Hello Friday: The Fiercest Nerds on the Block April 23-30

Hey guys! Make sure to stop in next week when one, possibly two HUGE announcements will be made re: your dedicated FaN editor. Oh, and if you haven’t weighed in on which photo I should get made into Michel Gondry sketch, please do so here, as I’m going by your results and sending in the photo this weekend.

Til then we had a doozy of a week in comments. Let’s revisit some of our faves:

HELLO FRIDAY

re: Wagner vs. Coachella, in which Evil E and Kasey Bomber brave a 5-hour Die Walkure and the Coachella festival respectively. So many good comments on this post, but this one actually made me want to sit through a 15-hour Ring Cycle.

Howard L: If you’ve never seen the whole RING [in] one go, I highly recommend it. Take the week off. Do it. Immerse yourself. You will never regret it. In my 20’s i was lucky enough to work on a production of it at Seattle Opera, so saw it 7 times in one summer. It remains one of the great experiences of my life.

PHILOSOPHICAL MONDAY

re: Crazy Cat Ladies Are Good Marriage Material, in which we put forth the theory that having a cat might not render single ladies undateable, based on a study which found that the cat-friendliest cities in America all had more single men than single women.

kim: ok I am not a social scientist but this study disproves nothing other than there are more single men than single in cat friendly cities. it didn’t measure WHO owns the cats. and as someone who lives near San Francisco I think I can safely say although there may be more single men than women, that doesn’t mean that the single men are down with the kitty…if you know what I am sayin’. If I am still single when I die I will be happy to know that my gravestone will read: at least she didn’t have a cat.

OH, IT’S TUESDAY

re: Political Physics: Is Obama Making the FDR Grade, in which Monique King-Viehland wonders would happen if we were all judged by our first 100 days.

(Thought) Chuck: The 100 days metric is a media red herring that news outlets use for their mindless, Twitter-like reporting. Assuming a standard 4-year term, why limit ones greatest accomplishments to the first 7% of one’s time in office? Think of how much ground-breaking legislation occured AFTER a President got the wind at his back and his full steam. And if we’re going by FDR’s standards, then we have to remember that Roosevelt’s first 100 days were a blip on the landscape of his 12 years in office. So the first 100 days for Roosevelt calculates out to roughly 2% of his total time in office – compared to a standard 4-year Presidential term, that comes out to only 30 days. How is that fair?

WOW! IT’S WEDNESDAY!

re: Technically Geeking: 94% of All Email is Spam, in which Justin Time made a rather intelligent argument for why email spam just might ruin the internet as we know it. Of course, what followed in comments was a lengthy argument on whether spam, the canned meat was tasty and much more importantly, whether I would allow my future child to wear this spam onesie. CH is for both the meat and the onesie. I said “absolutely not” to both.

Zack from “Tall Glass of Shame”: um… I have to say… I hated the stuff till I realized on skewers with some teryiyaki glaze and pineapple all grilled up at burning man, it can be a devil’s treat! It was actually delicious. Would I rush to cook it now that i’m back here in civilization… um probably not…  Now about the onesie… I see ernessa’s point, but I kind of like the whole creepy sick pop culture grossitude of it all! It also makes it appear like your child itself is spam… as if you should be looking for the pull tab… Way more creative and fun than a hipster baby Clash t-shirt…

DEAR THURSDAY

re: Thought Chuck for April 30, in which Charles Cron let us know that a grizzly bear can crush a bowling ball with its jaws. One reader had a logical follow-up question to this factoid.

Amy from “Tall Drink of Nerd”: Did you find this out by experimentally feeding a bear the bowling ball, or was the bowling ball some kind of defense against the bear that failed?