Herding the inner nerd

Last week, I wrote about the world’s growing technological dependency and how, since none of us really know how things like calculators actually work, our future is being left in the hands of a bunch of nerds. My solution was simple: become a nerd.

Well, I’m happy to report that my apprenticeship in nerdery is going really well. Thanks in no small part to you, dear readers, who have been flooding my inbox with words of encouragement and suggestions on how to awaken my inner brainiac (and phooey on those of you who said nerddom is born not bred).

Since last writing, I have taken readers’ advice and dedicated hours of nerd training to squeeze more juice from my mind grapes. Some suggested I start with the look: the ill-fitting clothes, the high-waisted pants, perhaps a t-shirt with a hilarious slogan that is some kind of technology pun or binary joke. Still others suggested I dedicate my leisure time to watching Monty Python films and studying Deep Space Nine (arguably the finest of the series) trivia. So I tried it all and immersed myself in the lifestyle. So much so that my week looked like an action film montage of someone prepping for the big fight, except instead of punching sides of beef, I was crunching numbers using those weird letter functions on a calculator, and instead of wrapping my hands in boxing tape, I was taping up my glasses.

I also tried to mimic the nerd attitude, a sort of snide know-it-all confidence that other mortals don’t possess. I took a cue in nerd ’tude from a recent visit to that Mecca of mindbenders the Apple Store, where I had been impressed that the guy at the Genius Bar (which is a pretty ballsy name in itself) remembered every personal detail I had given him 30 minutes before, completely from memory. “That’s some Rain Man shit right there,” I said. To which he frowned unimpressed and scoffed, “Hardly.” Zing!

But alas, it felt all for naught. While I was doing some straight-up nerd stuff on the outside, I didn’t feel nerdy within. I had to go deeper. After all, without the inner smartness, I’d just be a geek, a degree that my anime figurines and collection of needlepoint fishermen have already cemented. I had to go to the great nerds of our times and learn from them. I had to go to the top. The ultimate know-it-alls. The ones on the forefront of understanding the universe: the astrophysicists. To me, these guys represent the quintessential nerd. For an entire weekend, I tried to penetrate the programs of the pantheon of planetary poindexters. But finding the right one was a tough task. Carl Sagan was a good start, his Cosmos series is unbelievably mind-blowing, but he seemed a bit too hippie for me, and his obsession with aliens seemed a bit creepy (I don’t suggest watching the series high: the way he says “Cosmos” is a one-way ticket to giggle-town). Stephen Hawking proved no better. He had some great ideas about black holes but I kind of got tired of his auto-tune T-Payne vocal vibes and eventually he lost me at baby universes.

I needed something else. I was worried, because if these people are supposed to inspire this younger generation to learn about science, we were in trouble. Yes, they are smart and have awesome dome-shattering ideas, but something about them seemed a bit outdated. Maybe it was Cosmos’s visuals that looked like a soft-focus ’70s sci-fi show from the CBC or just that their passion seemed too rooted in the realm of the dreamy and theoretical, but it was tough to connect with without being super high (which then made it awesome).

But the new generation of tech-savvy kids will need a next level of nerd guru. Someone super smart who could put things on anyone’s level.

Luckily, a suggestion from a friend yielded my man. Host of Nova scienceNOW and the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan: Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. This guy breaks shit down like Chuck Norris. Listening to a Q&A entitled “Cosmic Quandaries” he did at the Palladium Theatre (YouTube that shit) was a huge eye-opener. He was dropping serious science in a way that even a soft-headed nerd-poser like me could understand, blending references to pop culture, like sci-fi movies and iPhones, with a sense of humour and a realistic approach to the limits of science that was both exciting and inspiring.

Seriously, check him out. If we can take a cue from deGrasse Tyson, there might be hope for us yet, and our inner nerds will expand like the outer regions of the universe.

RIFF-RAFF@SYMPATICO.CA