"Bright"?

[mmcirvin]

I'm with Andrew on the whole "bright" thing:

"Hi this is my friend Sparkles, and we're both Brights, and every Thursday our special club meets for a slumber party at Candycane Hollow and discuss issues of atheism in modern society and play My Little Pony." Why not save everyone some time and energy and beat yourselves up.

It's silly to be offended by it, but, really, you're not going to catch me calling myself that any time soon.

Comments

[plorkwort.livejournal.com]

oh, it isn't a reference to the story Star Bright (Mark Clifton, printed in Galaxy in 1952 and anthologized in The Mathematical Magpie and elsewhere), signifying that they can all teleport through the fourth dimension and bring back souvenirs from ancient Rome?

Sounds like Tomorrow People to me!

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

(More accurately, an entrant in the Odd John/Slan/Children of the Atom tradition that The Tomorrow People drew on.)

I had forgotten about that story, though I did read The Mathematical Magpie at one point. Actually, that and Fantasia Mathematica frustrated me, because so many writers of the era seemed to think that a good mathematical fantasy just involved a Möbius strip or Klein bottle doing something magical for no reason (a fixation (http://world.std.com/~mmcirvin/kibology/moebius.html) that I've parodied (http://world.std.com/~mmcirvin/kibology/telephene.html) on a.r.k a couple of times). After a while they all began to blur together.

Rudy Rucker's Mathenauts collection impressed me much more; the title story by Norman Kagan is an all-time classic of high weirdness.

[jwgh]

I don't think I've ever specifically been asked what religion I am. Mostly, people ask if I agree with whatever it is they believe in, and then when I say I don't they offer to give me a pamphlet.