the Joy of Geektitude
OK, so my e-grammar still sucks. You know, I’m seriously wondering when my grammar got so bad- it kind of crept up on me. I bought a book today on nanotechnology for $3.00. I also bought ‘Le Ton beau de Marot’ by Douglas R. Hofstadter, who wrote the deservedly infamous ‘Godel, Escher, and Bach’ for only $5.00.
The story behind the book on nanotech is that I want to eventually work in that field; it would be surpassing cool if I could get in on the early stages of the research and make significant contributions. So I’m trying to decide what major would be most appropriate for me (right now, I’m in electrical engineering)…
The story behind the Hofstadter book is a little (ok, a lot, more disturbing). I’ve noticed a recent trend in my actions: when I go to the library, I check out way more books than I can read in the six weeks maximum checkout time; plus too, I’m trying to read a wider range of materials. In some ways, this is a nice thing: finally I’ve gotten the books to learn Latin, which I said I was going to do years ago. But then, it’s also a bad thing; I think I’m being over influenced by pop culture. Namely: you’re not educated if you can’t spout off funky sounding trivia about liberal artsy type stuff in foreign or dead languages at the appropriate moment. And for that matter, you also have to be a battle hardened cynic to be cool.
That is a scary symptom for me: I don’t want to base my life on Dawson’s Creek after all. Plus too, I think I’ll have to prioritorize on the things I try to ingest, intellectually speaking. If I want to be a super science brain genius (which I do), I probably have to focus most of my learning on super science brain genius related stuff! Oh, but the urge to be well rounded is so hard to resist… especially when that road leads to a Rhodes scholarship.
God, I am such a geek.
And I kinda love it!
Possibly relevant posts:
- Sci-Fi as the last bastion of philosophical writing? (2/18/2008)
- the broccoli story (6/22/2005)
- How I discovered a roommate, and other sordid tales (12/4/2001)