\nJanet, our lovely resident ethicist has challenged all of the ScienceBloggers to [a geekout][geekout], to determine who, among us, is the geekiest. How could I, a *math* blogger and computer language geek, pass up such a challenge? (Incidentally, Janet, as the person who seems to do more community building and social stuff than anyone else at SB, I think you’ve pretty much disqualified yourself.)
\nLet’s start with recent stuff.
\n* I write a blog on theoretical math. Come on guys, how do you think you can compete with that? I spent my first two months at SB writing about *category theory*, a field of mathematics so detached from reality that it’s *inventors* proudly describe it as “abstract nonsense”.
\n* **I met my wife because she was sitting in the neighboring desk while we were studying for our prelims.**
\n* I know well over 150 different programming languages. A sampling, off the top og my head:
\n* C family: C, C++, Objective-C, D, C*, Java.
\n* Functional: SML, Objective CaML, Haskell, Miranda, Erlang, Clean, Scala.
\n* Scripting: Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby, ABC, Javascript, Rexx, Tcl, Awk, Groovy, Lua.
\n* Shells: csh, bash, DCL, JCL
\n* Lisp family: CommonLisp, Scheme, Dylan
\n* Pascal family: Pascal, Modula-2, Modula-3, Oberon, Ada
\n* Numeric: Fortran-77, Fortran-9x (9x is really quite different from 77), Sisal
\n* Misc object-oriented: Smalltalk, Eiffel, Sather, Simula, Beta, CLU, Self
\n* Distributed: Hermes, Act1, Actor, Occam
\n* Logic: Prolog, Mercury, Godel
\n* Misc archaic: Algol-60, Bliss, RPG
\n* Misc: Turing, Pike.
\n* Incredibly geeky: Forth, Fifth, Io, Postscript, Factor
\n* Unbelievably geeky: TECO
\n* I’ve implemented at least a dozen different programming languages.
\n* I read programming language specifications and math books *for fun*.
\n* Sitting next to me where I sit are DVDs for: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Serial Experiments: Lain, Babylon-5, Doctor Who.
\n* I own and play 10 flutes, and about 30 tinwhistles.
\n* I listen to music by people like John Corigliano.
\n* I’ve read “Lord of the Rings” **30** times.
\n* I’ve read “The Silmarillion” 5 times.
\n* I have two full bookshelves of RPGs, which I *still* play.
\n* I build highly detailed scale models of airplanes out of *paper*. (Like what you can see [here][pwb])
\n* That’s a real picture of me on my blog, balding ponytail and all.
\n* *I’m sitting here writing a list of reasons why I’m such a big geek*.
\nCome on, who can compete with *this* in terms of geekiness?!
\nUpdate: my results at the nerd test: 99th percentile.
\n[geekout]: http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/ethicsandscience\/2006\/09\/its_a_nerdoff.php
\n[pwb]: http:\/\/www.paperwarbirds.com\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Draw your pocket protectors, it’s a geekout!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chatter"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s4lzZS-geekout","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}