wotiwrote

I've put my name down to attend a geek dinner in London next month. Robert Scoble, who is single-handedly making Microsoft look like a software company once more, will attend. It's being organised this end by Hugh MacLeod, whose cartoons on gapingvoid are not to be missed. You've missed them? Well get there and have a look. Now.

For anyone wondering whether they qualify as a geek, a short visit to the Shorter Oxford Dictionary is a must. You'll note that I've broken blogging conventions and provided no link. Well, this particular Shorter Oxford is on my desk and I don;t want you all clumping across my workspace with your great big shoes and upsetting the photographs of my children. Anyway, what does the dictionary say about geeks? This:

geek noun. L19. (that means the word was first used in the late 19th century) A simpleton, a dupe; a person who is socially inept or boringly conventional or studious.

Not a winning combination for dinner, I guess. Socially inept or boringly conventional. Thank god it's not both at the same time.

But there's more. There's another variation:

An assistant at a sideshow whose purpose is to appear as an object of disgust or derision.

So it appears that the women I've met at parties and discos over the years were simply reacting accurately. Who would have guessed the definition was so widely known?