Revenge of the nerds

[James G]

Revenge of the nerds
Creative types used to run the show, but now the maths geeks have taken over the world
Andrew Martin
At my school in the 1970s there were three types of people. First were the artists: the ones who listened to John Peel and watched subtitled films. Then there were the footballers. These were usually un-academic (to put it mildly), imperious on the pitch, but amiable and amusing off it. Third, there were the nerds: the ones who were good at maths. Being inarticulate and incomprehensible, they understood the inarticulate and incomprehensible maths teacher. In maths lessons, they talked to each other in hateful, excited whispers, then they'd put their arms around their work so the artists and footballers couldn't copy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...s-school-geeks

The whole argument is ultimately laughable, from his mention of "hateful, excited whispers" down to his insistence that there is some kind of war on. He manages to conflate countless different points into a muddied disorganised rant, that makes him appear either bitter, or delusional.

He also insists that folk take sides, which is presumably an easy thing to do in his world of false dichotomy between nerds and creative types. Clearly no mathematician has ever played a musical instrument, or appreciated a novel, after all, how could they, being "inarticulate and incomprehensible." It is such a shame that Queen had an astrophysicist as a lead guitarist, as clearly Dr. Brian May couldn't play for toffee.

It is also curious that he should place the iPod down on the side of the nerds, because frankly I reckon Apple is a double agent. Macs are far too popular among graphic designers for me to trust that company in the coming 'war.' It'll have to be Linux all the way.

Oh, I can't help but wonder why he assigns 'bean counters' to the nerd side of things. Judging from where my friends have ended up the finance career track will just as happily gobble up an artist as a scientist.