The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

6-The Canadian Champion, Friday, August 7, 1998 *OPINION Box 248, 191 Main SiEF Milton, Ont. L9T 4N9 (905) 878-2341 Fax: 878-4943 Classified: 875-3300 Ian Oliver Publisher Neil Oliver Associate Publia/uer Bill Begin General Manager Rob Kelly Editar Karen Cros Circulation Manager Teri Casas Office Manager Tim Coles Producion Manager The Canadian Champion, psblished every Tsesday and Saturday a 191 Maini St. E., MilIce, Ont., L91 4N9 (Box 248), s onee t tEe Metrland Prntîng, Publishing & Distributsg Ld. group oI suburbas companies which includes: Aas / Pickering News Advertiser; Alliston HeraldfCourier; Barrie Advance; Brampton Guardian; Burlington Post; City Parent; Collingwood / Wasaga Connection; East York Mrror; Etobicoke Guardian; Georgetown lndependentl Actun Fee Press; Kingston This Week; Lindsay This Week; Markbum tconomist & Sun; Midand / Penetanguishene Mirror; Mssissauga News; Newmarket I Auroru Eru Banner; Nothumberlandt News; North York Mirror; OakvilIe Beaver; Orllia Today; Oshawa I Whitbyl/ Clarington I Port Perry This Wenk; Peterbor- ough This Week; Richmond Hill I Thornbill I Vaughan Liberal; Scarborough Mirror; Ubridgel/ Stoullville Tribune; Toduy's Seniors. Advertising is uccepteit on the condition thut, in the event ut a typogruphical error, that portion ut the advertising space occupleit by the erruneous item, together with a reasonabî e allowance tor signature, wil sot be churgeit for, but the balance of the udvertisement will bu pid for t tbe applicable rte. The pub- lisher reterses the rigt lu categorize advertisements or decline. Nerds- according to Dilbert If you want 10 encourage your children toward a career in computers, don't let them read Dilbert. linm a parent of two teenagers and a pre-leen. I wanî îhem t0 love computera because thats where the jobs are. But my kids don't wanl îo be engineers or pro- grammers ("da-a-a-ad"~), because "techies are nerds." My first job, then, is 10 find out what a nerd is. After carefully searching the scientific litera- ture, I have found that Dilbert knows besl. Here are Dilbert's Principles of Nerdhood, using engineers as the prototype. Early identification personality test The following personality lest tells you if you have the personality to be an engineering nerd: You walk int a room and notice that a picture is hanging crooked. You would... A. Straighten il. B. Ignore il. C. Buy a CAD system and spend the next six months designing a solar-powered, self-adjust- ing picture frame while often stating aloud your belief that the inventor of the nail was a total moron. Normal people put B, a few put A, engineering nerds put C. You gel extra credit if you said, "Il depend," in the margin. Social Skills Engineers are different when it comes 10 social interaction. Normal people are searcbing for the follow- ing: *Stimulating and thought-provoking conver- sation. *Important social contacts. *A feeling of connectedness with other humans. Engineers, on thse band, want 10: *Gel il over with as soon as possible. *Avoid getting invited anywhere. *Demonstrate mental superiority and mastery of al subjecîs. Gadgets To the engineer, ail malter in tIse universe can be placed mbt one of îwo categories: (1) thinga that need 10 be fixed; and (2) things that will need 10 be ftxed after you've had a few minutes 10 play wilb thero. Engineers like 10 suive problems. If there are no problems readily available, they will create problemis. Normal people don't understand Iis concept. Tbey believe that if il ain't broke, don't fix il. Engineers believe that if amIn broke, il docant have enougb features. No engineer looksata a television remote con- IraI withoul wondering whal il would take 10 tum il mbt a stun gun. To the engineer, the world is a loy box full of sub-optimized and feature- poor laya. PsychOlogy '"h 90s How about Milton Coydogs? Fashion and appearance Clothes are thse lowest priority for an engineer, assuming the basic thresbold for temperature and decency bave been satisfied. If no appendages are freezing or sticking together, the objective of clothing bas been met. Anyîbing else is a waste. Love of Star Trek Engineers love Star Trek since the engineers on the starship Enterprise are portrayed as beroes, occasionally evening have sex with aliens. This is much more glamorous than thse real life of an engineer, which con- sists of hiding from the universe and baving sex witbout the participation of other ife fonna. Dating and social life Dating is not easy for engineers. A normal per- son will employ various indirect and duplicitous methoda ta create a false impression of attractiveneas. Engineers are inca- pable of placing appearance above function. Fortunalely, engineers have an ace in the hole. They are widely recognized as superior manriage material: intelligent, dependable, employed, honeat, handy around tIse bouse and virgin. Il is of great comfort 10 a polenlial mate knowing their chiidren