Binaries are Tools of Oppression: down with the Jock/Nerd divide!

In our collective memories of high school, rings a "truth" so frequently cited in popular discourse that rarely is it ever challenged in any substantive manner – but I honestly think that time is long overdue.

Perhaps it is the year in sports thus far - we went from the Olympics, to the NHL Playoffs right into the World Cup of Football - but I've been thinking about sport more than I like to admit. In honour of the nerdish celebration of jock culture we are currently surrounded by (only pollsters value stats more than sports fans), I think it’s time we challenge the concept of a unquestionable, insuperable abyss between the two camps of jocks and nerds.

 

Photo: me and the sysop - Flikr Creative Commons

I'm not a big fan of generalizations, though I surely make them all the time, but I truly disdain the simplistic, reductionist principle that one cannot be effectively both a jock and a nerd. Frankly, I believe the best jocks are likely nerds - of sport - if nothing else. While I'm not sure that the opposite claim can also be made - I may explore this thesis for a future PhD dissertation. It's just that important to me.

Consider the following:

San Diego Padres pitcher Chris Young went to Princeton wrote a senior thesis entitled The Integration of Professional Baseball and Racial Attitudes in America: A Study in Stereotype Change, which examined the impact Jackie Robinson and the integration of Major League Baseball had on attitudes and stereotypes regarding race in the media. Man, that sounds pretty damn nerdy.

Anaheim Ducks right wing George Parros also attended Princeton, majored in economics and maintained a B-average, had a GPA of approximately 3.18  - presumably while training intensively for his sport.

Free agent utility player Eric Bruntlett attained a degree in economics in just 3 1/2 years, recorded an SAT score of 1440, posted a 3.97 GPA in high school, started studying algebra when his parents introduced him to it when he was in first grade. Such early signs of nerd-hood, are particularly interesting - he was likely nerdy long before knowing he was also a jock.

Anyway - enough with the anecdotal stuff. There are SO many such examples to be found on the interweb. Many of these men chose sport over knowledge work, as it can be so lucrative and presumably because sport was their true passion. I had a harder time finding female athletes for this exercise - presumably because the comparable women are likely more notable for their knowledge careers, given the relative dearth of women known for their professional athletic carriers. Moreover, searching anything about female athletes always leads to a plethora of "100 Hottest Female Athletes" lists - which despite my orientation, I find rather tedious. However, during my lifetime of playing a variety of sports, I've noticed that the best athletes have been what one might conventionally consider highly intelligent - as they generally have a better grasp of the training and strategy needed to excel in their sports.

Further, in a Northwestern State University study it was discovered that 133 "student athletes" were on the school's honour roll, and a full 21 students had achieved a 4.0 average. (Not knowing how many students in total qualify as "student athletes" makes it hard to interpret the study results as significant or not - but that academics are excited enough to talk about the findings to the media, suggests a certain degree of significance).

I think it's high time to acknowledge the false divide between jocks and nerds. I would suggest just like the controversial concept of "highly intelligent beautiful people", the idea that someone can be both kinestheticly wise and intelligent in more academic ways seems unfair in the grand scheme of things. Well guess what? Life is not fair. Deal with it. And while you are at it put your kids into sports - especially your daughters - you never know, it might help with their math grades. 

Note: I recognize that rhetoric around Nerd/Jock relations is incomplete without addressing the issue of Preps. I feel the particular tension between the two former groups requires careful attention and at this point I did not want to burden this foundational issue with additional complexity.

Boozer Bookshelf

I've been collecting wine bottles - attempting occasionally - mostly unsuccessfully - to make drinking glasses out of them. I had a few of these blue Aufkellerein bottles kicking around when the need for more book storage became evident.

After a visit to Instructables.com I found a great idea for this little boozy bookshelf project. And voila - an afternoon, several nights of drinking white wine in the park with my sweetheart, and a trip to the hardware store later: a lovely little place to house the children of my Amazon.ca addiction.

The best of Target Women

The great thing about living in a 1,000 channel universe is the increased likelihood that there will be something worth watching on TV.  Most auspicious for us is the coming together of both a 1,000 channel universe and the internet age, meaning that in order to watch said "good TV", you don't really need a TV at all.

