UrbanNerd.com

This is just such a great article on nerd culture and how it influences science and technology, while at the same time science and technology influences us nerds as we grow excited about what can be for the future. For the purposes of this article it seems to me that geek & nerd are fairly interchangeable.

If you have ever played the game Half-Life then you are aware of the storyline of the bespectacled  scientist with a goatee battling aliens and creatures not of this earth. You know the nerdiness & sheer fun of not using a gun in the game, but rather a crow bar as a weapon against the aliens.

If you are a nerd or science buff then you are aware of the Large Hadron Collider. You may have read more than one alarmist comment on how the LHC will cause the end of the world, open up a rift in time, and/or a great many other evil things.

Read on, laugh and admire how awesome this is:

These people are geeks. And they are the Internet’s unofficial hall monitors.

This is not an insult; it’s a badge of honor. Geeks can help give context to the scientific community. Thanks to the Internet, scientists find themselves and their work increasingly scrutinized, absorbed and distributed by legions of geeks worldwide.

Scientists have this incredible, laser-vision approach to specific disciplines, but it takes a geek to make the less-obvious connections. Just as geeks spotted an unassuming electrical engineer in the background of a publicity photo and made a connection to the “Half-Life” character, their cultural depth is different from that of the scientists. And the geeks comfortably straddle both worlds.

It was the geeks who grasped the importance of the LHC, who knew the questions to ask about the project, and who made winking connections to all manner of science fiction, from creation of out-of-control black holes to time travel jokes to science fiction references and other video game references.

From Slashdot, “The oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico could be stopped with an underground nuclear blast” according to Russian newspaper Komsomoloskaya Pravda.

“‘The underground explosion moves the rock, presses on it, and, in essence, squeezes the well’s channel.’ It’s so simple, in fact, that the Soviet Union used this method five times to deal with petrocalamities, and it only didn’t work once.”

GameStation has today revealed that it legally owns the souls of thousands of customers, thanks to a clause it secretly added to the online terms and conditions for the official GameStation website.

Read the story here.

Check out the video here

This video apparently shows the exact moment that Kevin Federline gets the SMS from Britney telling them that it’s over. According to the video, cameras were following him around the entire day in order to conduct an interview, part of which was him gushing about his wife and kids.

At about 1:46, you can see as K-Fed’s soul gets crushed as Brit-Brit drops the text-bomb on him via Sidekick—that is a Sidekick, right? Being divorced over the phone, wow. The Federlines truly are were America’s royalty.

WIRED: In the highly anticipated mockumentary Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, second-world superstar Borat Sagdiyev (aka Sacha Baron Cohen of Ali G. fame) travels the US in search of love, understanding, and Pamela Anderson’s welcoming bosom. But Borat’s shtick –exquisitely inept English, caterpillar ’stache, sleazy non sequiturs – reminds us of another heavily accented, hirsute symbol of the sex: late-’90s Internet celebrity Mahir Cagri, whose Web site, www.ikissyou.org, implored women of the world to visit his native Turkey, “stay my home,” and, yes, kiss him.

Turns out, we’re not the only ones who noticed the similarities: “All people know Sacha Baron Cohen imitate only me,” Cagri recently fumed via email. “He is stealing my character and giving bad message to USA people.” Cagri, who’s been struggling to start a career in show business ever since his boom-era glory days, says he intends to sue Baron Cohen. “He never contacted me or got my permission,” he writes. “If possible you can help me too for stop this or find good lawyer?” Sorry, we can’t do that, but we can give Cagri the third degree – and let Wired readers be the judge.

WIRED: In the mock-doc, Borat is a globe-trotting journalist. Are you also a man of letters?
CAGRI: I do journalism as a freelancer sometimes. I go travel sometimes and take pictures-video-write, meet people for documentary.

Borat travels the US, examining American culture. Any memories from your visit in 1999?
I can’t forget party about me in San Francisco. Many people kissed me, took my signature, and took picture. America mix culture and big country, but people don’t think about other people. They love their own life only and fun-sex-game-drink.

Borat plays the guitar and sings Kazakh folk tunes. Are you also musically inclined?
I can play many instruments, but best I play accordion-flute-mandolin-violin-drum-and-saz (Turkish instrument). I like Cher and Shakira. Their voice and songs nice I like it.

Borat’s signature is his mustache. Didn’t you rock it first?
I start first grow mustache, 10 or 15 year ago. Sometimes, I been no mustache. I’m male and mustache shows a male mature.

Borat has his movie. Any plans for the Mahir Cagri story?
I’m trying to find USA publisher, and I hope I can receive good offer from Hollywood and play my own life and share with my fans, Julia Roberts, Spielberg, David Bowie, or others, this movie.

Source: AP

OIL CITY, Pa. – Letter carriers occasionally have to deal with angry dogs or maybe even a spider’s nest in a mailbox, but a mean squirrel? Barb Dougherty, a 30-year Postal Service employee, said she was attacked and bitten Monday by a squirrel while delivering mail in Oil City, about 75 miles north of Pittsburgh.

“It was a freak thing. It was traumatic,” Dougherty told The Derrick in Oil City. “I saw it there on the porch, put the mail in the box and turned to walk away and it jumped on me.”

The animal ran up her leg and onto her back, she said.

“I eventually got a hold of the tail and pulled it off me,” Dougherty said. “No one was home at the house where I was delivering the mail, but the neighbor lady heard me screaming and came over.”

Read the rest here

KishKish, makers of SAM (Simple Answering Machine) for Skype, have now added a lie detector feature to the mix, claiming to detect stress in the voice of your Skype caller, alerting you to any bending of the truth.

It’s your $49.95 a year, but we’re thinking it’ll be another decade or two before voice stress analysis can absolutely detect if someone is lying to you. This thing could cause more problems than it solves. There’s good reason why this technology is not admissible in court. The video on the company’s website is quite entertaining, though, catching old Slick Willie in a lie about Monica Lewinsky.

Product Page

The comic Sasha Baron Cohen will be on Stern today but not as himself but as BORAT one of his characters.

Here are some links below:

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
The Offical Borat Page
The Ali G Show
Who is Ali G
Ali G Indahouse

Just wanted to say Happy Halloween everyone! Have a great day!

Source: MGM & ComingSoon

ComingSoon.net has your first peek at the new poster for National Lampoon’s Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj, which goes up in theaters this weekend.

“The Rise of Taj” is the sequel to the hit 2002 comedy, National Lampoon’s Van Wilder. Taj (Kal Penn), Van Wilder’s assistant in the first film, heads out on his own to England’s prestigious Camden University to further his studies. Along the way, he adopts a group of misfits and shows the uptight student body how to get Wilder!

The MGM release, hitting theaters on December 1, also stars Lauren Cohan, Daniel Percival, Glen Barry, Anthony Cozens, Tom Davey, Holly Davidson, William de Coverly, Shobu Kapoor, Ashley Rae, Steven Rathman, Amy Steel and Beth Steel.

You can find more images from the film here as well, and be sure to visit the official site.