Geek Quotient: 8.7

Okay, I've made no secret of it that I am a geek. I have officially rated my interest in this radio show (that's right, I said radio show) as a 8.7 on the Geek Quotient Scale. Similar to the Richter Scale, the GQS is logarithmic; therefore, a GQ of 7 is effectively ten times geekier than a GQ of 6. Don't ask what the GQ of rating according to the GQS is: it's too high to measure.

But what can I say? I'm a sucker for the tidbits and connections to life that Dr. John Lienhard offers up in this weekly radio series, Engines of our Ingenuity. A professor of mechanical engineering and history at The University of Houston, he brings an interesting and unique view to how technology has influenced our lives. This has been a long-time interest, dating back to an undergraduate class I took on the history of science - very enlightening. For example, the common notion that when Christopher Columbus sailed in 1492 the majority of the world disbelieved his notion that the earth was round, favoring a "flat earth" theory. Wrong! The first measurements of the circumference of the earth go back to at least 230 B.C. and Eratosthenes. The only argument Columbus had with scientists was that he was intentionally choosing estimates of the earth's circumference that were small enough to make it seem that sailing west from Europe to reach China would be feasible.

Anyway, back to the radio show. How can you not find it interesting that one of the first computing uses was in the tracking of tickets of the burgeoning airline industry? Or that marbles in something like a gumball machine was the big step up from acres of chalkboards, before computers came on the scene. Or that TWA spent almost a half billion inflation-adjusted dollars in an attempt to build a reservation system named George - as in "go ask George" - before it had to scrap the project and start over?

Consider shoes. A great study was done on the shoes worn by Ötzi, a Stone Age dweller whose preserved frozen body was discovered in the Alps in 1991. The shoes were complex. The leather on the bottom was from a bear, cured in a mixture of bears brains and fat from its liver. Deer leather formed the top. All this was mounted on a mesh of braided linden bark with bindings made of calf leather, straw for insulation, and moss as lining. Recreations of the shoes prove to be warm, even in cold water, with excellent traction and no opportunity for blisters. In fact, Ötzi may have been better shod 5300 years ago, than we are today!

Seriously, if you've any geek in you - even the slightest bit - you should check this out. Transcripts are available for all 2273 episodes, along with the audio for each. You can try to find Engines on a local PBS station. Or you can listen to podcasts of the latest episodes.

Now, go geek out for an hour and get lost in the history of technology.

(Maybe I should file this under "Posts that amply demonstrate why it is you should make a point of ignoring me"?)

Tags: Science, History, Engines of our Ingenuity, John Lienhard, Circumference of the Earth, Eratosthenes, Christopher Columbus, Airline Ticketing, Computers, Ötzi, Shoes, Geek, Red Green Show