Nerds are Hot

That's probably not a normal title you would expect from a post by me--or you would expect it to be about something that has nothing to do with the title. But the hotness of the nerd population of America is exactly what we're going to talk about. And yes, I felt this was important enough to post on a Friday instead of waiting until after our Evolution vs. Creationism discussion.

Mainly, that's because I went to JordanCon this past weekend, which is what made me think of this topic and I wanted to talk about it before I forgot.

There seems to be this stereotype in the world that nerds fall into one of two categories when it comes to looks: 1) skinny, glasses, pimply, messy hair, socially awkward, works for a major CS firm like Google, Apple, or Microsoft or 2) overweight, bearded, socially awkward, still lives in Mom's basement. And even though I am a nerd (a female one so slightly outside of the stereotypes), I sometimes get the mistaken notion into my head that my male counterparts fall into these categories. And this past weekend, this stereotypical notion crept back into my head as I went to JordanCon, the Wheel of Time convention.

A Wheel of Time convention? I know. I'm a nerd. Did you forget my exploits at Dragon*Con and that one of the highs was that I bought a Great Serpent Ring? I am a nerd. I have no shame. And being a nerd is nothing to be ashamed of.

Anyway, I don't know why these stereotypes would pop in my head for JordanCon. You would think of all the areas of nerdom this would be the one where I wouldn't have the stereotypes. After all, all of my guy friends who read Wheel of Time are hot. (Yeah, yeah, stop blushing you guys who I know who read WoT. You're hot. Now get over it).

So I went to this con, expecting the awkward guys and instead met guys of all types: suave, charming, well dressed (err..costumed?), and just all around nice. (One stereotype that I love that is usually true. Nerd guys are nice). Seriously, if I hadn't been there with my mom AND if I was looking for a boyfriend right now, I would have been seriously putting my charm on (if I have any. Not a master of flirtation here, but I do love talking Wheel of Time, which in this setting might have sufficed).

I guess the moral of this post is we should all try to get past the Breakfast Club view of the nerd and embrace the Chuck Bartowski view. Chuck is awesome, nerdy, nice, and hot. And this should be the new stereotype because its often true. Or at least make it the third stereotype. The other two types of nerds do exist, but I would say the hot ones are in equal if not greater proportion.

Oh, and just in case I have a future husband* who is reading this blog post. I love Mat Cauthon. Yes, we've established this. So, if you're trying to meet me/impress me at a Con, please dress up as him. There were at least two Mat Cauthons at JordanCon and both had excellent costumes and I loved it. But please don't be Mat Cauthon in real life, because I'm pretty sure in real life our personalities would clash. So you can dress like Mat Cauthon but act like Chuck Bartowski. :)

*I want to get married one day, but I'm not 100% convinced its in God's plan for me, so its always "if I get married" never "when".

5 Billion Years, Seven Days, or Yesterday

Last Thursday I talked about Galileo and why I never out of hand disregard a scientific discovery. Today I'm going to talk a little bit about the craziness that is the Evolution versus Creationism debate.

There are a lot nuances to this debate that I don't think most people even consider, but I'm going to divide up our conversation into three topics: 1) Traditional Seven Day Creationism, 2) the Universe is 5 Billion Years Old, and 3) the World was Created Yesterday. In this post, I'm just going to talk about the first of those topics. The other topics will follow next week.

1) Traditional Seven Day Creationism
I do not disbelieve in the Seven Day creation. I think that's an important point to make. If I get to heaven and God says, "You know what Mandy? You were meant to take that very literally and the universe was actually created in seven 24 hour periods (give or take the little bit that adds up to leap year)", I won't be surprised. Now the scientists out there might cry out and say, "How can you possibly believe this is true? All scientific evidence points directly to the universe being much older!"

The apparent age of the universe is a good point that I feel like people don't discuss enough when it comes to this debate. Yes, the universe seems very old. The scientists are not lying when they say measurements point to the universe being old (I'm pretty sure I covered that in the Galileo post but I just wanted to remind everyone). So if the universe seems to be 5 billion years old how can it really be..uh...much less than that. (I'm not sure what the agreed upon age of the world is by the traditionalist view, but its less than 5 billion).

Well that's actually pretty easy to answer if you think about it. The Bible is pretty clear that Adam was created as a man. Not a baby, not a child or teen, but a full grown man. So I'm willing to bet he would seem in every sense to be grown up.

Let me put it in another way. God creates a whole bunch of trees at creation. Do you think He created a whole bunch of saplings? Or do you think He created trees at varying stages of the life cycle (so that an entire generation wouldn't die off at the same time)? So if I went up to one of these freshly made but old seeming trees right after God created them, and cut through the trunk to see the tree rings, do you think it would look like there were no tree rings or God would really have made the tree be 20 years old and have the appropriate yearly rings? So if a scientists saw those rings he would swear the tree was 20 years old, when it reality it was literally created 5 seconds ago.

