Flaunting ignorance

You'll often hear people proudly stating that they don't know the first thing about computers or "math is for nerds".
I've been known to do it too. I'll act proud that I don't know anything about sports. "Who won the World Series in 1972?" I have no idea, and I'm proud that I don't. Why? Because this means I have better things to do than waste my time watching sports. (By golly, there are a million Starship classes from Star Trek that I gotta learn to recognize at sight!)

The problem is that not wasting time watching sports may be a good thing, but it doesn't mean that the time was better spent. Maybe you just played Quake instead.

What you should flaunt, if anything, is what you learned while other people learned sports scores, not what you didn't learn.

Knowing basic math doesn't make you a nerd, it just makes you a not an idiot.

"There's a 50% chance of rain saturday, and a 50% chance of rain on sunday, so there's a 100% chance of rain this weekend.

IMO, this idiocy can be attributed in two words: "Popular culture". The roots of the assertions that "Math is for nerds" and "Only geeks use computers" can be traced back into the age of immaturity known as middle school and high school. In that environment, achievers and smart kids are looked down upon due to the popularity of underachievement.

So, if you are good at math, in your world (at that time, school), you are ridiculed for being a "nerd". It is their loss really. In 5 years the nerds will make 100 times more money than all those jocks and cheerleaders put together.

The thing is, if one person spends his meager brainpower memorizing sports stats or you spend your considerably higher level of brainpower memorizing Star Trek ships doesn't really matter. Let them do what they want. To hell with them.

If popular culture dictates that knowing math makes you a geek, then I am a geek. And proud of it.

BTW, in the 1972 World Series, the Oakland Athletics beat the Cincinnati Reds, 4-3.