World keeps surprising me.

I now and then hear jokes about idiotic and stupid nerds. I thought they were just fairy tales, stories made up by the media and jocks. When I think of nerds and geeks, I think they are people that are unhealthily obsessed about one thing or another, and probaply know about them more than needed. But I apparently make the mistake that just because these people are often ridiculed, that would make them more emphatic and give them the ability to think things thru. But I'll return to this later.

I find myself thinking of people too positively all the time, as much as I admid in hating humankind (waiting for the atom bombs!), they still manage to surprise me negatively every now and then.

I dislike when I notice how people don't know something that should be common knowledge. I understand that not everyone is a computer geek, but if you aren't retired you should be able to know the distinction between monitor and PC. Link.

Even if you aren't mathematics major, you should be able to understand that the thing about probapility is that it can't be tweaked. If there is a change of something happening every 1 day time out of 1000, and it happening twice one day is 1/1 000 000 (because 1k*1k=1m).. you can't manually introduce one more Thing and say that the propability of second happening is one millionth... because the one you introduce has a value of one, not 0,001. If you know enough about maths to know this, you shouldn't be able to do this sort of mistake. Link.

OK, let's get back to the beginning. People don't seem to understand what screenwriters do. First I introduce a quote from a person who should know;

I am absolutely NOT exaggerating.[...] I understand, from many conversations with folks who have been in that end of the business [...]that in Hollywood, as the common perception -- not even an occasional perception, but a common perception -- among a lot of people is that the actors in tv and movies are indeed making up crap as they go along.

--Adam-Troy Castro, SF-Writer, on his post at PeterDavid.net 25.10.2006

And if you aren't convinced he knows what he talks about, here's a blogpost from Wil Wheaton, that talks about the same thing. Namely, that people can't understand that actors don't decide - particulary in large cast TV-series - what the plot is. Read the post. Would think that nerds - who aren't the peak of social ladder - would be more understanding, even if they don't get such a basic thing. Particulary if they are fans of TV-shows and practically worship Roddenberry on altar (if actors decide, what is Roddenberry for?).

And now to the thing that inspired me to write this. Basic economics. I saw this post on Newsarama, a comic book news site. Essentially he says that the coverprice of any given comicsbook goes as-it-is to the chests of the publicing company, even as his profile says he has written 110 posts at Newsarama (eg. he reads it regulary) and confesses in getting almost everything published by DC Comics. Even as retailers post on the forums, and are often part of the news items, he dosen't seem to understand they get part of the price of the book. He also dosen't seem to understand that printers, artists, writers, editors and distribution (as well as few other items) take their share of the cover price.

And these were just a few exambles. Though geeky, the knowledge behind them (mathematics, everyday object-naming, basic economics) are anything but.

Other exambles can easily be provided, but I have already used hour writing this message, and I think my point already came across well enough.

To summary it all up; these are things we all live with. And I understand that not everyone knows all the stuff in the world, but for Trekker not knowing who Roddenberry is and what he does, or comics "expert" not knowing how the industry works (even as he gives advice) is very strange indeed. I have few times in classroom given answers to questions (that, on hindsight might have been rhetorical, but at that point seemed practical and aimed to get the presentation go forward) and teacher has asked me how do I know this stuff. Examples include; how long does man do without drinking water (two weeks or so), how many people are there at India (over one billion) and in the world (six and half billion).
Also two weeks ago I made a question to a student group that had studied Nordic electricity market on how did the grid transfer power. as known, such long distances, cause high power loss. Not only could they not answer, they claimed I had made the whole thing up to make them fail. Which seems very unsporting. But thats just me.

What I watch currently

I found this great webpage, Next Episode which lets you mark up the shows you watch that come out of American television. American shows have week-to-month long breaks in the middle for no apparent reason. Some show might have only 13 episodes per season, but there might be two seasons in a year... or show might have 26 episodes, and then come out two episodes at a time, every two weeks (save when its on vacation etc). All in all, a great service.

Stuff I watch (includes wikilinks);
Avatar: The Last Airbender. This is action cartoon. It has the best qualities of eastern action (fastly moving cameras, cool character moves), good acting, big budget, magic, changed world, hint of romance, bad guys that have good qualities, good guys that have bad qualities etc. It has a definite storyline that has been written in stone. The plot moves forward, and the characters have objectives they might reach only after few episodes from setting them.
Its about a world where Tribe-Nations - each master of one of the elements - fight against each other (actually, Fire fights with Earth and Water). The person who was supposed to stop the fighting got stuck in the ice for 100 years, and now has to master all the four elements, while Fire Nation tries to stop him. The person in question is 12 years old and has a very bad attention span and no idea how the world has changed during his chilling time.

Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law is intentionally made to look like 60s Hanna Barbera-shows (you know, like Flinstones). Harvey Birdman, who used to be D-list superhero, has turned his life around and now works as a lawyer at Sebben & Sebben, taking cases of other animation characters, such as defending Fred Flinstone (accused of being a Mob Boss) or pushing the case of Apache Chef, who has spilled coffee on his lap and cant.. krhm.. grow big no more. Very crazy, very enjoyable.

House is a hospital series centered around Doctor House, who has high moral values and no ethical ones. In one episode he drugged the patient to make sure he wouldnt object to the tests he ran. He also regulary has people break (illegally) into patients houses to find out what they are hiding. Hugh Laurie (of Jeeves & Wooster and Black Adder fame) is House. Again, highly enjoyable but with lots of disgusting graphics.

Jericho is only few episodes out yet but looks very awesome indeed. After atom bombs start dropping, little Jericho in the middle of nowhere gets off without any hits nearby. The series follows the town as it tries to face the new reality. Kinda Falloutish.

Heroes. Another new series. Around the world, few people slowly find themselves having superpowers. Even though they dont know of each other - indeed, dont know the others even exist - they start to find their way to New York. And while they don't know of each other, they walk the same streets and talk to the same people. It's only matter of time before they meet.. and thats good, because in six weeks New York will be in ruins if nobody does nothing.