So the universe seeming old doesn't have to be contrary to a seven day Creation. God is smart, and He's certainly smarter than we are. If He wants the universe to seem 5 billion years old than its because we people need it to be that old to survive in it. It's like God fastforwarding through all that pesky other stuff (or skipping right over it) to create a world that's the exact right age we need to survive. I fully believe God is capable of doing something like that.

Now I feel I should note here that some people believe in a more of "seven distinct stages of creation". This sort of merges into the 5 billion year old, evolution universe, but it doesn't have to. I fully believe God is perfectly capable of creating our universe and all the life in it in 7 nanoseconds. How do I rationalize this with the Bible which clearly states days? Well, God is outside of time, so I don't think He would need to feel constrained by a period of time He had not necessarily yet created. He could if He wanted to--I don't doubt that--but I don't think He had to. However, I also think if God had said to Moses (the usual person believed to have written Genesis), "It took be one nanosecond to create all the animals in the world", Moses' mind might have exploded. Sure, God could have explained to Moses and make him understand. Completely possible and within God's power. However, then Moses would have to explain to everyone else and that's just a hassle. God could have been just talking in terms He knew people would understand.....

Thus we segue into a discussion of evolution and the possibility of Creation taking much much longer. However, that is a post for next Tuesday.

I forgot

So I forgot to write up today's posts. I blame it on school. This week is often lovingly called "hell week" at Georgia Tech. I suppose its because officially during next week, "dead week", professors aren't supposed to assign homework or give tests, so this week is the week all that stuff would fall on. But in reality, the two weeks have sort of melded into one awful time period where everyone shuffles around campus like zombies.

But I only have five things left to do this semester and then I can call it a quits:

1) Homework due tomorrow (that I honestly haven't started yet)
2) Test on Friday
3) Paper due on Monday
4) Make a poster for final presentation
5) Statistics final exam

So if I can survive all that, it'll be summer and you guys know what that means! It means my Tuesday/Thursday blogging schedule will morph into a daily blogging schedule! (Or at least a Monday, Wednesday, Friday blogging schedule--I haven't decided yet).

So if my posting in the next three weeks is sporadic, I hope you'll forgive me. I'm sprinting to the end of the semester.

Galileo

(Sorry about not posting this yesterday. My mom is coming to stay with me for the weekend starting today and I went into a cleaning frenzy. All thoughts of posting sort of fell out of my mind. But I'm back with the long promised science and religion post!)

Science and religion are often regarded as oil and water: two things that cannot mix. I have friends who are not religious who think believing in God is daft, to say the least. I have friends who have very strong faith who think a lot of science is completely bogus, like scientists are making information up purposefully to undermine Truth. And then there is my little sister and me, who believe in both science and religion. My sister and I are both strong (Baptist *gasp*) Christians. My sister is a Master's (soon to be PhD) student in anthropology and has no problem (faith-wise) TAing a class called "The Origins of Man" or something like that. I'm an aerospace engineering Master's student who has been known to say that the Matrix could be real and if it is please don't tell me.

So I think the most publicized science vs. faith debate is Evolution versus Creationism. Scientists firmly believe that nature, observation, and science point towards evolution. Let me assure my Christian readers that most scientists do not just make stuff up. They believe stuff based on math, observation, and experimentation. They're not stating it to mess with you. If math, observation, and experimentation could prove a seven day Creation, they would not hold back the information from the public. (Why would they? They'd probably win a Nobel Prize). Now let me assure my atheist, scientific type readers that Christians are not a bunch of blathering, head in the sand idiots. Christians believe in God because of personal experience, observation, and experimentation (though we call it "fleecing" or if we're real brave "doubt"). Christians, like any group of people, do come in varying levels of intelligence, but there are actually scientists and engineers among Christians. You can be smart and have faith.

Now that we've all put our prejudice aside and can look each other in the eye without thinking "that person is an idiot or bogus or fake" let's talk about something else: Galileo.

Galileo lived in the late 1500s and early 1600s, so think Elizabethan Era--except in Italy. He was a physicist and astronomer among other things. He was fascinated by the sun, stars, and heavens in general, as many were back then (and still are).

Now by the time Galileo lived, Copernicus had already made the insane statement that the Earth revolved around the Sun. I know, crazy right? Clearly the Sun revolves around the Earth. I mean, just watch it move across the sky. It's obvious. At least, that was very much the thought process of people back then.

