Date: Sun, 09 Mar 2008 15:07:50 -0400
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>,<wsfa-forum at yahoogroups.com>
From: Elspeth Kovar <ekovar at panix.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: [wsfa-forum] Sad news
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

At 01:27 PM 3/9/2008, Mike B. wrote:
>At 3/9/2008 12:28 PM, Michael Walsh wrote:
> >Gygax ... NY Times ... Flowchart
> ><http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/03/09/opinion/09opart2.ready.html>
>
>Well, it looks somewhat like a flowchart...but has the same
>relationship that the cargo cult airplanes did to real
>airplanes.  I.e. they are only the same if you are an ignorant
>primitive with no real understanding...or a NY Times "journalist",
>which appears to be pretty much the same thing.
>
>-- Mike B.
>--
>"The greatest obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the
>continents, and the oceans was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge."
>
>                                             --Daniel J. Boorstin

It's worth keeping the tagline, one of Mr. Boorstin's many aphorisms .  You
have the illusion of knowledge about this thing generally known as humor,
and perhaps not even an illusion but ignorance of a more basic aspect of
humanity.

You saw, criticized, and dismissed something and someone because of term
and form, not even looking at content or context.  It's not the journalist,
it's you who are being the "ignorant primitive with no real
understanding...".

It appears that you missed the boxes in the image that read "really pretty
great Yoda is" "Google is all about D&D".  There are two you obviously
didn't see:  "blogging about diagrams" and "doubting the technical accuracy
or the diagram".  See above and the tagline to this r.e. humor.

More importantly you seem to have missed the fact that this is a fond
tribute, not something for the anal-retentive.  The image you're bitching
about isn't something to be analyzed, it's a memorial for the dead.  That
people react to death and dying; the death of someone in specific or
something more general; and the reactions to those is one of the most basic
aspects of humanity and of being human.

Since nothing can be done to change your not getting something -- there are
a number of them -- it usually isn't worth the hassle.  This email isn't
going to change anything either so it probably isn't worth the hassle
either, just my being human.

I suspect that your response to this will make the topic revert to not
worth the hassle.  .

Elspeth

--

hu·mor
–noun
1.      a comic, absurd, or incongruous quality causing amusement: the
humor of a situation.
2.      the faculty of perceiving what is amusing or comical: He is
completely without humor.

                                       Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
                                       Based on the Random House Unabridged
Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.