A coalition of African-American activists and scholars released a strongly worded statement Monday citing the “urgent need” for popular media to depict a new black nerd archetype that more accurately reflects the full spectrum of 21st-century American dorkdom.

“Outdated representations of African-American nerds are simply not cutting it anymore,” the statement read in part. “Perhaps in the ’80s and ’90s it was possible for young people to identify with Steve Urkel’s hiked-up pants, nasal voice, and lovable catchphrase of ‘Did I do that?’ But today’s black nerds are different.”

“They may not carry slide rules and calculators, but they do carry smartphones to make posts on Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare,” the statement continued. “Yet where are the modern-day nerds of color in our films and television programs?”

African-American Community Calls For New Black Nerd Archetype

Last.fm introduced a beta feature that can compare artists, genres and tags on a gender – age plot. Interesting.

http://blog.last.fm/2010/09/22/now-in-the-playground-gender-plots

Here’s one that’s particularly interesting:

Software, engineer, DJ, producer, and musician all skew male, while boyfriend, girl, email, outgoing, person, friends and love all skewed female.

Thoughts?

UPDATE: Here’s my plot compared among my friends.

The Dance Pad Purse

My original dance pad broke, so I decided to cut it up to see what was inside. The top layer was actually pretty, so I thought it would make a cool purse. Literally. Hah!

Check out the photos documenting how I made it.

The first layer of the dance pad

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A few years back I modeled for iGo car sharing. If you’re not familiar, iGo is a non-profit car-sharing service, providing cars you rent on a half-hourly basis across the city. Gas & insurance is included, and there are lots of cars in the area. They were trying to let DJs and musicians know that cars are free from midnight until 6am, so it would be like there’s a DJ-discount, ha!

Anyway, so the above photo is the original flier with a closeup of my head. Decent design, but then a few years later they decided to change the layout, as shown below. Why, you ask? I think I might have figured it out…

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Were you one of those kids who had a next door neighbor who had that sweet corvette PowerWheel and were too woefully poor to have one yourself? We were those kids, and we decided to do something about it….20 years later.

We decided to modify and race PowerWheels, We do it for the glory, for the daring dreamy dream of that tasty elixir known as childhood that we’ll never have again cause we have day jobs and don’t weigh 70 pounds anymore. (Fatty)

We also want to play Mario Kart in real life without all those pesky pixels.

The PowerWheel Racing Series (PPPWRS) presents to the world an event for the ages.

On August 15th 6 teams will gather to win the prized PowerWheel Cup an award so prestigious I just decided to make it up five minutes ago to sound impressive.

Four Events will take place:

1. Off Road Race
2. Mario Kart Round
3. PowerWheel Polo
4. The Endurance Demolition Derby

FREE ADMISSION
11:30am Gates Open

DJs: Liz Revision,
Bands:

Sacremento Park (next to it)
3506 N Sacrement
Chicago, IL

This Event brought to you by: Pumping Station: One (Chicago’s Only Hackerspace), Best Express Messenger Service, and Chief O’Neils Pub

Watch Motherboard – The Granular Synthesis of Curtis Roads

This is a pretty amazing video. Granular Synthesis I can wrap my head around (imagine a more complex version of additive synthesis, but on a micro-scale), but what really amazes me is Curtis Roads was doing it in 1975 on a mainframe with punchcards. You heard me. How much more nerdcred does this guy need? Ok, lemme back up for a minute. I am, actually, old enough to know what punchcards are (but, keep in mind I was like 5 years old and hanging out at my mom’s company to learn about them). Back in the day (and my intro to computer science teacher in college was amazing because he explained this to us and made us basically write out our algorythms before we came to class to program them), a programmer would have to write out a program in its entirety and then wait for days sometimes, to get the program to execute. This is totally the opposite of people can work today, where they can see the results of a coding change realtime, or, on the web, with a simple page refresh. Pretty leet, I gotta say.

Check out this video–even an Autechre song makes a cameo (but, I would add to the video’s description that what made Autechre and similar IDM artists’ work so mindblowing wasn’t simply due to complex rhythms, it was that plus the unheard-of-before combination of electronically-generated revolutionary sounds while still maintaining a “more accessible” composition in terms of melody and so forth. At some point Roads says he considers his music “point, line, cloud” because a grain, or sound particle is a point, a series of points on either or both the x or y axis, and a cloud,–IMHO–is actually “a left-to-right series of chords”) BECAUSE CURTIS ROADS OPENED FOR THEM in the early 00s. Uh-huh.

He also recommends a book for sound-design inspiration. It’s called Education of a Gardener. Really. Just go watch this thing, ok?
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Here’s some of the best photoshops from the “Famous people who use the APC40″ thread on the Ableton site:

[imagebrowser id=2]

[thx: Create Digital Music]

Subvariant viral video of a very funny webcam dancer wearing a scarf and doing his best two step. You can dance if you want to, but leave your scarf alone.

Geeks, nerds, dorks — chances are, you didn’t attend your high school prom. During college, you were so focused on your engineering/math/science degree that other humans barely registered within your domain space. This is your chance to rectify your oversight without yielding to irrational forces of social pressure, and perhaps enrich your symbolic-semantic internodal linkages, as well! (okay, that was actually gibberish) Come to the GEEK PROM. There will be music, dancing, and some sort of contest based on physical appearance, but we promise that it won’t be excruciating or embarassing! Local tinkerers will bring their latest DIY and hacked gadgets — stuff that you WISH you had made for your High School Science Fair. To attend this fundraiser (see Meta) follow this simple instruction set:

» Obtain advance entry clearance for $15/couple or $10/single. $20/couple or $15/single at the door.

» Prior to GEEK PROM (but not too prior) enhance your physical appearance with
a. hygiene
b. cosmetic adjustment
c. optimized exolayer assembly

» On Saturday June 13th, Utilize a transport medium (non-virtual) to resolve this address:

Co-Prosperity Sphere
3219 S Morgan St.
Chicago, IL

» Entry clearance will be granted at the door for donations of $20/couple or $15/single, starting at 9 pm Central; unbonded pairs also welcome.
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