iraq.

Foreign fear of the might of the US military, felt throughout the Muslim world immediately after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was dissipating as US troops became increasingly bogged down in Iraq.

Now, he said, tribal leaders who had once cooperated with Musharraf because of his alliance with the Americans saw little reason to be afraid.

"Is that all there is?"

Needless to say, there is something to be said for Hama Rules. Of course, one must always think about how things will look through the lens of history:

According to one who was present, Churchill suddenly blurted out: "Are we animals? Are we taking this too far?"

Tougher Stance on Pakistan Took Months

We recently solicited your questions about street gangs for Sudhir Venkatesh, the then-grad student we wrote about in Freakonomics who is now a professor of sociology at Columbia. His answers are, IMHO, fascinating. Your questions were really good, too; thanks. Venkatesh will publish a book, Gang Leader for a Day, in early 2008.

Q: Do you think the HBO series The Wire gives an accurate portrayal of gang life? It is clear from the show (if it is as real as it seems) that traditional policing strategies are very ineffective.

A: I am a huge fan of The Wire. I actually watched Season Two with a group of high ranking gang leaders/drug dealers in Chicago, who desperately wished that the series producers would make a separate show about Chicago! Everyone in the room agreed that the writers did well to show the nuances in the underground economy.

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Street Gangs (But Didn't Know Whom to Ask)

Ira Glass: "Not enough gets said about the importance of abandoning crap."

Thank you!

Also noteworthy advice:

"If you're not failing all the time, you're not creating a situation where you can get super-lucky."

This excellent video interview is available in several parts on YouTube, or as a single video on current.tv, alongside other interviews with Robert Redford, Dave Eggers, Sarah Vowell, Elvis Mitchell, Catherine Hardwicke, Xeni Jardin, and others.

Ira Glass on Storytelling

In the end, Madigan got into her vehicle and promptly drove into a dead end corner of the parking lot. Needless to say, the large crowd found it extremely amusing when she had to back up and drive through the crowd to get out of the parking lot.

There is something to be said of the obsessive snobbery of a collector, someone who gathers nicely shaped items in a series -- for a shelf, a lit cabinet, an overflowing brain.

Needless to say, he mercilessly pwned us.

It seems to us that there is something to be said for the idea that when America is at war, citizens, and especially political leaders, have a patriotic duty to put differences aside in the cause of victory.

Needless to say I woke the next morning with this big white bandage wrapped around my leg. Whoa! Where did my leg go? Is this really happening?

Some former geeks turn into phobes, just as puppies turn into old dogs, refusing to learn new tricks, even when the tricks would make their work or personal lives more productive or enjoyable. There's something to be said for the maxim, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." But this should be a decision-making process, not a knee-jerk resistance to change.

Milgrim is a code cracker and addict who is dependent on Brown, a violent man who might be with the CIA; their quarry, Tito, is Cuban-Chinese ("indeterminately ethnic") and a preternaturally limber young man whose family has roots in counterfeiting and intelligence: His actions are guided by the spirits of Santería. Needless to say, everyone's questing for the enigmatic shipping container, wherever it might be.

While we Nejedlos have always driven painfully slow, there's something to be said for never having spent time tossing rocks at soda bottles on the side of an American interstate waiting for a tow truck.

Needless to say, five minutes later ...

"There is something to be said about intimacy," the vice president of a sports marketing company, Premier Partnerships, Todd Walker, said. "People are willing to pay more for that experience."

This is, needless to say, ... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

I was a college student when I saw "L'Avventura" for the first of many times, and it changed my life.

Rattle is facing an ocean of troubles that cannot be held back by lashings of charm and spin control.

“Are rainbow parties pretty common?” inquired a rapt Oprah, to which Burford replied, “I think so. At least among the 50 girls that I talked to…this was pervasive.”

Down at the cement factory, operations are supervised by a demonstrative young Turkish woman who favors skin-tight jeans, cowboy boots and strategically tight white blouses. Soldiers try to find an excuse to drop by.

I’ve decided to start prude-proofing myself via a series of daily micro-immersions in sex and violence.

"One bear will teach another bear, and then that bear will do it," he said. "There are bears that peel and bears that don't peel. We target peeling bears."

"There's nobody in the United States government whose job it is to find Osama bin Laden!" one frustrated counterterrorism official shouted. "Nobody!"

Speculators who bought overpriced condos in hope of a quick killing are going to get hosed.

Be polite, be professional, have a plan to kill everyone you meet.

Americans have this funny habit of confusing freedom, which they cherish, with choice, which can give them headaches.

The more people know who you are and what you're good at, the 'luckier' you're likely to be.

"No, I’m not going to be in this industry anymore. The industry's dying." He waited a beat, then added, "I'm going to sell drugs to junior high schoolers."

What appears to be wasted time is really jell time.

"I get heartbroken flying into L.A.," he said. "It's just this feeling of unspecific loss. Can you imagine what the San Fernando Valley was when it was all wheat fields? Can you imagine what John Steinbeck saw?"

Rapid modernization is likely to produce more short-term radicalism, not less.
This is not a trivial point.

"The young women who choose to wear the niqab, Mr. Rehman told me, are "rebelling against what their parents tell them to do, they’re trying to differentiate themselves."

In the long run, the "swarming" that really counts is the wide-scale mobilization of the global public.

"You are just increasing the size of the haystack."

Grieving over the lost establishment is pointless, and kind of sad. But in acceding so easily to the imperatives of the Internet, we've allowed decay to pass for progress.