Gingrich Declared Geekiest Candidate, Geek Population Promptly Dies Off
Newt "Skywalker" Gingrich has been declared the geekiest candidate of them all in a new six-page "study" conducted by Scientific American. The criteria? Obviously not intelligence, but rather knowing stuff about topics including guns, stars, the Internet and science fiction. SciAm finds that Gingrich vastly outdoes Romney (second place, bafflingly) and Paul (third) in these categories. All three candidates rank high largely because of "ties to Silicon Valley," e.g. rich people with bold new visions of how to not have to hang out with other humans.
But Gingrich outdoes them all because he was once on the cover of Wired magazine, is into space, and lasers in space, and mirrors in space, though has not quite figured out how to soar off into it yet, and because Bob Walker, former chairman of the formerly named U.S. House Committee on Science, said Newt "would probably be the most knowledgeable president on technology issues ever elected." Also, SciAm writes:
Calling Gingrich a science-fiction nerd is like saying that vampires have seen a modest resurgence in young adult literature. He has repeatedly expressed that Isaac Asimov's seminal Foundation trilogy (about "psychohistorians" who use mathematical models to predict the future) made a deep impression on him in his youth.
And there is much more. Having loads of Twitter followers. Penning/ghostpenning alternative histories. And proposing "a private, 3-D Internet metaverse for elected officials to share ideas and best practices." OK fine, Newt, you really do win. But let's take a minute to appreciate Michele (sixth place) Bachmann's impressive ability to actually turn back time on the public's understanding of the HPV vaccine. [Scientific American]