Geek Chic
Geek is cool! This is not a new revelation. From experience I know that owning a pair of Louboutin’s and a Mulberry bag is not mutually exclusive with getting excited about the latest developments in technology or science.
I have always been proud of my completely geeky and random interest in the most abstract of things. Even when the thirst for knowledge strikes me in the middle of the night (I once got up at 3am because I HAD to know whether Bournemouth got it name because it was the mouth of the River Bourne. It is.)
Yesterday when I discovered Wolfram Alpha I was far too excited, the excitement lasted longer than my rant about National Express seat charges, though won’t quite beat shopping at DVF in New York last year. Every time I have been on Wolfram Alpha in the past 24 hours (I have probably ramped up their visitor stats!) I have become more and more amazed at the kind of information I can find… things I never thought I needed to know are fascinating. I will never have to go without data and statistics again!
I’ve already discovered that I am 9492 days old today (who’s up for celebrating my 10000th day on Saturday 9th October 2010?) and that Southport has over twice the population of Durham.
Last week I was so annoyed with the over hyped Swine Flu issue I wanted to find out the deaths from Swine Flu vs. Malaria, to make a point about how ridiculous the ‘pandemic’ fear was, but even with the power of Google I couldn’t. Now thanks to Wolfram Alpha I know it’s 910707 per year… that’s 341827 deaths from malaria to date in 2009 compared to 69 deaths from Swine Flu.
I better curb the amount of time I spend on the site otherwise I’ll find myself ditching fiction to entertain people with numbers and facts instead!
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