would have Iigh-paying jobs long before losing their virginity. Maie engineers reacb their peak of sexual attractivenesa later than normal men, becoming irresistible, erotic dynamos in their mid-thirties 10 laIe forties. Here are examples of sexuaily irresistible men in technical professions: " Bill Gates " MacGyver " Etcetera Honesty Engineers are always honeal in maltera of lechnology and Iuman relationahipa. TIsa's why il's a good idea 10 keep engineers away from customers, romantic inleresta and other people who cant handle tIse Inath, Ego Two thinga are important 10 engineers: " How amat lhey are. " How many cool devicea they own. Notbing is more lbreatening than suggesting tIsaI someone else bas more tecbnical skill. Be vewwy vewwy qwiet. We're hunting wab- bits. Actually, il's coydogs we're bunting for, but it doesn't work with the Elmer Fudd voice. Nobody that comes in contact with coydogs likes îhem. AIl you have 10 do is read T/se Champion to know that. And nobody, as far as I know, bas a pet coydog or bas nursed a coydog with a broken leg back to healtb. That doesn't mean we stili can't be fascinated by them. Nobody who meets up with a lion is likely to like them, either, but that doesn't stop people from making movies about them. I think coydogs are fairly unique 10 Iis area. For my sports fantasy teams on the Intemnet I always use the name, 'Milton Coydogs'. People ask me what a coydog is ail the lime, thinking perbaps it's just a sîy old regular dog. I did a search on the Intemnet under coydogs and came up wiîb a measly 29 web sites or arti- cles that mentioned them. For lions, there are 483,569. Geez, moose have 44,344 places that you can find ouI about them. The articles showed that not much is known about thse coydog. One, in fact, said, "there is lit- tde evidence that coyotes cross with dogs, but coyotes do cross witb wolves." Another contradicted that, saying you can have coydogs and wolfdogs, but that you couldn't have coywolves. A Nçw Hampshire site said that they bad coy- dogs in their state and that they were a particu- larly scauy type of predator because tbey bad no fear of humans. That wonried me some, but in the same article they suggested that "sliding off snow-covered roads is no fun," s0 il might have been written by an eighî-year-old. I don't even know anybody that bas seen a coydog. Tbey're tierce, menacing, and mysteri- ous - that we know. I'm getting off track here, but I wisb the Milton Merchants would change their name to the Milton Coydogs. The Merchants are the moot boring team nickname perbaps in the bisto- ry of sports. Put a scary looking coydog on some bats and t-shirts and they'd selI like crazy. Anyway, I wanted 10 see a coydog for myself, so I went looking and listening for them. I knew how 10 go about Ibis because I've watched enougb nature TV programs. I like those shows until one animal starta snacking on another, then 1 tumn it back to Thse Siropsons. People in TV nature shows always wear khaki, but I don't bave anything like that 50 I put on dark shorts and a dark t-shirt. I tbought about a camera and perhaps an Uzi for protection, but since I didn't have, a loaded one of either, 1 took nothing. I tnied to enlist my kids as assistants, but they said that il was stupid. Or 1 was stupid. Or bath. I made my youngest daughter and her friend go anyway. Why? Because I said, of course. Besides, I was too scared to go on my own. We slunk out of the bouse laIe at night, being vewwy vewwy qwiet. We drove slowly through town. Slowly, because that adds to the dramatic effect. Once outside the main part of town, we headed for the escarpment. Then the radio had 10 be tumned off, despite a lot of grumbling. We made our way to the top of the escarpment and after finding a secluded area 1 stopped at the ide of the road and tumed off the car. Just lis- ten, I told the girls. They looked at me hopefully. To the radio? No! We didn't hear a thing. Then my daughler got out of the car and did her shtick where it looks like she' s running in tbe beadlights of a car, but then runs backwards slammning into the car as if it had hit her. Funny. So, we moved along the escarpment and stopped again. Nothing. Further along. Nothing. It was kind of spooky, though, and kind of fun. And the girls were finally getting into it, yelping out the window like coydogs probably wouid. We stopped six or seven imes while making a circuit of the Milton escarpment. Last stop. Silence. Tben the girls yelped out the window again, îelling me 10 make sure that 1 neyer told anyone that lhey did that. Your secret is safe with me, I told them. This lime, however, there was an answer! Coydogs? Weil, no, il was jusl one dog, but il sounded like a big one and il sounded like il was geîîing dloser. I started up the car quickly and away we went. No coydogs that night, but I could feel them out there. Watching. Listening. Waiting. Laughung. "My kids don't want to be engineers or programmners because 'techies are nerds.'