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Geek Stars From Atkinson to Zappa
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Fri Oct 26, 2007 02:51 AM
from the brains-to-make-it-in-show-business dept.
from the brains-to-make-it-in-show-business dept.
Ian Lamont writes "You probably remember reading about Brian May getting a PhD in Astrophysics, but may not know about the many other celebrities from the music, TV, and film worlds who have studied science and technology in college and grad school, or are simply serious gearheads who like gadgets, games, and other geek pastimes. Computerworld has identified about 50 celebrities who fit the bill, including Dan Grimaldi (Patsy Parisi, The Sopranos) who has a Bachelor of Arts degree in math, a master's in operations research and a Ph.D. in data processing; Rowan Atkinson, who has a master's in electrical engineering from Queen's College, Oxford; and Todd Rundgren, who developed an early paint program called Utopia. Other folks on the list: Dr. Demento, Montel Williams, Natalie Portman, Curt Schilling, and Huey Lewis."
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Brian May, Rock Legend, Soon-To-Be Astrophysicist 169 comments
xPsi writes "Brian May, the guitarist for the legendary rock band Queen (age 60), has finally decided to submit his Ph.D. thesis in astrophysics. The title is 'Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud.' From the article: 'May was studying astrophysics at Imperial College when he formed Queen with singer Freddie Mercury and drummer Roger Taylor in 1970. He dropped his doctorate research into interstellar dust as the band met with increasing success.' And, hey, if this whole Rock-n-Roll thing doesn't pan out, at least he'll have something to fall back on."
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Portman (Score:4, Funny)
Psychology (Score:3, Funny)
Natalie
Re:Portman (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yawn (Score:4, Interesting)
Many actors majored in some field of science rather than art, and didn't flunk. Robin Williams plays video games and likes gadgets. Real big geek cred...
Quite a waste of time.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Comic Guy voice: "I like to refer to these people as "closet geeks", their many faux friends call them "interesting"...pffft!"
Re:Yawn (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, Masi Oka has a double in Math and CS, and worked at ILM. I don't care what you say: Hiro Nakamura is a real geek. He still consults for ILM for Petes sake!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Apparently he's also a huge fan of Neon Genesis Evangelion, and managed to get an Evangelion toy to appear in his movie One Hour Photo [imdb.com] .
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Also in a movie of his, a toy used as a prop is a Production Model Evangelio
Hey Editor! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Psychology == Geek? (Score:5, Insightful)
But I decided to actually read the story. According to the article, and also Wikipedia, shes a Psyc student, published a couple papers. Seriously, thats enough to make the geek list? Am I in a dillusioned world that of the thousands of "stars" out there, there aren't many with more geek cred than this?
Oh and I will karma whore... here's the link to the full article print link:
http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&articleId=9043739 [computerworld.com]
Actually, geekier than it sounds. (Score:5, Informative)
Frontal Lobe Activation during Object Permanence: Data from Near-Infrared Spectroscopy [66.102.1.104]
Definitely geekier than your average psych paper.
And it appears that her other paper, on which she was first author while in high school, was actually in chemistry:
A Simple Method To Demonstrate the Enzymatic Production of Hydrogen from Sugar [wisc.edu]
Though it's actually in a chemistry education journal, and appears to maybe have something to do with doing demonstrations in chemistry classrooms.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Psychology == Geek? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't forget Britney Spears! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Don't forget Britney Spears! (Score:5, Funny)
Mensa (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
From Asia's Bio... (Score:4, Informative)
Geeky Academic Stuff - NJ spelling champ, National Mathematics League, Spanish National Honor Society, placed in National Geography, Language Arts, and Mathematics Olympiads.
Geeky Other Stuff - Played classical piano at Carnegie Hall at 13 & 14 (Ernesto Lecuona's 'Malaguena' and Bach's 13th Invention), taught Colloquial English at Tsuruga College in Japan at 16
Education - Attended performing arts high school (emphasis on instrumental music and visual arts), National Merit Scholarship Winner (for 1440 on SAT's), and Garden State Scholar (for nerdly grades). Attended Rutgers University on full academic scholarship, with a double-major in Business and Japanese.
Zappa on music (Score:5, Interesting)
Um, Dr. Demento *not* on the list (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Um, Dr. Demento *not* on the list (Score:4, Informative)
http://members.aol.com/quentncree/lehrer/
Check the above for his lyrics.
puto
Thomas Dolby spoke at the Be Developer's Conf. (Score:5, Informative)
His real last name isn't Dolby, it's Robertson [wikipedia.org].
When he spoke at the BDC, it was about his high-tech startup [wikipedia.org], which developed a new audio format.
He got sued by the Dolby corporation; according to Wikipedia, the settlement allows him to use their trademark only when in the context of "Thomas ".
Dr. Demento's Thesis (Score:3, Informative)
Erdos-Bacon number (Score:5, Interesting)
Natalie Portman has one of the better scores (Erdos 5 + Bacon 2 = 7). She did not (so far as I know) use her fame in her primary field (acting) to get preferential treatment in the other (science/maths.) There are scientists with a lower total, but I think they've all got an acting part on strength of their science fame (e.g. Stephen Hawking.)
