Nerdfighters Gazette

Many of you have probably heard of the SETI@HOME project where SETI records data, and sends it to several volunteers over the internet to have other computers analyze the data. While cool, I don’t see how it’ll do very much good for helping the world. Luckily there are many other projects and researchers using grid computing.

The World Community Grid is one. It has projects you can contribute to like a cure for AIDS, Cancer, Muscular Dystophy, maximizing crop yields, and several others. They send your computer parts of problems, your computer calculates the answers, and then it sends the answers back to them. It’s like a supercomputer, but distributed.  If 365 people are running it, then a year of computing can be done in a day.

All you have to do is:

• Go HERE (this link automatically puts you on the Nerdfighters team when you register)
• Sign up.
• Download the program.
• Pick the projects you want. (Make sure you choose to have other projects sent if the ones you picked aren’t available)
• Let it run.

Within the team, we can track how many hours we’ve contributed and there’s even a point system.  It’s really easy and I don’t see why everyone couldn’t do it. You can even edit the settings to control when it runs and how much of your processor it uses.

The top team on there has 16,000 members. I think we could easily blow them away.

All research conducted as part of the world community grid is in the public domain.

There was a bit of drama here at the Gazette last weekend and it got me thinking. Here’s the abridged version of the story:

I wrote my first movie review column last weekend about Avatar. It contained some vulgar language and in the end I compared the movie to sleeping with a surgically-enhanced prostitute. Happy with my first column, I posted it to the site and went to sleep. Upon awakening, I found that one of the site’s new administrators (who I will not name as calling out a hater is not the point of this article) had not only hidden it from public view and noted how vulgar it was, but he had also changed my user status on the site to that of a subscriber, effectively taking away my ability to do anything. Which is bad because I am also the site’s webmaster.

Now, luckily I was able to hack my way back into the site and restore my user status back to that of an administrator and after doing so I sent the guilty admin an email stating my displeasure and informing him that it is not his place to play censor and that he shouldn’t have taken it upon himself to decide who can and can’t write for a website that he is not in charge of. He then responded with the following:

“…if you feel that posting obscenities to an audience of mostly young people then go nuts. There is nothing faintly nerdfighterish about what you’re doing.“

Now I am certainly not as ingrained in the Nerdfighter community as most of you, but I’ve looked around the Ning and have watched some of the Vlogbrother’s videos, and nowhere is it stated that obscenities are a bad thing. As a matter of fact, John frequently uses adult language and even describes sexual intercourse, alcoholism and drug use in his books, which are marketed to the same crowd we are writing for.

He then goes on:

“I do not wish to be a part of something where the people with power are free to post obscenities that do not belong in the community…“

Yes, I do feel free to post obscenities and my thoughts on any topics that I choose because that is my right as an American. Now, I hope this outraged former admin (who is from the United Kingdom) never makes the journey over to the USA, because I’m sure he will be appalled to learn that I can stand in the middle of the street and loudly describe, in detail, every sexual experience and bowel movement that I’ve had. And there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

His account was deleted and I have since received a couple of trollish emails, as  has the site’s owner Bekah. He has even threatened that “Hank and John (Green) will be told about how outlandish your website is.” That’s akin to hearing your 8 year old brother swear and then running to a random stranger on the street to tell on them. While we at the Gazette certainly admire and look up to Hank and John Green, they hold no real authority here.

Which brings me to my question: Why is cursing bad? The word “shit” contains 4 letters and refers to solid human waste. The word “poop” also has 4 letters and is a synonym. So who decided that “shit” was a bad word but “poop” was okay? “Fucking” is considered the King of Obscenities, while “humping” is fine and dandy to use in everyday conversation. And the only reason the word “cunt” is derogatory is because medieval clergymen were scared of vaginas (WARNING: video NSFW). These words got a bad name for no good reason.

So what do you think? Are curse words really a bad thing? And do you think vulgarity should be banned in the Nerdfighter community? Let me know in the comments below.

