If you read Geek Logik,you may have found, at least for a while, that you lost control over your own decision-making ability.

   Geek Logik was a way to quantify every important decision you may have wanted to make, from how many drinks at the company picnic you should have to how much sports you should watch today.  The beauty of it was that by abdicating the decision you also abdicated responsibility - or so you thought.   'Should I hit on that girl?' calculations combined with errors in a 'How many beers should I have?' calculation probably took you to a bad place if you are married and no amount of pointing to his book was going to help.

The value of using equations to solve life's dilemmas was verified time and again; pity poor Levi in the video below, who rejected Garth Sundem's numeric methods for success and, at moment 5:44  of this video snippet below, is forced to lament, "I should have followed the math."



Garth may have realized that people who too rigidly followed the math were missing the point; geeks are about empowerment, not being slaves to doctrine that geek-ness by its very nature opposes.   After all, no one  with any true sense thinks that Lando Calrissian is actually a worthwhile Star Wars character - everyone knows Lando was George Lucas' response to those who complained about the lack of black people in the Star Wars universe by showing they still existed, they just weren't cool any more - but by embracing Lando, geeks assert their independence.



In The Geeks Guide To World Domination,Garth has crafted a manual for acolytes to make it into the second circle of knowledge.   Wait, you're geeks, let me give a better example.    Say you're a character in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever;well, this new book is the Second Ward of Kevin's Lore.   It will serve you well, as long as you don't try and get too crazy with it.

Things It Promises And Delivers

First, let's get to the good stuff;  it  does have 314.15 pieces of information in it, which is the proper geek way to outline a book; well, maybe, I am too lazy to actually count but I will say it has 100*(²²³/₇₁ < Info < ²²/₇) pieces of information, which I am happy to say is 314.15 if it makes him feel better.

It does have my favorite chess opening (you guess which one - it hasn't been popular for anyone but me since the 1800s and, in true Geek fashion, I use it because no one else does, it not being all 'bloody' like modern people prefer), it does have an unnatural fixation with Richard Feynman and it does have useless stats of famous pirates, all of which tell you he is walking the walk of geek credibility.

He also manages to correlate mechanical engineering with post-Zeppelin pseudo-glam rock which, as you know if you are reading this, we do about once a week, though you can substitute electrical engineering or maybe aero-.   Civil engineers get equated to Barry Manilow or one of those play-by-numbers art pieces.

Create your own chain mail?  Check.   Value-based fantasy baseball hints?  Check.  Primer on Western notation in music?  Check.   In other words, the book is stuffed with ... well ... stuff you can use if, unlike me, you don't already know it all.

But it's not all balloons and ponies ... 

Things It Fails To Deliver

Just because Garth writes here, don't think he gets a free pass.   I can't tell you how many times people here have told me I'm full of crap, and I pay the bill for the servers.   So here goes my complaint about the flaws.

I read his book and did not have sex in Second Life, despite his claims that I would.    I even made my avatar look like him to try and duplicate his experiment.    It didn't work.   Even worse, when my wife found out I was cruising Second Life, I didn't get real sex that night which is a double whammy.   She even yelled at me though I eventually forgave her for that.    Killing my avatar for his indiscretions was a bit offsides on her part.

I also did not get accepted into the Knights Templar despite applying two days ago.   His link between Linus Torvalds and Batman is tenuous at best though I may be biased because I know I am Batman.   

Should you buy his book?  Of course you should.   You should do it right now, actually.    If you're going to be a real Geek, you need to practice your Funky Alien dance moves and he can show you how.