nerds

Holiday travel, with the sheer volume of travelers and the potential for bad weather, seldom goes according to plan. If you are a frequent or even occasional air traveler, then you likely have an app or two on your phone that keep you apprised of your flight status. But I doubt you have an app that can answer the following questions:

"How do I get from Terminal A to Terminal B?"

"What are my ground transportation options?"

"Do I buy a soda and a soggy slice of Sbarro now, or can I get a beer … Read more

Intelligence gets you nowhere. Being right is as overrated as A-Rod.

That has, at least, been my impression of the world as we know it. I feel uplifted, therefore, that this view -- so often derided as cynical -- has now been confirmed by economists.

Large brains from as far apart as Chicago and the U.K.'s Essex (under the guise of the National Bureau of Economic Research) have concluded that the mere idea that nerds will have their revenge and soar like Shrek into money and love is just so much Hollywood bunkum.

I am indebted to The Atlantic … Read more

Low Latency is a weekly comic on CNET's Crave blog written by CNET editor and podcast host Jeff Bakalar and illustrated by Blake Stevenson. Be sure to check Crave every Thursday at 8 a.m. PT for new panels! Want more? Here's every Low Latency comic so far.

Some people watch the Wampa cave scene from "Star Wars" and think, "Look out! Wampa attack!" Others watch it and think, "I could make a dress out of that!"

Nerd Alert Designs falls into the latter camp. The geeky Etsy store is full of custom dresses with "Star Wars" themes.

One of the most impressive of the lot is the $130 Wampa dress crafted of fake white fur with a bomber-style horned hat and clawed boot covers. A little touch of blood on the chest really makes it pop.… Read more

Trendsetting fashion site The Sartorialist be damned! Everyone knows the geeky guys featured on Nerd Boyfriend dress much, much classier.

And now it looks like the geeky girls will get their own chance to stumble strut down the virtual runway too.

Hubba hubba: Nerd Girlfriend has arrived!

Debut "cover girl" Gilda Radner is somewhat surprisingly not in Lisa Loopner garb, but then, that's one of the things we've always liked about Nerd Boyfriend: in addition to nailing the thick-rimmed stereotype in spot-on but unexpected ways, NBF is very good at offering up a nerdy revelation or two.

In part that's because the site doesn't limit "nerd" to the tech-, science-, or intellectually oriented. And we agree: a nerd is a nerd--and though we might not always be able to define the term with slide-rule precision, we know one when we see one.… Read more

There's always at least one person on your holiday shopping list you put off as long as possible because he or she is such a pain to find something for.

You know these kinds of people. The insufferable wiseacre who insists he's easy to shop for when he's constantly looking for weird movies no one has heard of (more accurately, ones no one wants to watch), or talks about how he needs to add to his collection of '70s and '80s TV commercials. They're like gift hipsters. It would be too easy to just get them something readily available.

These are the people for whom gift cards were created.

Ah, but it doesn't have to be that way. With a minimum of fuss, you can get something unusual for that precious snowflake in your life without having to leave the house. Here, in no particular order, are five Crave-worthy ideas that don't involve your online shopping history being inexorably linked to movies with titles like "Blood Freak" or "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies." … Read more

It's 11/11/11 and it's episode 100 of Reporters' Roundtable. Sounds like an excuse for a predictions show. So here, without further hand-waving justification, are me and Tom Merritt of Tech News Today on TWiT going through 11 categories of tech predictions for the next 11 years. Or 11 months. It varies.

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… Read more

The Halloween trend for women, it seems, has been to get sexier and more revealing every year. I'd be lying if I said I think that's a bad thing, but there's a problem. Some things should never, ever be made sexy--like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Optimus Prime, or Ghostbusters.

The problem is that not everyone agrees. So there is a Sexy Ghostbuster costume. And a sexy Iron Man getup. And a sexy Optimus Prime outfit.

Unless your Internet connection lives under a rock, you've probably seen the sexy Chewbacca costume that made the rounds a couple of weeks ago. It's disturbing, but just the tip of the sexy-costume-trend iceberg.

I've done some digging at a wonderfully insane Web site called Buy Costumes and have hereby compiled a list of the 10 worst "sexy" costumes that would enrage, entice, or just plain confuse any self-aware geek. Starting with:

10. Sexy Ghostbuster It would be easy to start this one out with a "who you gonna call?" joke, but that would validate that this costume has anything to do with the awesomeness that is "Ghostbusters" aside from a logo. I simply will not do that. The Sexy Ghostbuster costume contains a revealing dress, Ghostbusters-logo hat, and a fake Proton Pack. Because a real Proton Pack would be cost-prohibitive.

9. Sexy Tin Man from "Wizard of Oz" I'm so confused here. The Tin Man is called the Tin Man, with "man" as part of his name. But they're calling this the Tin Woman. Whatever, the Tin Man showed no skin. Know why not? Because he had no skin, he was made of tin. That's why his name wasn't the Skin Man.

8. Ms. Kruger, aka Sexy Freddie I get the idea here: You're a girl who needs to make a splash (slash?) at a Halloween party. You want to be scary and sexy at the same time. Combining the "Nightmare on Elm Street" villain with a short, ripped dress seems like a no-brainer, but I'm lost on this one. Maybe I'm a delicate guy, but the clawed hand isn't one I'd want to hold while bobbing for apples. Or any time. … Read more

When I was a kid, I'd wear an old bathrobe I found in a closet as a Jedi robe. I'd pull out my plastic lightsaber and battle Sith lords in my backyard. In a neat extension on my childhood Sith wars, Lucasfilm is now marketing an actual bathrobe that's Jedi-style, and it's kinda cool.

It's a one-size-fits-all affair, is made of cotton velour, and features an awesome Galactic Republic logo right over the heart. It's $70 on preorder right now, and it ships in November.

You'll have to come up with the rest … Read more