2013 — 26 November: Tuesday
At any given time, there's much that I don't know.1 Today's little dollop of ignorance originates in a piece lamenting the parlous state of UK employment of its recent Computer Science graduates:
The geek image of computer science came under attack, because it was blamed for putting women off studying the subject. Here I have to demur. It's not a problem that there are a lot of geeks in computer science. It's a fact. I know a lot of women who are geeks, and I think that society is actually rather fond of its geeks — and becoming more so. Rather than fight an impossible battle trying to dispel the geek image, it makes more sense to embrace the image and represent its positive side: we want a portrayal that's more like The IT Crowd's Maurice Moss than The Simpsons' Martin Prince. Geeks are people who can do amazing things that other people couldn't dream of.
As one of the people appending a comment astutely points out, however:
Large numbers of unemployed graduates in a subject suggest that there are too many graduates for that subject. So a meeting is arranged to discuss how to get even more students to study the subject. Does anyone else see a flaw in this plan?
When (if!) it warms up a bit, I shall be off out in search of the newly-released "RED2" on the discount shelves of the world's largest supermarket. I hope that doesn't make me too much of a geek. [Pause] Nor, I hope, does downloading the last-ever version of WinAmp before it's removed from the world next month. End of an (audio) era, and all that.
Well, it's still...
... only -2C out there, but I'm safely back, clutching tonight's piece of entertaining2 tosh:
Meanwhile, had I not chanced to peek at Brian Sibley's always-fun blog, I might well have missed at least one of the two radio items he's recently had a hand in. Safely snaffled via get_iplayer.
Just received...
... an email reminder about showing up here tomorrow morning. How could I forget?!
I secretly enjoyed watching this...
... en famille when it was originally broadcast, so it will be interesting to see if I still do, as it were, solo.