Friday, February 24, 2006

Do you really, honestly care?

The commentary for today's Penny Arcade highlights for me exactly what is both the best and the most terrifying aspect of geekdom. The obsessiveness of fangeeks. I was laughing out loud, which is unusual for me at work. It tends to raise awkward questions, like, "What are you doing reading that instead of working?"

Anyway. . . Why is it that geeks (perhaps that should be we geeks) take so much pride and pleasure from knowing that which others do not? Even (perhaps that should be especially) that which others don't care to know? I understand it a lot more with the young geeks here at Information Services: They're trying to establish pecking order and a little informational one-upsmanship helps them with that. But shouldn't we be able to outgrow that? Or is that just one of those features that defines the geek his whole life? Of is it a guy thing?

And why, oh why, do all of my posts tend to be filled with questions? Am I attempting to be Aristotilian, or am I just trying to encourage the sort of commentary that makes blogs so interesting? I think that that's the one feature that threatens my geek status more than anything: The willingness to use the question mark rather than favoring inflammatory declarative statements.

Monday, February 13, 2006

Thursday, February 09, 2006

"Good night, and good luck."

I saw this film last night. My reaction is a simple one. Go see it. Immediately. Tell your friends and family to see it. Tell them to tell their friends. Go see it, even if you have to spend your lunch money to do it. Then think about it.

A couple of quotes from Edward R. Murrow (not all from the film)

"We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. "

"We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were for the moment unpopular. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of the Republic to abdicate his responsibility."

"If we confuse dissent with disloyalty — if we deny the right of the individual to be wrong, unpopular, eccentric or unorthodox — if we deny the essence of racial equality then hundreds of millions in Asia and Africa who are shopping about for a new allegiance will conclude that we are concerned to defend a myth and our present privileged status. Every act that denies or limits the freedom of the individual in this country costs us the . . . confidence of men and women who aspire to that freedom and independence of which we speak and for which our ancestors fought."

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Disillusionment

Man, that groundhog Phil is full of shit. It's 55 deg F here. Supposed to be 60 deg F tomorrow. 6 more weeks of winter my ass. If you can't trust a groundhog to predict the arrival of spring, what can you trust? Nothing and no one, that's what.