Highlights of the week include: hospitals treating victims from the Aurora massacre earn their ‘compassion’ badge, more ‘real geek girl’ controversy, 3D movie cures medical malady and Congressman seeks public help to build a better mouse-trap (err… SOPA style legislation).
All in all, it was kind of a weird week in the geek-o-verse.
Hospitals treating Aurora massacre victims show compassion
Of the five hospitals treating victims of the Aurora shooting massacre, three of them have announced that they will waive all fees and co-pays for the victims they are caring for. Many of the victims were young adults with minimal or no health insurance and hospital fees are already mounting for the victims and their families, so this move stands to significantly ease the stress for these victims who face a long road to recovery, both physically and psychologically.
According to a statement from Colorado Children’s Hospital, which treated six of the victims,
“We are committed to supporting these families as they heal…”
In addition to the move by hospitals to waive fees and co-pays, donations from Warner Brothers Studio and the public have reached nearly $2 million. The money is ear-marked for helping victims with their healthcare and rehabilitation.
“Real Geek Girl’ controversy flares once more
Honestly – can’t we get past this whole real/fake thing? Apparently not.
Stoking the fires this time was Joe Peacock a blogger for CNN’s Geek Out called out ’6 of 9′s’ — or semi-pretty girls (6′s) who can’t make it as models who head to various Cons, slap on costumes or a geeky t-shirt and immediately become ’9′s’.
“What I’m talking about is the girls who have no interest or history in gaming taking nearly naked photos of themselves with game controllers draped all over their body just to play at being a “model.” I get sick of wannabes who couldn’t make it as car show eye candy slapping on a Batman shirt and strutting around comic book conventions instead.
I’m talking about an attention addict trying to satisfy her ego and feel pretty by infiltrating a community to seek the attention of guys she wouldn’t give the time of day on the street.” – Joe Peacock
While some of Peacock’s argument seems to support geek girls (he does defend Felicia Day as a bona-fide geek girl against the accusations of Ryan Perez) he spends much of his time deriding these ’6 of 9′s’ which only succeeded in getting people up in arms again.
From The Mary-Jane to celebrities on Twitter, the ‘real/fake’ geek girl controversy is still dividing the geekdom – but Joe Scalzi’s scathing retort to Peacock ‘wins the Internet’ for the week! In short:
These are your choices. Although actually there’s a third choice: Just let her be to do her thing. Because here’s a funny fact: Her geekdom is not about you. At all. It’s about her.
Well said Mr. Scalzi!
3D movies just might be good for you…
A 67 year-old man who has suffered from stereo-blindness, a lack of depth perception cues found his condition was cured – by watching the 3D version of Martin Scorsese’s film Hugo. And people said the movies are just entertainment! Hah! Unless of course the 3D movie itself was not the miracle and it was Scorsese’s film. Either way, more research is needed. I for one and waiting for a movie (or type of movie) that can cure other things – like ingrown toenails and kidney stones.
A Congressman finally ‘smartens up’ and seeks public help
Congressman Hank Johnson of Georgia is trying an unusual tactic to gain input for creating a better mouse-trap — um…. Internet Privacy Act. In an unusual move, he turned to social media community Reddit to announced his AppRights.us initiative on July 26.
“It’s an open, bottom-up approach to drafting legislation that will protect the privacy of mobile device users.”
The move is unprecedented, as Reddit has been one of the leaders in the anti-SOPA blackout that has seen SOPA and other similar legislation fail due to a grass-roots movement of angry Internet users. Rather than seeing Reddit users as the main reason SOPA and similar legislation keep failing, Johnson is turning to Reddit users and other Internet users to seek their input for what the legislation should contain.
However, unlike previous legislation attempts, it seems that Johnson’s primary concern is actually with protecting user privacy — rather than the interests of businesses. If this is true, then he may just get the information he wants.
About Dani Lawson
Mild mannered Assistant Professor of Communication by day; geek culture maven, gamer, medieval re-enactor, fanfic author and sci-fi/fantasy freak by night. Who needs sleep, right?! She has an enduring obsession with Spike from 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer', as well as being crazy for 'Firefly', 'Eureka' and the Goblin King. In addition to raising GeekGurl2.0, she has a loving (and infinitely tolerant) hubby who patiently listens to random rantings about the need for 'more fangy vampires' and the fact that 'only the Goblin King should sparkle'. When not torturing students (or her hubby) she can be found blogging at http://geekgirlmanifesto.blogspot.com/
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