It is pretty damn annoying. Even though you dawned a pair of glasses with thick rims and play the occasional video game, you are not a nerd. You still failed physics 101. I see the acceptance of the 'nerd' culture, but it's not like society is encouraging high levels of education or creativity than it ever was. So the fad really left the valuable part of being a nerd behind, which isn't really surprising.
Really? Physics might not be the most intuitive of things, but personally, I find languages worse than physics. And is it just me, but isn't physics 101 (or in my case, high school physics in class 1, 2 and 3) just one big exercise in finding the correct formula and filling in the correct values?
You would be surprised by how many people have difficulty with the plug-the-numbers-into-the-formula type of work. The major problem many students have is in identifying what the correct formula to apply is. Typically in algebra-based intro to physics the hardest any problem is going to be is two equations and two unknowns, algebra that should have been learned in early high school. But even if the algebra isn't a problem, getting some students to recognize which variable stands for what physical entity is sometimes harder than it should be. Maybe it is one of the downsides of letting everybody into college in the US. There are a lot of upsides to that, too, but its certainly a two sided coin.
I agree. It's not like the media is promoting the importance of better/higher education and the importance of constantly learning to better oneself. All they're doing is making the so called 'nerds' look like some terminally annoying snooty people. What is more infuriating, is putting the nerd label on anyone who has read a book. Go figure! Apparently the quality of the literature and knowledge is none of their concern as far as you look like a total dork and hold a book in your hand. I watched the commercial and cringed the whole time. Yikes!