The Updated Great Bearded Geek Study

in #geek8 years ago

Derived from the better-known Eric Conspiracy, this does not attempt to prove the Eric-ness of the world, but rather to determine whether bearded Geeks (homo sapiens numerorum et barbam) are sufficiently distinguishable as a subspecies.

So, here is my attempt at a preliminary survey.

Numerorum Et BarbamGeek Sans Barbam
Bob PeaseLinus Torvalds
Dennis RitchieJim Williams
Ken ThompsonTom Kilburn
Ian BellDavid Braben
Richard StallmanSeymour Cray
Alan CoxRobert Love
James GoslingCon Kolivas
Brian KernighanAndrea Arcangeli
Philip WadlerIngo Molnar
John Horton ConwayPaul Erdos
Grigori PerelmanFred Broadhurst
John McCarthyHarold Scott MacDonald Coxeter
Niklaus WirthDonald Knuth

From this, we may conclude that the designation of numerorum is not dependent on the designation of barbam, and vice versa.

What can we conlude, however? It would seem obvious that there is a qualitative difference between the two columns, bears notwithstanding.

I think I am going to leave that one open for discussion. However, as with the Vi vs Emacs debate, paintball seems a decent substitute. In light of the infirmity of those still alive, Netrek II (Chaos rules) or XTank (if anyone can get the server fixed) might be in order. Bots can then take the place of the dead, coded the way they would have wanted.

Sort:  

Hm. What about geeks who shave only at irregular intervals? What's latin for stubbly?

Well, you have a choice of "horridulus" or "quinque meridianus umbra". The first works better with traditional classification systems, though.

I upvote U