As evidence, I present you the best of "Target Women", a regular segment on infomania,  where comedian Sarah Haskins considers the often ridiculous way marketers and the media more generally "reach out" to women. Smart, sad and funny all at the same time.

Overcoming the tyranny of common sense

Sir Robinson is charming, insightful man who has now given two fabulous talks about creativity and learning. So he's basically one of my growing lists of nerd-heros.

He's calling for a revolution in education - one that is personalized and creates the conditions for meaningful and passionate learning.

More cool recycling ideas from Montreal coffee shops...

I love glass walls - but they are so blinking expensive. Unless, of course you run a coffee shop with an alcohol licence and a clientele that has a taste for Moosehead. Check out this great glass wall at Le Caffè Mariani (4450 Notre-Dame ouest - in St. Henri)

The two sides of the glass wall - stacked Moosehead bottles, stuck together and encased in a thick welded metal frame.

EcoBooth design facilitation follow-up.

Photo from M. Bernier

In February, I was fortunate enough to act as the facilitator for a green building charette at École Polytechnique de Montréal.  Clearly the students got busy shortly thereafter - because by the end of the semester, they had a completed building on their campus. Defying at least part of the cardinal law of real estate development - thou shall double your budget and timeline in half the time planned - they put this little gem together in no time (e.g. about two months from our meeting in February). No word on the budget - but there appear to be many sponsors for the whole project, so I hope that means this little project won't be haunting departmental budgetary meetings for too long.  

The challenge was to design, develop and build a booth for a parking lot attendant that a) does not have to be connected to an energy grid; b) must be thermally comfortable for the occupant; c) while not occupied the internal temperature must stay between 0 and 40°C; and all while being d) collapsible and transportable. No small feat, for a little building. 

What they developed is called S.P.A.R.K. - or Solar Powered Autonomous Renewable Energy Kabin - if you want to get all technical. Engineering students and their clever branding! As you can see from the picture, the booth is powered by three 210w Kyocera solar panels, which have been paired with 6 batteries, to allow for energy storage. The wee building will produce 645 kWh annual and is able to store 8.3 kWh.

The students investigated three separate envelop designs and compared their cycle of life impacts on the environment, before choosing to compose the walls of Roxul R22, Enermax pannels and MDF, the ceiling of Pare-air Tyvek, Celfort 300, MDF, and the floor of fibre cement board. The generous fenestration is triple glazed, and allows for substantial solar gains.  

What an awesome project! Congrats to Prof. Bernier for offering his students this practical learning experience and here is hoping they have many green buildings in their futures. 

Oh hello blog. It's you again.

Yep, like most bloggers on occasion... I fell off the bandwagon in terms of writing. I'm fine with it. Life's like that. I've been playing a crazy amount of derby in other cities and have been loving every moment of it - something has got to give, and it's not going to be work or derby.

Besides writing another thing I haven't been doing very much of is reading for pleasure. However, I did manage to pick up a copy of Dan Pink's A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future while wondering JFK a few weeks ago, and plowed through it on the flight home. I like a writer that theorizes and then gives you the opportunity to put some ideas to practice, and Pink does just that by providing the reader with a goodly number of exercises that one can undertake in order to better get in touch with the creative brain. One such exercise is to maintain a design journal, where you can note (in writing or in images) both good and bad design - in an effort to encourage a higher level of design consciousness within the practitioner. While I would suggest I'm often excited by good design, I must honestly say that I spend more time being critical of bad design and now I have an excuse to compile the two and see if I can learn something in the process. Or at least have a good coffee in the process - which is what happened today:

L'Emporte-Pièce is a new restaurant in the Plateau. It's tiny, really cute and the gentleman behind the counter can make a mean soy-latte. You should go and check it out. And pay attention to the chairs - if you are a fan of the STM you may recognize them - they are old bus seats. The guy behind the counter, presumably the owner (or one thereof), said he bought them from the STM for a steal and refashioned them into seats of the shop. Clever man. They are super durable and look great in the eclectic design of the shop, which seems to be heavily reliant of the clever re-use of a old objects and materials. The coffee appears to be all new though, so don't worry about that.  

Awesome re-use of STM chairs at L'Emporte-Pièce.