(no subject)

I've seen the meme about a graduation speech that Bill Gates supposedly gave at some unnamed high school "recently" (he gave no such speech at any time) for quite a while. It's interesting to me to see what names get attached to these sorts of perals of wisdom. Bill Gates. Steve Jobs. The Dalai Lama. Any number of people who have words made up or falsely attached for them to endlessly appear to espouse; artifacts of some anonymous person's vision of a Bill Gates who never was.

I love the Abraham Lincoln response; the classic portrait of Honest Abe next to text like "Don't believe everything you see on the internet just because it has a picture next to it. -Abe Lincoln."

I think it's interesting too that, in the past when I pointed out a misattributed quote, it didn't matter at all to the original poster. These memes exist as expressions of a certain attitude or belief. Their basis in truth or lack thereof is often irrelevant and can be disregarded in favor of the intent of the underlying expression.

It makes me inclined to react pretty negatively and skeptically to every last one of them on a personal level, though I'm beginning to find it more interesting intellectually.

(no subject)

The Parkside help desk has long hours for finals week starting today. As the closer, that means I get to hang out here until one in the morning both tonight, and on Monday. Yay! I'm going to spend tonight working on my anthro paper and math practice test, but if anybody wants to come hang out (as if there's anybody near enough to me who'd would want to come out to UW-Parkside right now), you're welcome to come have a working-at-the-helpdesk-hang-out.

(no subject)

I'm trying very hard to decide what happens to my fictional race of pastoralist chocobo herders after epidemic (foot and beak disease) is introduced by unscrupulous mercantile colonialists.