Free Republic

1. Alexis Latifi: A rare gem Age: 24 Hometown: Huntsville, Ala. Political party: Republican Relationship status: Single Meet Alexis Latifi: raw foodist, bikram yogi, jewelry maker. Latifi moved to Washington from her native Alabama last fall and has enjoyed taking her unique interests to a higher level. ************************* 2. Laura Donahoe: The fan Age: 24 Hometown: Selinsgrove, Pa. Political party: Republican Relationship status: Single Laura Donahoe may be a small-town girl from central Pennsylvania, but she’s right at home in the District. ********************** 3. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand: Supermom Age: 43 Hometown: Hudson, N.Y. Political party: Democratic Relationship status: Married If...

THE next time you want to bag the bonk of your life, you need a partner who knows a lot about your hardware. While computer nerds are obviously good at IT, what we didn't realise is that they're good at "it" too. An anonymous study of 2,000 British men and women concluded that out of all jobs, computer geeks make the best lovers. They were found to be the most selfless in the sack, the most adventurous and more likely to use love gadgets. Seventy-eight per cent of techies that were questioned also claimed that sex toys were part of...

2 guys who are wooping on each other using computer keyboards...

It's sweltering in Boston, and a dozen Tufts University coeds are out in shorts and tanks, attracting the usual stares. Only today the stares are for a different reason: the girls are huddled around a 750-pound machine that looks like a spaceship, long and wide with a bubble-shaped cockpit open to reveal a mass of pipes and wires. It's actually a solar car—one they've built from the ground up and hope to race next year. Suddenly sparks fly, and the girls jump back. They may be engineering whizzes, but they know a hazard when they see one. They call a...

The debate is on: The widely circulated photograph of Barack Obama on a bicycle this last weekend either did the presidential candidate no favors, or actually helped his cause. In an article in today's New York Daily News, writer David Saltonstall shows no mercy, declaring: "It wasn't a pretty picture: ill-fitting jeans, a tucked-in golf shirt, black-and-white socks and a helmet that could make Michael Dukakis blush." A weekend in Chicago spent by presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama included a bicycle ride with his family Yet in comments to Saltonstall, some Big Apple fashionistas cut Obama major slack. Simon...

When we were in junior high school, my friend Rich and I made a map of the school lunch tables according to popularity. This was easy to do, because kids only ate lunch with others of about the same popularity. We graded them from A to E. A tables were full of football players and cheerleaders and so on. E tables contained the kids with mild cases of Down's Syndrome, what in the language of the time we called "retards." We sat at a D table, as low as you could get without looking physically different. We were not being...

Sample question: While not at work working, what do you spend most of your time on the computer doing? Doing work I rarely use a computer away from work Chatting, and/or using MySpace, Facebook, etc... Reading technology news (e.g. Slashdot, Digg, TechWeb, CNet, etc...) Playing video games Doing random stuff Porn

ELM MOTT, Texas - A Navy man who got mad when someone mocked him as a "nerd" over the Internet climbed into his car and drove 1,300 miles from Virginia to Texas to teach the other guy a lesson. As he made his way toward Texas, Fire Controlman 2nd Class Petty Officer Russell Tavares posted photos online showing the welcome signs at several states' borders, as if to prove to his Internet friends that he meant business. When he finally arrived, Tavares burned the guy's trailer down. This week, Tavares, 27, was sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading...

Sunday morning at three minutes and four seconds after 2 a.m., it will be exactly 02:03:04 05/06/07. And if you find that so astounding that you won't be able to sleep until you've experienced this once-in-a-century sequence, you are, in case you didn't know … a nerd. A numbers nerd, that is. No shame in that — I'm one, too. (Hey: one, too. Cool numbers are everywhere.) Folks like us find it hard not to shout, "Look! It's 12:34!" Even 2:34 is sweet, as are 1:23, 3:45, and of course 4:56. And when it's 11:11 — well, it just doesn't...