According to Wikipedia, a few people have lower Erdos-Bacon numbers which appear to be 'clean', but I haven't heard of them before: Kiralee Hayashi (3+3), Danica McKellar (4+2), Barney Pell (3+2), John Platt (3+3), Karl Schaffer (3+2), Brian Wandell (3+2), Wendelin Werner (3+3).
Not to be a bore, but.. (Score:4, Insightful)
A Bachelor of *arts* in Mathematics? (Score:3, Funny)
"e^i*pi = -1. How does that make you feel?"
"Pythagoras' Theorem is a^2 + b^2 = c^2. What do you think he was trying to convey by that?"
Re:A Bachelor of *arts* in Mathematics? (Score:5, Informative)
Quoth Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
The "Bachelor of Science" (BSc) is a relatively recent invention by modern universities. "Modern" in this context means "Not already 600 years old when those Romantic trendies re-wrote the dictionary". Certainly the University of Oxford (est. 1069 give or take a few decades) doesn't have any truck with this sort of newspeak and awards BA for everything.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A Bachelor of *arts* in Mathematics? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A Bachelor of *arts* in Mathematics? (Score:4, Funny)
Part 2, law: outline a case for suing
a) The driver of the first train,
b) The manager of the railway company,
c) A contractor working on the signalling system,
d) A passer by,
e) Your grandmother,
f) The insect.
Show how you would win each case.
Obvious Missing Entries (Score:5, Interesting)
(He kept the geek look but lost the career!)
Peter Gabriel is quite the computer nerd...
Joe Walsh of the Eagles - he's got a Ham Radio license...
And Jeff Foxworthy used to work for IBM, but I'm not sure how nerdy he was.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Gary Shandling -- was an EE before going into comedy
Cindy Crawford -- valedictorian of her high school class, received ChemE scholarship to Northwestern
Teri Hatcher -- math major
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Brian May (Score:3, Interesting)
Kris Kristofferson (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Rhodes Scholar.
2. Military Helicopter Pilot.
3. Assigned as a professor at West Point but resigned his commission.
4. Golden Gloves boxer.
A true geek in the Heinlein sense. Smart and tough.
Dexter Holland, lead singer of The Offspring (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexter_Holland [wikipedia.org]
PhD !=geek (Score:5, Insightful)
The #1 all time famous nerd was Niel Armstrong, who was an engineer who famously said "I am and always will be a pocket protector wearing nerd". He accomplished the ultimate in nerdiness, being the first man to step foot on another world. That was a nerd's wet dream come true!
-mcgrew [kuro5hin.org]
(Linked text is titled "Growing Up With Computers" from 2005, in it is mention of Niel's most famous act of nerdiness. Another of my useless but on-topic scribblings is a two year old blagh titled What is a nerd? [mcgrew.info])
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
As long as Winnie Cooper made the list ... (Score:3, Funny)
She was recently on NPR talking about what she was doing with her degree in mathmatics
Poor Kevin Arnold! How'd he let her slip away?
Also expert driver (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Also expert driver (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think about it, anybody who is bad at something might do something funny by accident, but a pro has to get up on stage or on camera and be funny on cue. Kaye taught himself to sing, dance and fence tolerably well. Maybe not well enough to be a singing and dancing star or that you'd put your money on him in a duel, but well enough to be able to execute his idea of what might be funny accurately enough to make people laugh on purpose.
There are lots of people in the world who can be funny opportunistically, but there is an incredible amount of craft even in something as deceptively simple as stand up comedy. What could be more natural than telling a funny story? Practically anything, if that means you have to tell that story five or more days a week, several times a night, to a paying audience that really wants your act to be over so they can see the guy they came to see. Sometimes if you see a comedian on TV who is funny, then look up his website, he'll have posted an earlier version of the exact same routine. Frank Caliendo's Bush impression comes to mind. If you look at the early videos of his routine, they are undeniably funny, but not as funny as the version he did on Letterman. That's unnatural. Most people who tell the same joke over and over again get less and less funny, but a skilled comedian is funny even if you've seen his routine a dozen times.
I think that a mania for craft is an often overlooked element of geekdom. It certainly isn't your schooling that makes you a geek; it isn't an interest in science or math. You've got to be obsessed with doing things that other people can't. Lots of guys work on cars; quite a few are good at it. But the one who spends years trying to redesign his car is a geek, no matter what other trappings his intellectual life sports. Likewise being able to work a math problem that most people can't is not necessarily geeky. Having strongly held opinions about the best way to approach certain kinds of math problems is quintessentially geeky.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Most EE's with a soldering iron make me cringe.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Over ~30 years in electronics, I have met many engineers who are whizzes with SPICE simulations or Fourier transforms, but put them on a bench
Linkage? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean, in my admittedly not so humble opinion, he's about the most overrated semi-actor I know. H