Top Ten Geek Girls 560
TurboPatrol writes "CNET have published a list of the Top Ten Girl Geeks throughout history. The winners include the elegant Ada Byron (the world's first computer programmer), Grace Hopper (invented the compiler) and Lisa Simpson (invented the perpetual motion machine — well, in the world of cartoons). Some of the entries are fascinating, for example Marie Curie apparently used to carry plutonium in her jacket pockets. Have they missed anyone out?" At least two entries on the list are stupid. I guess someone thought they were funny.
Real geeks only please (Score:5, Insightful)
Lisa Simpson? (Score:5, Insightful)
where the hell (Score:4, Insightful)
Cynthia Breazeal! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yuck. (Score:5, Insightful)
A girl geek friend of mine works for CNet. I wonder how well her and her fellows are taking this.
Paris Hilton or Madame Curie... hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
I give up.
Re:Lisa Simpson? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Real geeks only please (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, that just insulted girl geeks everyone,
Re:paris hilton? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Real geeks only please (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Me and my joystick (Score:3, Insightful)
Come one... this
Re:Leah? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Real geeks only please (Score:5, Insightful)
It must be very empowering to women to know that it's apparently impossible to compile a list of even ten prominent geek women without padding it with fictional characters and vacuous celebrities.
-Eric
Where the hell is Kari? (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF?! Some of the entries are total bullsh*t. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the f**k is Darryl Hannah on this list? She not a f**king geek! She's a left-wing, activist actress! Oh, wow, she made two board games. So what? That does not qualify her to bear the category of "geek" in any way, shape, or form.
Lisa Simpson? Paris Hilton? Others have discussed the stupidity of these entries, so I'm not going to bother reiterating them.
Why the hell are two of the most prominent girl geeks around not on this list -- Aluria Petrucci (aka Cali Lewis) and Amber McArthur [tv.com]? Cali Lewis is one of the most famous tech geeks out there with her GeekBrief.TV video podcast that gets tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of downloads every day. Even if she's just a nice-on-the-eyes presenter, she still has far more qualifications than Hanna, Simpson, or Hilton. And Amber McArthur is just about every geek's wet dream - intelligent (holds several college degrees), co-host and producer of several tech podcasts and TVs shows, host of commandN video podcast, clearly has a love for tech, and is incredibly easy on the eyes.
I certainly can agree with Marie Curie, Ada Byron, and the others. I'll even give the nod to Mary Shelley. But some of the entires in this list completely destroy the credibility of whoever the person is who made this list.
Re:Real geeks only please (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, you go to space, you blog about it, the blog gets slashdotted. And you don't even beat Paris Hilton in geekiness? Nothing to see here, move along.
No Emmy Noether? (Score:4, Insightful)
Despite the incredible sexism and rise of the nazi rule that she faced during her day, she was brilliantly accomplished, contributing huge amounts to the fields of commutative algebra and theoretical physics.
Re:Cynthia Breazeal! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:where the hell (Score:5, Insightful)
It annoys me that these were the 10 women (Paris Hilton, et al) they chose. It must be really insulting, when they leave out so many serious 'girl geeks' that actually did have a positive impact on the world.
Where the hell is Radia Perlman? (Score:3, Insightful)
Spanning Tree algorithm...she even wrote a poem about it- and she is not a top ten geek girl? And Paris Hilton is? You sure this list isn't the top ten Greek (screwing) girls?
I think this list is meant more for entertainment than fact- even if it is just someone's opinion.
The list is an insult to women (Score:3, Insightful)
Having filler like Lisa Simpson is bad enough, but Paris Hilton?
If the list were of the top 10 men, would it include Dilbert and some-random-male-gameplaying-celebrity?
Honestly, there are lots of girl geeks (a lot have been mentioned in other posts, I'd like to add Jeri Ellsworth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeri_Ellsworth)) that would far better fit the list.
The only thing this list proves, it the author's inaptitude as a journalist.
Re:Real geeks only please (Score:3, Insightful)
Lisa Simpson is clearly a girl-geek role model, even if she's a cartoon.
Aleks Krotoski spends a lot of time advocating 'girl-video gaming' according to her Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org], though I've never heard of her.
I have yet to RTFA, but I'm wondering how they drew the line. For example, many geek guys are fans of Ripley from the Alien movies, but SHE is more of a strong female character than a geek per se. Same goes (though without the teen drooling) for Eleanor Roosevelt who was an iconic strong woman with a powerful presence, but not even remotely a geek. On the other hand, I'd say that every woman on the list of female Nobel Prize Laureates [wikipedia.org] is worth a spot on such a list, but very few were strong personalities, and thus are typically not recognized even when their contributions were enormous.
Re:Real geeks only please (Score:4, Insightful)
On the flip side I don't see anything wrong with the occasional silly entry. Say if this list was a solid 9 geeky women and one Lisa Simpson that's cute. If its 5 solid women and 5 fluff women, then its silly bordering on insulting.
Me (Score:2, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Real geeks only please (Score:2, Insightful)
Everyone is pointing out the silly choices and the huge number of worthy candidates not on the list. But I think the most poignant line is the bit about Rosalind Franklin where it says something about DNA and X-ray crystallography (and I've lost the quote because I closed the page and now it's slashdotted - d'oh) and then says in brackets "don't ask". This is supposed to be about geeks ffs, and asking is the first thing geeks do. This just shows that cnet is about the geek as a passing trend, and has nothing to do with intellectualism.
Oh, and I vote for Lisa Randall [harvard.edu] :)
Re:Real geeks only please (Score:5, Insightful)
Geek is very chic nowadays, lots of people who are not geeks *wish they were*. Geek is in.
Re:Real geeks only please (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree. It's chic to say geek is chic, but it's not actually cool to be a geek. Never has been, never will be.
Some geeks may manage to be cool, but that's in spite of their geekiness, not because of it.
Re:The list is an insult to women (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Real geeks only please (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The list is an insult to women (Score:2, Insightful)
Also why is Mary Shelley on there? She wrote a book that has a "robot" in it? Wow she's really geeky... isn't she?
Ah yes, being one of the pioneers of science fiction gives her no right to be considered a geek.
Re:The list is an insult to women (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll say -- fuck that list and just read something like this [wikipedia.org].
Mary Anning - paleontologist (Score:1, Insightful)
What a lame list that they had to add fictional characters and Paris Hilton to fill out the list.
Re:Real geeks only please (Score:1, Insightful)
Unshunned does not equal Successful, which is what you're implying here. Unshunned equals Popular, which is another thing altogether. After high school, success can be defined any number of ways other than popularity -- even *in* high school if you're deprogrammed enough.
If they were looking for a "gamer" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:WTF?! Some of the entries are total bullsh*t. (Score:2, Insightful)
Agreed, and may I add that some of the entries completely nullify the validity of the list? Yea, varily, some of the entries will outright downgrade the others on the list. It makes me ashamed to call myself a girl geek, (even though I don't even speak or write a word of C).
To make a list as this one and post it on Slashdot is positively insulting to all those women (see other comments) who are first class geeks. The only thing Curie and Hilton have in common is their gender; to compare Marie Curie with Paris Hilton is to call an apple 'an interesting new kind of plastics'.