CNet posted an article about the top women geeks. Except they called them girl geeks and included Paris Hilton, Darryl Hannah, and Lisa Simpson in the list (along with more obvious candidates like Marie Curie and Grace Hopper). The list is stupid for so many reasons … but one thing that has come out of it that surprised me is that Slashdot has an article criticizing the list with actually some positive info on women geeks (which I found out about through Systers). I’m used to Slashdot discussions bagging on women, but this one actually has some positive posts and some info on women who deserve recognition for science and tech. accomplishments.

To give you an idea of what the “Top ten geek girls” is like (without linking to CNet and giving them more traffic), here’s my impression of how CNet would have written …

Top ten geek boys

1. Alan Turing. World’s first computer scientist.
2. Neil Armstrong. Went to space.
3. Dennis Ritchie. Won a national medal of technology.
4. Keanu Reeves. Geek icon.
5. Thomas Edison. Inventor.
6. Aldous Huxley. Wrote Brave New World.
7. Jimmy Neutron. Boy genius.
8. Albert Einstein. Played dice with the universe.
9. Click and Clack. Hip car talk show hosts.
10. Fabio. Famous boy gamer.

The order is inspired by the actual list on CNet. The description titles are about as lame as the original ones. I don’t actually know that Fabio enjoys video games, but if he does, I think he’d be a perfect analog to Paris Hilton on the original list.

You too can make your own top 10 list! Bonus points for going further and Bio paragraphs like:

Dennis Ritchie

Ritchie was a quintessential geek. Not content with working on the Multics operating system, he wrote a compiler. His invention was called the Pascal programming language. Ritchie’s contribution to the world of computers cannot be underestimated …

You get the idea. ;-)