Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

There are plenty of excellent t-shirts around, but once in a while a brilliant one comes up, which makes all the differences.  Here is one at ThinkGeek.com - nanotechnology is huge !

The moment I saw that phrase appearing in my Google Reader (here is some info about ThinkGeek feeds), I wanted to buy this t-shirt.  Even before I saw the actual t-shirt.  Even despite my total ignorance of nanotechnology.  It’s just so hilarious and true and makes so much sense at the same time!

It came to me that geek t-shirts aren’t very well suited for gyms and other places crowded with strong people. Geek t-shirts tend to be a little offensive and aggressive. Here are a few examples:

• “Bow before me, for I am root.” - nobody cares enough to read all of it, and “bow before me” sounds offensive enough.
• “Go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script.” - has the same problem.
• “I see fragged people” - “frag” is not a wide spread word, and it’s often misread as another f-word.
• “I’m blogging this” - “blog” is a very wide spread word, and it can get you killed. Especially by women.
• “You are dumb” - OK, you can ware this, but never ever answer the question “What does this mean?” truthfully.

It’s good to know that sports-ware manufacturers realize this problem. That’s why they make t-shirts with just their brand labels - “Nike”, “Adidas”, “Reebok”, etc.  These aren’t even real words…