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Geek Stars From Atkinson to Zappa
Ian Lamont writes "You probably remember reading about Brian May getting a PhD in Astrophysics, but may not know about the many other celebrities from the music, TV, and film worlds who have studied science and technology in college and grad school, or are simply serious gearheads who like gadgets, games, and other geek pastimes. Computerworld has identified about 50 celebrities who fit the bill, including Dan Grimaldi (Patsy Parisi, The Sopranos) who has a Bachelor of Arts degree in math, a master's in operations research and a Ph.D. in data processing; Rowan Atkinson, who has a master's in electrical engineering from Queen's College, Oxford; and Todd Rundgren, who developed an early paint program called Utopia. Other folks on the list: Dr. Demento, Montel Williams, Natalie Portman, Curt Schilling, and Huey Lewis."
Have you seen the arrow?
This isn't so much "geek stars" as it is an exhaustive list of "Everyone in Hollywood that isn't mechanically inept."
Many actors majored in some field of science rather than art, and didn't flunk. Robin Williams plays video games and likes gadgets. Real big geek cred...
Quite a waste of time.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Bill Nye the Engineering Guy doesn't seem to ring as well... I don't know why, but a part of my childhood feels like it was deceived. :P
Is mentioning Natalie Portman in a Slashdot story a good idea?
I was considering karma whoring and making a Natalie Portman joke early on in a discussion, almost guaranteeing a +5 Funny...
But I decided to actually read the story. According to the article, and also Wikipedia, shes a Psyc student, published a couple papers. Seriously, thats enough to make the geek list? Am I in a dillusioned world that of the thousands of "stars" out there, there aren't many with more geek cred than this?
Oh and I will karma whore... here's the link to the full article print link:
http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&articleId=9043739
Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics :-)
What no mention of Asia Carrera? Mensa, gamer, pornstar
In his book "The Real Frank Zappa" released in 1989 Zappa explains his plan for the future of music distribution. He says that consumers arn't that interested in CDs or vinyl and explains how you could use the cable tv or telephone system to digitally transmit music (and cover art, etc) into peoples homes on a subscription basis. This was back in 1989, long before your interweb thing took off.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
Do the submitters actually RTFA? Dr. Demento's name was dropped in trying to put context around Prof. Tom Lehrer (not sure why you need to see Dr. D's name to understand who Lehrer is). BTW I think Dr. Demento has only a masters degree and was an A&R guy at one time - one of the least geeky jobs ever.
Rowan Atkinson also holds higher levels of British Driving license allowing him to drive HGVs aka articulated trucks on the highways. I'm told he performs many of the car stunts in the shows himself.
threadeds blog
Where's the link? You can't make a statement like that and not give us a link: it leaves us all frozen and petrified.
threadeds blog
His real last name isn't Dolby, it's Robertson.
When he spoke at the BDC, it was about his high-tech startup, which developed a new audio format.
He got sued by the Dolby corporation; according to Wikipedia, the settlement allows him to use their trademark only when in the context of "Thomas ".
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Uhm... Not to be a total bitch. But is there any actual reason why we would *not* want to totally forget about Keanu 'Rigor Mortis Is Acting, Really!' Reeves?
I mean, in my admittedly not so humble opinion, he's about the most overrated semi-actor I know. His only good 'performance' was as Johnny Mnemonic, and that pretty much only because he had to play himself.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
Here at Reed College (Dr. Demento's alma mater), finding Dr. Demento's senior thesis in the Thesis Tower is a common scavenger hunt item. While the topic (the operas Wozzeck and Pelleas et Melisande) isn't traditionally nerdy, no one can get through Reed without being a little bit geeky.
I can't let this go past without bringing up Erdos-Bacon numbers.
Natalie Portman has one of the better scores (Erdos 5 + Bacon 2 = 7). She did not (so far as I know) use her fame in her primary field (acting) to get preferential treatment in the other (science/maths.) There are scientists with a lower total, but I think they've all got an acting part on strength of their science fame (e.g. Stephen Hawking.)
According to Wikipedia, a few people have lower Erdos-Bacon numbers which appear to be 'clean', but I haven't heard of them before: Kiralee Hayashi (3+3), Danica McKellar (4+2), Barney Pell (3+2), John Platt (3+3), Karl Schaffer (3+2), Brian Wandell (3+2), Wendelin Werner (3+3).
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
isn't this just a list of famous people who also have an academic degree? That's hardly synonymous with "geek" for me..
How does that work?
"e^i*pi = -1. How does that make you feel?"
"Pythagoras' Theorem is a^2 + b^2 = c^2. What do you think he was trying to convey by that?"
There's Elvis Costello - former computer programmer who chucked it all for Rock 'N Roll...
(He kept the geek look but lost the career!)
Peter Gabriel is quite the computer nerd...
Joe Walsh of the Eagles - he's got a Ham Radio license...
