Here are some relevant links people sent me during my travels, plus a couple I just stumbled upon today. I haven’t had a chance to read them myself yet.

Cabral sends along this Marketplace story about Sweet on Geeks, a geek dating site. Also worth noting: Geek 2 Geek.

Dan Moren sends along a link from Stop Motion Verbosity with a photo that shows George Lucas wearing a “Han Shot First” t-shirt while standing with Harrison Ford. If the irony of this is lost on you, take a glance at this Wikipedia article.

Emily didn’t actually send me this link about trading puzzles, but it was funny and interesting enough that I had to link to it myself. The key exchange:

I called the guy around 2 in the afternoon (on a Thursday). Is it strange he was home?

Umm… the guy spends his time doing jigsaw puzzles of a certain size and then swaps them with strangers. I would honestly expect him to be home at 2pm on a Thursday afternoon.

I also happened upon this post on Game Politics about Jerald Block, a psychiatrist who seems to have published a peer-reviewed article in American Journal of Forensic Psychiatry arguing that deprivation of Doom may have been somewhat responsible for triggering the violent tragedy at Columbine. I have to read the whole article, but it seemed worth posting as a follow-up to my recent comments on catharsis and restricting media access.

Mike relays this Vice story sent to me by Jade, an Annenberg “cousin” at USC. The article is about “The Gathering,” a “Geek Utopia” LAN party with “5,500 teenage nerds in a massive, chilly, smelly auditorium in Hamar, Norway.” The main points of interest to the author were the rampant piracy, obsessive sleep deprivation, occasional unexpected sexual behavior, and the observation that the “nerds” (not clear if those present actually called themselves this) seemed to be “speaking another language.” After three days at Comic Con, I honestly can’t tell if Vice picked a pathetically tame example of nerd jargon, or if I’ve just become so immersed in geek culture that I don’t notice when it’s being spoken. Probably the latter, as I was about to write, “like when Harry Potter hears Parseltongue and interprets it as English.”

And finally, my advisor sends along this MSNBC story about a navy man who traveled 1,300 miles to set a guy’s trailer on fire for calling him a “nerd” on the internet. This is definitely not funny, but I can’t end this post without noting that this may be the most literal flame war ever.