Originally scheduled to be shot at Emory, the remake of "Revenge of the Nerds," the 1984 film in which a group of bookish and socially awkward outcasts band together to fight their oppressive bullies, has been cancelled, Fox Atomic Films announced last week. The magazine explained that filmmakers' concerns with the direction of the movie prompted the decision to cancel, but some movie bloggers blamed Emory for the shutdown. McClurkin said the filmmakers initially proposed to the University a crew of about 100 people with three trucks of equipment. But the filmmakers' final proposal called for about three times as...

First prize winner, for sure. Today I am announcing this column's inaugural blue ribbon award for the totally dorkiest look of the year. There's no contest here. Without any doubt, the dumbest sight anywhere in 2006 is a human ear with a Bluetooth technology device sticking out. For starters, it looks ridiculous — like a reject part from the Borg (evil cyberbeings). Is anyone so important she or he must be linked to Verizon Wireless or Cingular or any mobile service on an 24/7 basis? I don't think so. And if one has to be on call for any reason,...

Rocket scientists, long considered the gold standard in intelligence among all professionals, are not nearly as smart as originally thought, according to a controversial new study published today by the American Association of Brain Surgeons. The study, which appears in the organization's monthly publication, Popular Brain Surgery, is entitled "The Intelligence of Rocket Scientists: Myth Versus Reality," and suggests that rocket scientists' reputation for smartness is largely undeserved. "It does require a superior intellect to function as a rocket scientist," the article concedes. "Having said that, though, rocket science is not brain surgery." The article drew an immediate rebuke from...

http://graphics10.nytimes.com/images/2006/09/17/fashion/17vows.600.jpg Adam Berger and Stephen Frank By KATHRYN SHATTUCK THEY had been close friends for years, first at college and later in New York, but now Adam Berger was baring his soul to Stephen Frank. “I have news: I don’t play on your team,” he said, adapting the line from “Seinfeld.” They had gotten to know each other as freshmen at Harvard. As college progressed, they became best friends, dated women and ultimately became suite mates. They bickered, they quibbled, they finished each other’s sentences practically before the one speaking knew what he was actually going to say. So much...

World of Warcraft is what's called an MMORPG - a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game, for you non-geeks - and like all computer games, it has its share of goobers who take the game way too seriously. This video makes fun of said goobers. Watch it at your peril - both because it contains profanity, and because if you know anyone like this, your face will hurt from laughing.

Have fun! I'm just a low-ranked nerd.

On the O'Reilly Factor just now, Schumer is spinning his crap and hilariously just called Justice Alito "slightly nerdy". I know this isn't newsworthy, but there's hypocrisy and then there's hypocrisy.

The world is moving into a new age of numbers. Partnerships between mathematicians and computer scientists are bulling into whole new domains of business and imposing the efficiencies of math. This has happened before. In past decades, the marriage of higher math and computer modeling transformed science and engineering. Quants turned finance upside down a generation ago. And data miners plucked useful nuggets from vast consumer and business databases. But just look at where the mathematicians are now. They're helping to map out advertising campaigns, they're changing the nature of research in newsrooms and in biology labs, and they're enabling...

Feature A Guy Named Craig How a schlumpy IBM refugee found you your apartment, your boyfriend, your new couch, your afternoon sex partner—and now finds himself killing your newspaper. By Philip Weiss Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, in his San Francisco apartment.(Photo credit: Robyn Twomey) The Exploder of Journalism and I have an appointment at noon at a café near the Haight in San Francisco, and he’s right on time in the Kangol hat. To be honest, he’s not much to look at: short and balding, with a little smile and round cheeks with bright-pink patches of color. Modish...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A team of researchers at Central Missouri State University has discovered the largest known prime number, university officials said Tuesday. The researchers, led by associate dean Steven Boone and mathematics professor Curtis Cooper, are affiliated with a worldwide computing project that uses volunteers to run software that searches for an elusive set of numbers called Mersenne primes. A prime number is a positive number that is only divisible by itself and one: 2, 3, 5, 7 and so on. Mersenne primes are a special category, expressed as 2 to the "p" power minus 1, where "p"...