And Jeff Foxworthy used to work for IBM, but I'm not sure how nerdy he was.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
Actually, it is only a Bachelors. The University of Oxford "upgrades" all B.A.s to M.A.'s a year after graduation.
In Engineering (or actually, Engineering Science as they call it here), there is the M.Eng for undergraduate masters and for the few postgraduate masters courses, they are normally called M.Sc or M.Phil.
So don't be fooled when you hear of Oxford or Cambridge graduates with Masters, it is a big con!
P.S. How fitting that the captcha is ensnared...
You mean they could be good role models like in: "I couldn't get a proper job despite my academic education(s) but hey, who can complain when you get millions for jumping up and down like a monkey?"
send + more == money?
This comes directly from her bio: http://www.asiacarrera.com/bio.html
Geeky Academic Stuff - NJ spelling champ, National Mathematics League, Spanish National Honor Society, placed in National Geography, Language Arts, and Mathematics Olympiads.
Geeky Other Stuff - Played classical piano at Carnegie Hall at 13 & 14 (Ernesto Lecuona's 'Malaguena' and Bach's 13th Invention), taught Colloquial English at Tsuruga College in Japan at 16
Education - Attended performing arts high school (emphasis on instrumental music and visual arts), National Merit Scholarship Winner (for 1440 on SAT's), and Garden State Scholar (for nerdly grades). Attended Rutgers University on full academic scholarship, with a double-major in Business and Japanese.
Brian May *doesn't* have a PhD. He has submitted his thesis, but hasn't been awarded it yet. Get your facts right.
My web domain.
He apparently has a BA in Mathematics.
I think we've all got to recognize that the psychology department is where people go if they're not geeky enough to go into engineering or compsci, but have too much self-respect to wake up one day with a Bachelor's of microeconomics on their wall.
Natalie Portman isn't a geek, she's just a girl who was smart enough not to spend four years with a bunch of Star Wars fans.
Although he doesn't have the best voice. He did write a slew of hits, Bobby Mcgee and Help me Make it through the night. Was one of the highway men.
1. Rhodes Scholar.
2. Military Helicopter Pilot.
3. Assigned as a professor at West Point but resigned his commission.
4. Golden Gloves boxer.
A true geek in the Heinlein sense. Smart and tough.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Dexter Holland, lead singer of the the band "The Offspring" has a Bachelor's degree in Biology and a Master's degree in Molecular Biology, both from the University of Southern California. He is also a PhD candidate in Molecular Biology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexter_Holland
"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
Having a PhD does not, of course, preclude nerdiness, but it doesn't guarantee it, either. My old boss Charlie (now retired in Florida) had a PhD and was, in fact, a true geek. OTOH, the fellow now in the next office from mine has a PhD but is dumb as a box of rocks, and has no geek qualifications whatever aside from being a fat dork who wears glasses. It doesn't take a high IQ to obtain a PhD, just stubbornness and a good work ethic. It does require a three digit IQ to be a nerd.
The #1 all time famous nerd was Niel Armstrong, who was an engineer who famously said "I am and always will be a pocket protector wearing nerd". He accomplished the ultimate in nerdiness, being the first man to step foot on another world. That was a nerd's wet dream come true!
-mcgrew
(Linked text is titled "Growing Up With Computers" from 2005, in it is mention of Niel's most famous act of nerdiness. Another of my useless but on-topic scribblings is a two year old blagh titled What is a nerd?)
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Frontal Lobe Activation during Object Permanence: Data from Near-Infrared Spectroscopy
Definitely geekier than your average psych paper.
And it appears that her other paper, on which she was first author while in high school, was actually in chemistry:
A Simple Method To Demonstrate the Enzymatic Production of Hydrogen from Sugar
Though it's actually in a chemistry education journal, and appears to maybe have something to do with doing demonstrations in chemistry classrooms.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
I had to make sure Danica McKellar made the list ... sure enough.
...
She was recently on NPR talking about what she was doing with her degree in mathmatics
Poor Kevin Arnold! How'd he let her slip away?
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -- "Step Right Up", Tom Waits
, probably because a shockingly large percentage of them don't seem to know which end to pick the thing up by. :)
Over ~30 years in electronics, I have met many engineers who are whizzes with SPICE simulations or Fourier transforms, but put them on a bench with a screwdriver and a soldering iron, and you have created a weapon of mass destruction targeted at the most expensive piece of silicon in the vicinity. Some of them know this, and leave the hands-on development/prototyping work to engineering techs, or others with the experience and training for it (most of which is NOT taught in a university EE program anymore).
The few engineers that I have met who can actually BUILD their ideas as well as they could design them got that part of their training outside of an EE program. Some started in TV repair shops, some were techs in the military, and others were ham radio operators, model rocketry geeks, or hardware hackers long before they got out of HS.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
Todd Rundgren only gets a single line:
...but his involvement with technology has been greater than any other person in that list.
Pretty damn geeky.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb