“Even though he’s a lovely person, when he’s on stage or in print he can flip on this switch and turn into a slightly hostile, insecure, boastful dunderhead,” noted his friend Sarah Vowell, the author and radio commentator, in an e-mail. “As hostile, insecure, boastful dunderheads more or less run the world these days, it’s cathartic to see such figures skewered…. The character he often plays is that of a pompous windbag.”

Maybe Stein is truly pompous while Hodgman just acts like it. Hodgman definitely has his good points (hanging out with Coulton, Lots of Hobo names, and great Mac commercials), but I have to go against the pro-Hodgman tide and stick with my “I just don’t like Hodgman” stance.

Stein is smart, and has an amazing ability to absorb information, he’s also uncreative and close minded and simply applies information (impressively well no doubt). I would call him a financial expert not a financial genius.

My other votes:
1. Hodgman, 2. Cerf, 3. TMBG, 4. ??, 5. Alton, 6. G&T, 7. Yankovic, 8. Adams

-Michael Wiczer

-Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich for Sec. of Geek Affairs 2012

2. I went with Cerf primarily for his involvement with Google. I think that the kinds of things that Google has done with creating healthy office environments for geeks is something that with wider application would benefit geeks across the country (and other workers as well).

3. One of the guys in TMBG wrote some original tuba music for a play I was in at college. Plus I have most of Flood memorized. No contest.

4. Seriously Funny – a book about comedians of the early 50’s and 60’s that transformed comedy from Vaudeville and Catskills jokes to the observational and personal humor of today – introduced me to Tom Lehrer. Great book, really funny and thought provoking. Could be a great jester on the cabinet to make sure the Kings stay humble.

5. The Battle of the Browns was my most difficult choice so far. What finally decided it for me was the realization that Alton Brown has made me care about how molecules behave during the cooking process, whereas Encyclopedia Brown just knows that a hard boiled egg will spin longer than an uncooked egg.

6. I like my Penny Arcade shirt. A lot.

7. Weezer? Seriously?

8. Douglas Adams invented the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. FTW.

6.

*: Okay, I suppose with the loss of their brass section they’re more of a surf rock band nowadays. But still, a goofy geeky superhero surf rock band!

2. Spock does not strike me as quite so much “geeky” as just plain “encyclopedic”, with an unerring computational mind thrown in. I mean, seriously, Kirk, McCoy, and Scotty came up with the creative answers, and each would be a better representative. Cerf, though? He invented (and still maintains) much of what geeks use to this day. He’s my vote here.

3. While Ponder is a bit of a geek-inserted-in-a-fantasy-setting character, he doesn’t quite do it as the President’s right-hand geek for me, even though he should be getting double points for being a geek AND a fantasy character. If he also crossed over into sci-fi, that’d be a triple word score, but alas. They who are known to some simply as “They”, however, have the look, the web savvy, the music, and the curiously deep lyrics that geeks everywhere listen to.

4. This one was a tough call for me. A classic legend in Leher, or a modern, though maybe not as well-known, legend in Ze? I had to side with potential on this one and picked Ze.

5. Encyclopedia Brown, to me, falls into the same trap Mr. Spock does: He’s brainy, yes, but he really lacks the imagination and creativity of a geek. Alton has the brains AND the imagination, and if his programming language is kitchencraft, so be it, he’s the geek of the two.

6. Another tough one. I eventually went with Vowell, though, because while Tycho and Gabe represent the “popular” state of geekdom (mainly video gaming), Sarah seems to have a much keener grasp on the obscure end of things. Plus, she’s a fan of TMBG and appeared in their documentary, Gigantic, so that does score a few extra points with me. Side note: When I voted, I honestly expected this one to be a sheer one-sided slaughter, but the fact that Vowell is holding her own against the PA team is downright incredible.

27. Al simply IS geek. The voice, the humor, the musical subjects, the goofiness, everything. It’s going to be hard to top him. Weezer has some geek in them, but it just doesn’t compare to Al.

8. I still maintain Bill Gates is a marketer, not a programmer, and thus he, by default, fails to get my vote. But even at that, Douglas Adams doesn’t just walk away from this with a default vote; he definitely earns it with the Hitchhiker series, as well as everything else he’s contributed to before his passing, and, in fact, everything he’ll continue influencing well past his life.

-Mike Cuellar
-Self-Demoting Other Half-Minion
-Order of the Inner Sanctum Guard

I voted for Hodgman anyway… I’d like to go there some day.

I wish there were a Ponder Stibbons / Harry Potter match-up. I’d maintain that Stibbons is the geekier wizard (and thus more capable of being secretary of geek affairs) because his magic borders more on science and technology (albeit the science and technology of the Discworld). Plus he built Hex the “computer”.

++?????++ Out of Cheese Error. Redo From Start.

There were some really tough calls in this bracket. I spent a really long time with Gabe & Tycho vs. Sarah Vowell. Ended up with Gabe and Tycho mainly because of proven capacity for great ideas. (See PAX and Child’s Play.)

Also, Alton Brown FTW!

And to everyone voting for the Penny Arcade duo: Don’t make it a no brainer. Sarah V. is plenty geeky. Her essays are fantastic. I voted for her without hesitation.

The toughest one for me on this round was Bill Gates vs. Douglas Adams. Gates is a bonafide geek. Unlike Jobs, he’s a real computer nerd. But at the same time, Adams reveled in being a geek. He was a brilliant, insightful and hilarious man. In the end, I had to go with Adams, but it was the toughest choice for me in the tournament so far.

By the way, if the only thing you know Adams from is his Hitchhiker series, I recommend you grab a copy of “Last Chance to See.” It’s a book about animals that are in danger of going extinct. It’s funny, sad, charming and (despite itself) incredibly optimistic. Stephen Fry is working on a documentary that follows the same spirit and has the same title. Well worth the effort of tracking down a copy.

Spock vs. Vint I’m still thinking about.

In the next one I voted for Ponder, even though I haven’t read many Discworld novels. I’ve tried to like TMBG, but they sing terribly, their lyrics are quirky without being clever, and my favourite songs of theirs are covers (Why Does the Sun Shine, Istanbul, and also JoCo+P&S’s cover of Birdhouse In Your Soul.) Maybe I still haven’t found their good recordings, I got a live album which included most of the songs people recommended to me.

And then of course Tom Lehrer, who can vote against Tom Lehrer? Ze Frank is just a n00b in comparison.

Never heard of Alton Brown but I have a hard time believing a chef could be secretary of geek affairs, even if he does molecular cuisine, so I voted for Encyclopedia.

I don’t really know the next two. I read some Penny Arcade comics when I randomly ended up with a Penny Arcade T-shirt, but didn’t really get into them. I love Pixar films. But there’s nothing strong enough to give either of them the vote.

I wasn’t even aware that Weezer had any geek cred, so I voted Weird Al in that one.

And then, naturally, Douglas Adams. This is the guy who said (in ‘Last Chance to See…’) that he’d rather spend all day programming his computer to do something which would otherwise take him a good ten seconds to do by hand. A true geek. Plus, he did some programming in HyperCard, which I love (although both Adams and HyperCard are dead now) and he didn’t found Microsoft.

Cerf. Sorry, but Spock hasn’t been born yet.

TMBG is a no-brainer.

Ze is much the same.

Gabe and Tycho are definitely more geeky than Sarah, but she’s cuter. Alas, Gabe and Tycho know what a Null is, so the vote goes to them.

Gotta go Weird Al for the simple fact that Weezer can be extraordinarily inconsistent.

And, even though he is dead, Adams. Always Douglas Adams. My money’s on him or Hodgman.

2) Cerf, even though he’s a liar. I say liar, because we all know it was actually Al Gore who invented the Internets. Also, and this may cause my excommunication from the nerdness, but I never watched, or remotely got into, Star Trek. Sorry, that’s just how it is. Nerds > Geeks. Represent.

3) I went with They Might Be Giants, even though they are suspect. Are they giants or aren’t they? They might also be astronauts, or cowboys, or lawyers… we can’t be sure. On the other hand, they did Flood. That wins.

4) I went Ze Frank. No particular reason as I don’t follow either of the two. What I have heard from Ze Farnk I’ve liked a lot.

5) Encyclopedia Brown all the way. Granted, I do love the Food Network, but only Rachel Ray, really. Plus I think using your brain to solve problems is something Obama/Biden and their team will need A LOT of help with, so he can bring it.

6) Gabe and Tycho – I really like PAX and such, and really dislike NPR, so this one wasn’t too hard.

7) Are you kidding? Of course Weird Al! He’s got a song about being nerdy! And he’s pretty nerdy anyway, so even if he didn’t have the song he’d be my pick. No offense to Weezer. I am going to be dreading They Might be Giants vs. Weird Al in a future round, I bet.

Yeah I think I really hate Bill Gates, Microsoft, and both of their philosophies regarding software, hardware, and freedom. Their tireless work against freedom and pro-controlling the user is not something I would EVER vote for. That being said, that isn’t the only reason I voted Douglas Adams. The very fact that 6 x 9 = 42 as a joke, is amazing. Then someone figured out it was correct if you think about it in base 13. Adams then replied something like “Who writes jokes in base-13?” So, yeah, I love Adams, I hate Gates. Easy vote there.