Galileo and Kepler were both two dudes who wanted to figure out if this Copernican theory was real. But we're not here to talk about Kepler, who was living in Germany. We're here to talk about Galileo, who was living in Italy--which was very much controlled by the Church.

Now, I feel its very important to note that Galileo was actually a pretty religious guy. He had considered going into the priesthood. And honestly, he probably would have stayed under the Church's radar even with publishing his ideas, if he hadn't been such a religious man. You see, Galileo believed in heliocentrism (fancy word for the Earth revolving around the Sun) and God. And he went to Rome, to try to explain to the Church that one could believe in both heliocentrism and the God of Christianity, to try to convince them that those who like him believe in both were not heretics. Because of his love of the Church and science, he was banned from further defending this to the Church (though he was not banned from working on his science).

You see, heliocentrism and the Bible could not both possible be true, in the mind of the Church 500 years ago. The two things cannot possibly be reconciled. There is no way heliocentrism can be true if you believe the Bible is true. The two things directly conflict. Obviously.

After all:

"The Lord reigns, He is clothed with majesty;
The Lord has clothed and girded Himself with strength;
Indeed, the world is firmly established, it will not be moved."
~Pslam 93:1

"Say among the nations, "The Lord reigns;
Indeed the world is firmly established, it will not be moved;
He will judge the peoples with equity."
~Pslam 96:10

"Tremble before Him, all the earth;
Indeed, the world is firmly established, it will not be moved."
~1 Chronicles 16:30

"Also, the sun rises and the sun sets;
And hastening to its place it rises there again."
~Ecclesiastes 1:5

"He established the earth upon its foundations,
So that it will not totter forever and ever."
~Psalm 104:5

Clearly, the Bible indicates the world is not moving but sitting still in space. In fact, I'm not even sure the Earth should rotate according to these verses.

Now, I'm not here to point out supposed contradictions in the Bible. I do not believe that any of these verses contradict the idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun. I think the writers (and through them God) were trying to make the point that God very carefully placed the Earth. That this Goldilocks zone we are in is special. And that God will not allow anything to move us from this zone. And that we can depend on the Sun. He put it there for us. And as long as He wants us to be here, the Sun will be there.

The point I am trying to make is that today, in the modern world, we all believe in heliocentrism (as far as I know). Christians are not protesting in the streets, not angrily overrunning school board meetings, to protest that heliocentrism is being taught. We believe in heliocrentrism. And we believe the Bible. Yet, the angry feelings and denials people had back then are very similar to the feelings Christians have about Evolution.

So maybe 500 years from now future Christians will laugh at us for disregarding Evolution as true.

In short, as Christians we shouldn't dismiss science out of hand because we think it contradicts. It doesn't always. Sometimes it just involves thinking out of the box. As for my feelings about evolution (and the Matrix), that's a post for another day. For now, I just want you to remember Galileo when your first thought is "Scientists are just making this crap up!" Galileo was a scientist and a believer and he really did believe both (as most of us now do when it comes to heliocentrism).

Feminism and Geordi LaForge

So when I was taking a five minute break from my research over the weekend, I read this article on Feminist Books. Basically the point of the article is that its not the behavior of the characters in the book that make the story Feminist, it's the attitude of the reader. I didn't really think much about that at the time (due to my head being overloaded with control laws, algebraic riccati equations, and saturation blocks), but while I was driving into the office this morning, it sort of popped into my head.

I was thinking about how Amanda Tapping is going to be at Dragon*Con this year, and how I need to add her signature to my collection of science fiction engineer/scientists. And I started thinking about how recently in SF a lot of the engineers and scientists are mainly females. It started with everyone's favorite Klingon Engineer, B'Elanna Torres. Then came Samantha Carter of SG-1. Then Kailey of Firefly. It's a trend. And I get it. We're trying to tell girls--hey! you can be in the position! See! Here is a girl engineer. You can be one too.

And thinking about all of this is what made me realize what the article is saying. That is sort of anti-Feminist. Saying "Here is a girl doing it so you can do it to" is not the point of feminism (in my mind). The point of it is the same point as getting rid of racism. I don't want someone to look at me and pre-judge me based on my sex, race, or anything. A person shouldn't think "Look! A black man has become president of the United States! I can to!" A person should think "Hey! A person can become president! I can to!"

What the article is trying to say, what it means, is basically that a girl should be able to look at an character/role and know they can be that. And I think the best example of this is one that happened to me and is very near and dear to my heart.

I was not inspired to be an engineer by the female B'Elanna Torres or Samantha Carter. I was inspired to be an engineer by Geordi LaForge, as played by LeVar Burton. I watched Star Trek: The Next Generation as a kid, and I saw how cool and wonderful being the Chief Engineer of the Enterprise was. I wanted that job. I wanted to be Geordi. It never crossed my mind that Geordi was male or black or blind (though with the visor he actually had better vision than any other person on the Enterprise). It was a job a person was doing and therefore I knew I could do it. Geordi was a person (fictional, yes) and I am to, and that's the only correlation necessary. That is feminism.

