Category: Useless Facts

Fake Geek Girls vs. Real Geek Girls?

As we lead into SolidWorks World 2013, a land of geekdom if there ever was one, an interesting meme is making its rounds on the Internet.  There seems to be a bunch of hoopla about “fake geek girls”.  What’s a fake geek girl?  Apparently Urban Dictionary doesn’t have an entry for it yet (as of today, anyway).   Umm, I did find a definition at some site called Geek Feminism Weekly (whatever that’s supposed to mean…kinda sounds like random words thrown together that only vaguely represent what it really is, similar to California Pizza Kitchen.)  Anyway, their definition for fake geek girl is:

Fake geek girls – allegedly women who show up at geek events, possibly while hot, with not enough geek cred for you.

This all seems to have started with an article on Forbes (Really, Forbes?  Yes, Forbes.) called Dear Fake Geek Girls: Please Go Away.  In this article, the author talks about being a “geeky girl” growing up and how she now sees “pretentious females” now posing as geeks when they haven’t put the time in to justify the claim.

What’s with all the hate?  In fact, why are girls singled out as being fake geeks (especially by other woman) for being posers?  I think a commenter on a recent article by @Mikeynerd says it well (Fake Geek Girls),

The Fake Geek Girl thing bugs me. Because I do feel there is an underlying sexism at play.

If someone is a poser, then it doesn’t matter if they are a woman or man.  But, is it even bad to be a poser?  Isn’t a poser just someone whose trying to figure out what everyone else already knows?  Aren’t they really an outcast too?  As outcasts trying to fit it, doesn’t that make them more geeky (since being a social outcast is technically a major component of geekdom)?   The answers to this series of rhetorical questions are as follows: no, yes, yes, and yes.

I’m going to go out on a limb to reveal information about SolidWorks World 2013 ahead of time.  Don’t tell Dassault Systemes that I’m revealing this secret to you!  The secret: men will outnumber women at SolidWorks World 2013.  Not by a little, but by a lot!   I’m going to bet that most woman who attend this conference with a full pass are as geeky if not more so than most of the men who attend.  In fact, many of the men who attend this conference are prolly fake geek dudes by comparison.  But, that’s all OK!  We are all there to interact, learn, share, teach, and connect in a mutually supportive (and sometimes fun and exciting) environment to gain a higher level of geekdom (value).

Senseless Sunday: Rolling space wax

  • The inability to roll your tongue is a genetic trait that may involve more than one gene.1
  • American pronunciation of tt and dd in words like letter and bladder make the same tongue movement and similar sound as the rolled Spanish “r”.
  • A person in orbit around the earth gets taller while in orbit.
  • Sahara Desert is growing about 1/2 mile southward per year.
  • Before an official name was chosen in Mandarin Chinese, one of many transliterations of the name Coca Cola was “bite the wax tadpole.”   Another was “female horse fastened with wax”.  Current official transliterate trademark is made up of the characters of K’o K’ou K’o Lê which translate as “to all the mouth to be able to rejoice”.2

A little fun today: Which do you prefer to be called as a person of Earth?

Which do you prefer to be called as a person of Earth?

A Twitter posting by other human this morning inspired me to have a little fun today.  The question is simple:

Which do you prefer to be called as a person of Earth?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

 

Feel free to leave comments to explain your choice! 🙂

Senseless Sunday: skin deep lunacy

  • The next leap year where Feburaury does not have a full moon is 25721.
  • The current definition of the term “Blue Moon” dates back to March 1946, in which Sky and Telescope magizine mistakenly misinterpreted the definition of the term from 1937 Maine Farmers’ Almanac.  “Blue Moon” originally referred to the third Full Moon in a season which has four Full Moons2. 
  • Atheists outnumber all but nine organized religions in the World.
  • The skin of a polar bear is black. Though the fur appears white, it’s actually clear.
  • More often, you will use more gas making a left turn than making a right turn.

Senseless Sunday: Now that tittle is heavy!

  1. A giraffe heart weighs about 24 pounds.
  2. Plastic sheaths at each end of a shoe lace are called aglets.
  3. The world’s largest baseball bat is 120 feet long. It weighs 68,000 pounds.
  4. Pat Welsh was the voice of E.T. in the movie E.T. the Extra-terrestrial
  5. That dot over the lowercase j and i is called a tittle.

Senseless Sunday: the long and the short word

  • The word hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia means fear of long words.
  • Flint, Michigan is the largest city in the U.S.A. to have just one syllable in its name.
  • An urban legend defines a twit as a pregnant gold fish.   Gold fish do not get pregant.  They lay eggs that get fertilized afterwards.  A twit is also not a comment on Twitter.  That is a tweet.