Monday, October 03, 2005

Nerdiness is cool

A while back, I wrote a list of potential band names that I would probably never use. But now I've changed my mind. It won't be any of those, and I'll explain why.

Dorkiness/Science will be the next cool thing. If not in mainstream stuff (read network TV and Major Labels) then at least in the just-off-mainstream stuff. If it was a stock, I would change my recommendation from "hold" to "buy." You might think that dork-chic hit its high point with Napolean Dynamite (A terrible movie by the way, who's with me here?) but that is patently untrue. First, Napolean wasn't a dork in the true sense. He was just an idiot. It had the fashion and culture sense of a dork with none of the redeeming qualities, like an aptness for science, or mad programming skills. Second, the ND related popularity of dorkiness was like the dork internet bubble. Everybody got excited about it and involved in it. Then, blam, it suddenly lost it's popularity and only the true believers were left. I think of dorkiness as a sort of Google, part of a huge rush of mainstream interest, but now even cooler with those in the know, while maintaining mainstream popularity. Sort of an internet tastemaker. Well, that's what nerdy science related stuff will be within a year. Trust me.

To this end, I came up with this band name that I will use for all future songs that I don't record: The Chandrasekhar Limit. Actually, that's a pretty cool name even if you don't know what it means. But if you don't, briefly, it's the mass a star needs to have in order to someday become a black hole. The value ranges from about 1.2 to 1.46 solar masses depending on the chemical composition of the star. (So, as you can see, we're safe here on earth because our sun is only, suprise suprise, one solar mass. It'll just turn into a white dwarf, not a black hole.) Basically, it's the limit at which gravitational forces outweigh electron degeneracy pressure and cause the star to collapse. Subramanyan Chandrasekhar won the 1983 Nobel prize for his discovery. I can't believe I remember this from Maggie's Astronomy class!

The Scharzchild Radius would also be a good name.

3 comments:

kate said...

*Whew!* That's a load off my mind. Let me call the insurance company and cancel the "in case of black hole" part of my insurance.
I dunno, though. I really liked Mark Darkly and the No. 2 Pencils.

[REDACTED] said...

I like that one too, it just seems a little too inside-jokey to me. It only makes sense if you take or have taken lots of scantron multiple choice tests. Plus, I think the whole somebody and the somethings type of name was played out a long time ago.

Maggie said...

I think you may be getting nerd and dork mixed up. You don't have to like science to be a dork. ND was a dork, but not a nerd. You, darling husband, may be a little bit of a nerd, but not a dork, because you are too cool;)