It doesn't matter that the Lord of the Rings is mostly about guys. What matters is that I can relate to the characters and can see myself being one of them.

I've always liked boy books better than I like girl books and I think in a way this is part of the reason. Girl books make me hyper aware that I'm a girl, that I'm different somehow, somehow a different sort of human from a boy (or other girls apparently since I can't relate to them). Boy books just deal with life, without making it a big deal. It's not a big deal that Harry is a boy. He just is. And I can imagine myself in his place, taking down Voldemort.

Yes, I think it is important to have females portrayed as engineers to help girls overcome their own un-feminist minds, but in the end a girl (or boy) should be able to look at any job/role and say "I can do that" regardless of the gender of the person portraying it. It's all in the eye of the beholder.

Summer Reading

So I was going to have a nice, thoughtful post on how science and religion don't have to conflict in all situations, but a thoughtful post requires thought. And due to a statistics test tomorrow and a research deadline on Tuesday, all of my thought processes are currently in use. So instead a less thoughtful post.

Every summer I go back to my co-op, which is wonderful. It's like three months of vacation. Not because I don't have to work--because I do. I go to work everyday for eight to ten hours (depending on how I feel) and then I go back to my apartment. So how is this like a vacation? Well, when I go back to my apartment--I don't have homework. I don't have to fret about school. I don't have to feel guilty about watching TV or reading a book because I have work I should be doing. I can leave work at work, and that is the most wonderful thing ever. It's a vacation from 24/7 stress. Wonderful.

So I do a lot of reading in the summer (as if you couldn't tell from the large quantity of book reviews I posted last summer). But this year I'm being slightly more intentional about my reading, I'm creating a list of all the books I want to read. And I can read a lot in the summers. Three books a week is a minimum. I've been known to devour a book a day in the summertime (I have very few friends at my co-op, so though that means I have no life it means lots of time to myself which means lots of reading).

So my current list is:

1) The Forest of the Hands and Teeth Trilogy by Carrie Ryan
2) Bumped by Megan McCaffery
3) Memento Nora by Angie Smibert
4) Dark Parties by Sara Grant
5) Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare
6) City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare
7) Divergent by Veronica Roth
8) The Malazan Book of the Fallen Series by Steven Erikson (I think its 10 books long)
9) The Desert Spear by Peter V. Brett
10) Ghost Story by Jim Butcher
11) Thunderstruck by Erik Larson

So far my list is a lot of new YA books, an entire series of fantasy, and one non-fiction book. (I don't usually read a lot of non-fiction, but Thunderstruck is apparently really good and its a narrative which is all that really matters). This is only 22 books, which is not enough. Even if I limit myself to three books a week I still need about 22 more books. So does anyone out there in blog land have a recommendation? I would greatly appreciate it.

So please! Suggest books!

Faith and Work

The other day one of my friends was told by his research adviser that because of my friend's personal beliefs, he was unfit to be an engineer. My reaction to this news was three-fold.

First off, say what? Aren't we past that now? Isn't America supposed to be beyond religious persecution? If my friend thinks his beliefs don't conflict with his work, who is his research adviser to tell him otherwise?

Second, what the heck does engineering have to do with what I believe? Last I checked engineering and science were not the same thing and let's be honest--what does robotics have to do with evolution? Not much.

Third, why do people still have the ridiculously mistaken belief that science and religion are incompatible? (And I'll also admit that people have this ridiculous belief on both sides of the fence! Religious people think they can't believe in science and science people think they can't believe in religion! Ridiculous! But more on this in Thursday's post!)

I will be the first to admit that there are some beliefs that are incompatible with some job options. If you believe modern medicine is wrong, then you shouldn't be a modern doctor. Firm believers in seven day Creationism probably wouldn't make good evolutionary scientists. I get that. But no one should ever be told they can't do something because of what they believe.

Yes, I wouldn't want to work on anything that conflicts with my beliefs. But if I think something doesn't conflict with my beliefs, who are you to tell me they do?

I think this all comes back to my fundamental belief that no one should ever try to tell me what I should and shouldn't do (outside of the law, of course). That is for me to decide. If I think I can and should be an engineer, then I will be an engineer. If I think I can and should be a doctor, then I'll be a doctor. It is not an outsider's place to tell me otherwise--to tell me my capabilities or supposed place.

Yes, I'm a girl. Yes, I'm a Christian. But that doesn't mean I can't or shouldn't be an aerospace engineer, or so I believe. And that's what matters.