Interesting, but very long, essay here: Why Nerds Are Unpopular. Intriguing theories about zero-sum popularity contests, priorities, and the fact that pre-modern teenagers weren’t universally considered miserable, hormonal creatures, because they functioned as junior members of adult society, while modern teenagers create their own Lord of the Flies-esque societies in a vacuum at secondary schools…because the schools offer nothing more than a holding pattern before moving on to college. Life without real meaning creates its own meaning, as it were.

Not much else going on today, apart from work. More later.

Edit: I removed a couple of links, and added one, over there on the left. Added: the livejournal of Justin Achilli (Line Developer of White Wolf’s VAMPIRE, and a nifty-keen DJ as well).

GMS

The Dastardly Best Friend (hereafter DBF) rightfully groused today about a lack of updates….so:

(Saw this one on BoingBoing:)

Obscure federal agency seeks anti-terror gizmos

Article in today’s Wall Street Journal(subscription required) about a little-known federal agency known as the TSWG:

“Americans worried about terrorism on their home turf will soon be able to buy a $3 sensor the size of a credit card that will show whether they have been exposed to a dirty radioactive bomb. Behind the development of the tiny dosimeter, which features a baby blue or pink stripe that blushes deeper the greater the radiation exposure, is a tiny government agency that labored in obscurity — until now.

The 70 employees of the Technical Support Working Group are the nation’s talent scouts for antiterrorism gadgets. Their job is not to build the stuff but to fund it and ensure that gizmos find their way out of the laboratory, onto the market and into the hands of those who may need them. That, of course, became all the more pressing after Sept. 11. Since then, some 16,000 proposals have landed on the desks of the group’s staffers. Only 120 made the cut. But now the agency is preparing for a new onslaught of proposals. It expects this week to issue its first public call for antiterrorism gadgets on behalf of the new Department of Homeland Security, which has promised to kick $30 million into the group’s budget.”

Gotta love the new agency’s logo: Nothing says “gadget search” like a globe with a combat knife through it.

More strangeness (this time from Reuters):

Mexican scientists breed man-eating flies. Say….maybe they should contact the TSWG. Man-eating flies would make one hell of an anti-terrorist measure….

That’s it for now. Perhaps the DBF will be placated for now. But soon, I suspect, like some eldritch, nameless horror, writhing in blind madness at the center of reality, the DBF will demand further tribute…and I will be there, to stave off the destruction of all we hold dear by assuaging the DBF with new updates.

Wow. Where the hell did THAT come from?

GMS