CULTURE/SOCIETY - Basic rights and responsibilities of geeks

http://kroq.cbslocal.com/2011/05/25/happy-national-geek-pride-day-what-type-of-geek-are-you/

CULTURE/SOCIETY - America's Inner Geek Is Out

http://blog.modis.com/job-seekers/americas-inner-geek-is-out/

CULTURE/SOCIETY - 15 Reasons Why Dating A Geek Is Worth It

http://m.tickld.com/x/15-reasons-why-dating-a-geek-is-worth

CULTURE/SOCIETY - A geek infographic

Our team of 20 does not take geek holidays lightly. With May the fourth behind us, we’re taking full advantage of Geek Pride Day on Sunday, May 25, to let our geek flags fly. We designed the infographic below in celebration.

Feel free to share it with friends and let us know what you think on Twitter with the hashtag #GeekRain.

http://www.steadyrain.com/digital-clarity/infographics/geek-pride-day.aspx

CULTURE/SOCIETY - A geek infographic

Our team of 20 does not take geek holidays lightly. With May the fourth behind us, we’re taking full advantage of Geek Pride Day on Sunday, May 25, to let our geek flags fly. We designed the infographic below in celebration.

Feel free to share it with friends and let us know what you think on Twitter with the hashtag #GeekRain.

http://www.steadyrain.com/digital-clarity/infographics/geek-pride-day.aspx

MY LIFE - Wives, stepsons, and geeks...

ENTERTAINMENT - Amanda Palmer: The art of asking

TED2013 · 13:47 · Filmed Feb 2013 
Subtitles available in 37 languages

Don't make people pay for music, says Amanda Palmer: Let them. In a passionate talk that begins in her days as a street performer (drop a dollar in the hat for the Eight-Foot Bride!), she examines the new relationship between artist and fan.

pinThis talk was presented at an official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.

http://www.ted.com/talks/amanda_palmer_the_art_of_asking

Excerpts:

(Breathes in, breathes out)

So I didn't always make my living from music. For about the five years after graduating from an upstanding liberal arts university, this was my day job. I was a self-employed living statue called the 8-Foot Bride, and I love telling people l did this for a job, because everybody always wants to know, who are these freaks in real life?Hello. I painted myself white one day, stood on a box, put a hat or a can at my feet, and when someone came by and dropped in money, I handed them a flower and some intense eye contact. And if they didn't take the flower, I threw in a gesture of sadness and longing as they walked away....

And meanwhile, I was touring locally and playing in nightclubs with my band, the Dresden Dolls. This was me on piano, a genius drummer. I wrote the songs, and eventually we started making enough money that I could quit being a statue, and as we started touring, I really didn't want to lose this sense of direct connection with people, because I loved it. So after all of our shows, we would sign autographs and hug fans and hang out and talk to people, and we made an art out of asking people to help us and join us, and I would track down local musicians and artists and they would set up outside of our shows, and they would pass the hat, and then they would come in and join us onstage, so we had this rotating smorgasbord of weird, random circus guests...

And meanwhile, my band is becoming bigger and bigger. We signed with a major label. And our music is a cross between punk and cabaret. It's not for everybody.Well, maybe it's for you. We sign, and there's all this hype leading up to our next record. And it comes out and it sells about 25,000 copies in the first few weeks, and the label considers this a failure.

And I was like, "25,000, isn't that a lot?"

They were like, "No, the sales are going down. It's a failure." And they walk off.

Right at this same time, I'm signing and hugging after a gig, and a guy comes up to me and hands me a $10 bill, and he says,"I'm sorry, I burned your CD from a friend."(Laughter) "But I read your blog, I know you hate your label. I just want you to have this money."

And this starts happening all the time. I become the hat after my own gigs, but I have to physically stand there and take the help from people, and unlike the guy in the opening band, I've actually had a lot of practice standing there. Thank you.

And this is the moment I decide I'm just going to give away my music for free online whenever possible, so it's like Metallica over here, Napster, bad; Amanda Palmer over here, and I'm going to encourage torrenting, downloading, sharing, but I'm going to ask for help, because I saw it work on the street.So I fought my way off my label and for my next project with my new band, the Grand Theft Orchestra, I turned to crowdfunding,and I fell into those thousands of connections that I'd made, and I asked my crowd to catch me. And the goal was 100,000 dollars. My fans backed me at nearly 1.2 million, which was the biggest music crowdfunding project to date...

For most of human history, musicians, artists, they've been part of the community,connectors and openers, not untouchable stars. Celebrity is about a lot of people loving you from a distance, but the Internet and the content that we're freely able to share on it are taking us back. It's about a few people loving you up close and about those people being enough. So a lot of people are confused by the idea of no hard sticker price. They see it as an unpredictable risk, but the things I've done, the Kickstarter, the street, the doorbell, I don't see these things as risk. I see them as trust. Now, the online tools to make the exchange as easy and as instinctive as the street, they're getting there. But the perfect tools aren't going to help us if we can't face each otherand give and receive fearlessly, but, more important, to ask without shame.

ENTERTAINMENT - Hysterical Literature (and Music!)

Women are seated with a book at a table, filmed in austere black and white against a black background. They have chosen what to read and how to dress. When the camera begins recording, they introduce themselves, and begin reading. Under the table, outside of the subject's control, an unseen assistant distracts them with a vibrator. The subjects stop reading when they're too distracted or fatigued to continue, at which point they restate their name, and what they've just read. The pieces vary in length based on the response time of the subjects.

WARNING: Video contains adult content!!!

http://hystericalliterature.com/

And here's a music video that was done the same way...

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ENTERTAINMENT - Kid Snippets: "Star Wars - The Rescue" (Imagined by Kids)

CULTURE/SOCIETY - Parents call cops on teen for giving away banned book; it backfires predictably

In News by Alex Moore

Apr 28, 2014

The book in question was Sherman Alexie’s young adult novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.” Published in 2007, it won the National Book Award and has become popular with young teens, supposedly for its universal themes of fitting in, making sense of race, and sexual discovery. Parents in Idaho called the cops last week on junior-high student Brady Kissel when she had the nerve to help distribute a book they’d succeeded in banning from the school curriculum.

The sex part (and let’s face it—probably the race part) led parents to lobby Junior Mountain High School to remove it from the syllabus, citing its sexual content (it discusses masturbation) and supposedly anti-Christian content.

For the rest of the story:

http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/219767/parents-call-cops-on-teen-for-giving-away-banned-book-it-backfires-predictably/