I'm really into Pinterest. The picture-sharing site has become a daily preoccupation, as I scour the web for images of Russian Orthodox icons, prewar Japanese entertainers, surrealist art, and other things that ring my chimes, and post them on "boards" under headings that I create. Users are encouraged to "like" pix from other members' boards and/or "repin" them onto their own, and the site lets you know who has done so. It's a kind of visual Twitter.

Monday evening I learned that somebody who goes by the nom de Pinterest of YangUL "liked" a Japanese cartoon I had pinned, so I decided to explore his or her visual world in return.

YangUL came across as an interesting person with an offbeat sensibility and a tendency to write long, hyperinformative captions for each picture. One image in particular struck me: a cartoony infographic explaining the difference between a geek and a nerd.

Now I like to identify myself as a non-geek/non-nerd (although I have always enjoyed Monty Python, and as a budding Asian Studies major I carried a plastic-covered Japanese-English dictionary in my breast pocket all through high school, so you be the judge). Even as I edited or wrote stories in The Line about local tech heroes, many of whom use these terms proudly to refer to themselves, the g/n distinction was something I never thought about. Didn't our own Geek Squad use the slogan "When You Need a Nerd." and didn’t that imply geek-nerd equivalence? Weren't they simply alternate terms for the pocket-protector-wearing, D & D-playing, Segway-riding, code-writing mostly male smarties who have become the new billionaires?

Apparently not. The charming infographic--here it is--which comes from an otherwise straitlaced site called "Guide to Master's Programs in IT," has plenty to say and show about subtle but real differences between the species.

Malbec Versus Binary Code

Your geek is likely to wear an ironic teeshirt. Your nerd favors white dress shirts, buttoned all the way up, with or without bow tie. The geek "can be pretentious and long-winded" as he (I'll forgo the "or she" here, since while girl geeks exist, they are a decided minority) expatiates on his favorite area of expertise--gaming, film (both arty and "anything Will Farrell stars in"), collecting, tech gadgets, coding, screen printing, etc. The nerd is quieter, usually more introverted, likely to be too socially inept to want to hold forth for any length of time on his favorite subjects, which tend to be more scientific/academic or focused on fantasy worlds.

While both geeks and nerds like to drop recondite references into their conversation, the geek's name-dropping is more likely to center on pop culture and other worldly pursuits, the nerd's on the inner workings of tech, fantasy, or math. A geek might utter a line like "There's nothing like kicking it to some crunchy bass while enjoying a good Malbec." Nerd-speak: "There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don't."

Geeks are Mac, Nerds are PC.

Geeks can and do marry non-geeks. Nerds usually mate within the species.

In short, and with all kinds of qualifications, we can say that geekdom is the more worldly, outgoing, entrepreneurial polarity; it overlaps with hipsterism. Nerdery is far more ivory-towerish. This pairing, it seems to me, is just a contemporary version, for our tech-dominated world, of a perennial contrast: Aristotle, with his obsessive and loquacious interest in every area of human activity, was a geek, Plato--his eyes always on ideal objects at one remove from daily reality--a nerd. Freud: a geek; Jung: a nerd. And so on.

But what do you think? Check out the infographic and weigh in on geekdoom versus nerdery here. Meanwhile, I'll return to posting images of 1930s Japanese pop singers on Pinterest, whatever that may say about me.