To some extent, all who experience the joy of understanding a deep thing well, or who prize new and expansive thoughts, participate in the unity of all things geeky. But each of us has our interests, our fields of expertise.
Now, so that Jonathon can poke dozens of holes in it, I propose a heuristic for ordering a set of geeks according to their geekiness.
- You are a geek if you desire to master some area of scientific or cultural knowledge, whether it be fluid dynamics, web programming, french poetry, or Harry Potter trivia (hey Aspen).
- Within a given discipline, X can be ranked higher than Y if X can perform feats of geekery that Y is unable to duplicate.
- X can also be ranked higher than Y if neither X nor Y can match the geektastic exploits of Z, but X is fascinated by Z's geeking and Y is indifferent to it.
- X can be ranked higher than Y if X is Donald Knuth.
- It is not clear whether to rank unparalleled geekiness in a single subject higher than solid geekiness across a variety of subjects. It seems like a value judgment that depends heavily on your conception of geekiness. Therefore, the result of summing the scores of a single person across various disciplines is undefined.
Having said that, allow me to introduce the geekiest blog I know: my buddy Jonathon's anotbnotornot. I bow before his programming language geek-fu.