Has anyone else noticed the new trend in movie making? Or, should I say, movie remaking? For starters, some movies just don’t set themselves up for another sequel, take “Pirates of the Caribbean 3″ for example: That ending seemed pretty final, yet, whoop-di-doo, “Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides” is being produced. They are remaking the Freddy Krouger movie, and “Shrek 4″ is going to be coming out in 3D as well– the first two Shrek movies were pretty funny, but the third? Uh-uh, honey.

This is only because the producers want to bleed as much money from this as humanly possible, and if that means drafting a script from a seemingly closed ending, then so be it! They will find a way. It doesn’t matter if the movie sucks, if it insults our intelligence; as long as they can make a buck or two off it, who cares? Now, some movies need to be remade, because while they were good and had potential (or if they were based off a book) the movies themselves were awful. Has anyone else seen the original Narnia movie? Loved the guy in the beaver suit. The remake for that was more than descent!

I’m going to be hypocritical on this issue because, yes, I will be going to the theaters and watching my beloved “Alice in Wonderland” be acted out by Johnny Depp (anyone here see SciFi’s Alice? For some reason, I really liked it. Oh wait, that’s right– Andrew Lee Potts was in it, duh) and pray that it doesn’t stink to high heaven. I will probably go and see Shrek, and Pirates of the Caribbean, even though I am already prepared to accept that they both will [most likely] turn out to be disappointing and unimaginative: because I’m curious, and…well everyone else is going.

In fact, the only movie that I was completely unable, and unwilling to go see was “Where the Wild Things Are”. I loved that book when I was little, and I don’t want to  have the images that I have had built up in my head for the past 10 years, dashed by some computer generated man with glued on fur and plastic claws. No thank you.

Am I the only one who is terrified to go see the final movies of the Harry Potter series? Most of the movies so far have been an insult to the books, which so many of us have built childhoods out of; if the last movie[s] are awful, I think I’ll burst.

I’m going to assume that 98% of you have not heard of robo.to.  It’s a site similar to DailyBooth or Twitter, depending on how you use it.

The way the site works is like this: You record a 4 second, muted video with your webcam.  If you have the option to use effects, then sure, go ahead.  You can update your status to Twitter like this, using video to emphasize things.  Or, you can just keep things on the site (and if you want, still tell your Twitter followers that you’ve updated).

It’s pretty fun, and not very well known.  So, if you want to check it out, then go ahead and do that.  I have an account here.

If you join, go ahead and link us to your profile in the comments!

I am sure that every single person on this planet has, at one time, put off their work, avoided calling an obnoxious relative until they absolutely had to, or otherwise loafed about until there was no time left to do the things they so desperately needed to do. Any of you who are still in school will agree on this: We all procrastinate, it is in our nature. We want fun now, and work later, and we often ignore the fact that if we finish our work quickly, we can have all the time in the world to mess around later– but that would also mean putting ourselves through a bout of boredom before we did what we wanted to do.

Now, honestly, there is a point to this rant! I am in a play called ‘Talking With’ playing the character Mary Titfer (The crazy one; I was a bit bemused when everyone who read the script said that it was the character I should try for, since they could “see me doing that”), the play is composed of several monologues strung together; all women. We had to have our pieces memorized by March 1st… Today is February 28th, and I still don’t have it memorized. “No, I’ll start working on it tomorrow, I have plenty of time!” I said. NO. WRONG. That plentiful supply of time that I was fond of has run out, and now I’m left furiously staring at the three pages of rambling that I’m supposed to have completely memorized by tomorrow, trying to force it to stick in my hazy brain.

And let me say, I have the memory of a dazed goldfish.

According to my good friend Webster, to procrastinate means ‘to defer action; delay’. Simple. But as a matter of fact, it is a defining trait of what it means to be human– and I suppose that cats do it to, all mine does is sleep all day…but what does a cat need to do? I don’t think they ever sit there in the sun and say “Oh…I really should lick myself, but I think I’ll take a nap first…”

In truth, I really should be memorizing my monologue–instead, I wrote this. Really, if the director throws things at me, I have only myself to blame.