Are you a Geek, Nerd or Dork?

This has to be one of the clearest profiling descriptions that I've seen. Thanks to Militant Geek blog,

An alarming trend that we've noticed at the Militant Geek HQ is the sloppy usage of the terms geek, nerd, and dork. It was almost as if certain individuals assumed that they meant the same thing!

For the record, Geeks are those that have technical aptitude. Nerds are bright but socially awkward. And, Dorks are just inept excuses for protoplasm. To prevent such future travesties of verboten wonders, the retired circus-monkey crew at Militant Geek have prepared this handy comparison chart:

Geek vs. Nerd vs. Dork

Fictional Differences Expressed in Terms of Everyday Items

	GEEK	NERD	DORK
Chief Cell-Phone Concern	Does it have BlueTooth?	Does it play games?	Who would I call?
Mantra	Can we fix it? Yes we can!	The meek shall inherit the earth	Where’s the remote?
Dream Job(s)	Nasa/ILM/Google	Wizards of the Coast/Marvel Comics	‘American Idol’ Archivist
Uniform	Jeans and Ironic T	Penny loafers and Acne	Whatever Mom wants
Starter Apartment Furniture	Computer Desk	Kitchen Table for D&D	Starter Apartment?
Favorite Sport	Robot Wars	Captain Kirk Drinking Game	Handheld video poker
Playlists	Knight Rider/A-Team Mashups	Lord of the Rings/Star Wars Soundtracks	139.5 ‘Best Hits of Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond!!!’
Favorite Childhood Toy	Legos	Superhero doll action-figure	Own snot
Boner Worthy	API Documentation	Babylon 5 Marathon	Bra section in the JCPenny Catalogue

Time's Person of the Year is YOU!

According to a Time magazine article, the Person of the Year 2006 is YOU!

"But look at 2006 through a different lens and you'll see another story, one that isn't about conflict or great men. It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.

The tool that makes this possible is the World Wide Web. Not the Web that Tim Berners-Lee hacked together (15 years ago, according to Wikipedia) as a way for scientists to share research. It's not even the overhyped dotcom Web of the late 1990s. The new Web is a very different thing. It's a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new
version of some old software.

But it's really a revolution."

What is your BIG idea to shape the future?

As we review 2006, examine what we've learned and discuss where we want to do, I hear so many people talking about changing the future. We are always changing the future. Everything we do impacts the future. What we do today shapes the world tomorrow.

Walk around with this thought in your head for the rest of 2006:
What is your BIG idea to shape the future?

Really think about about this. What would this mean for you, your family, your friends and community, your country, the world?


What is your BIG idea to shape the future? Share it!

SocialMeter.com

SocialMeter.com is another ranking tool that measures the links connected to a site. There is a bookmarklet that you can drag to your toolbar and use to analyze any site that you come across.

It gives you a numerical score based on the number of links from Bloglines, Google, Del.icio.us, Technorati, Yahoo, Digg and Shadows.

Responsible Investment

During the Eco6 conference on SRI, I finally got face-to-face time with many people that had only been names to me. Since then, I have been working with a several people to develop another conference under the banner of thePlanet 2025 Network. Planet 2025 is organizing The Responsible Investment Forum to engage delegates in defining benchmarks for responsible investment.

When it comes to social responsibility and money, the real problems we are trying to address are complex. We have been engaged in political polemics instead of resolution-based dialogue about sustainability. In order to change the polemics, we need to work with the contradictions between the economics of competition and our social responsibility to sustainable development for human life.

Reading through the Stern Review final report on The Economics of Climate Change, understanding the workings of adaptation will be key to finding the devices that will set business and public administration on to the path of setting real targets.

What are the real impacts of setting attainable targets and adhering to the processes of attaining them?


Download the Principles for Responsible Investment Overview
The PRI overview contains background on the Principles, the 6 Principles -- with their possible actions for signatories -- and an extensive FAQ. How do we take these principles and use them to guide our behavior and make better choices? A sustainable future can also be prosperous.

The State of the Blogosphere from Technorati

Dave Sifry, the CEO of Technorati, posted the State of the Blogosphere, on the Technorati weblog today.


"In Summary:

* Technorati is now tracking more than 57 Million blogs.
* Spam-, splog- and sping-fighting efforts at Technorati are paying dividends in terms of the reduction of garbage in our indexes, even if it does seem to impact overall growth rates.
* Today, the blogosphere is doubling in size approximately every 230 days.
* About 100,000 new weblogs were created each day, again down slightly quarter-over-quarter but probably due in part to spam fighting efforts.
* About 4% of new splogs get past Technorati's filters, even if it is only for a few hours or days.
* There is a strong correlation between the aging and post frequency of blogs and their authority and Technorati ranking.
* The globalization of the blogosphere continues. Our data appears to show both English and Spanish languages are a more universal blog language than the other two most dominant language, Japanese and Chinese, which seem to be more regionally localized.
* Coincident with a rise in blog posts about escalating Middle East tensions throughout the summer and fall, Farsi has moved into the top 10 languages of the blogosphere, indicating that blogging continues to play a critical role in debates about the important issues of our times."

The Geek Test v.3.1

The geek test v.3.1 was rather scary. Someone sent it to me - (thanks for making that point!) - for fun.

As I scrolled through the list, I became more and more aware that there is a large gap between being techno-saavvy and being techno-challenged. To the techno-challenged, I guess we are "geeks". Does it have to sound so nerdy?

Take the geek test v.3.1, and let me know where you stand.

Media Education in the 21st Century - New Literacy

Read a white paper on media education by Henry Jenkinds today. I found it on Peter Morville's blog. In Jenkins paper - Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education in the 21st Century - makes clear that we have to rethink how we define literacy.

As a teacher at different graduate schools, I have noticed (and have been vocal about) the lack of skill sets needed to cope with and engage in a world driven by multi-streamed communication messages embedded in multi-media and shared on web-based platforms. The average person has been educated to deliver transactional value by performing simple tasks repeatedly. The Internet changed all that at a speed of change not yet met by education, business processes, or daily life. Nor is there even awareness at the decision-making level responsible to adapt everything - from education and training through to organizational behaviors and simple communication - to address that speed of change and build the new skills required to cope with it.

Jenkins makes several points about the skills required to become literate in the 21st century. These skills require the same kinds of finesse that being good at sports or dance or music...playful engagement and practice that builds the kind of experience that makes someone feel comfortable playing that way.

I really suggest that you read both Peter's blog and Jenkin's white paper. We need to become more aware of these challenges and the gaps they have already created and will continue to create.

92 Standing Stones in Portugal

See rest of photos from "Portugal" set on Flickr.

testing new blog