I remember when Mark Miller from my block told me that it was against the law to lie on TV. I believed him. I had no reason not to. It made sense to me . It appealed to my idea of fairness. I don’t remember how or why I stopped believing it. However, it turns out that the notion that the TV tells no lies is wide spread… very wide spread! Adults, who hold down jobs and wield positions of authority still believe it today, or some version of it.
I often act as if it’s true, even though experience, and just plain common sense tell me otherwise. My computer monitor is basically square and emits light. It is the child of television, and more than believing that it does not lie, I have (in my behavior anyway) taken it a step further to believing that it holds deep truths and has the power to transmit those truths. I stare at it. All the time! I poke around on the internet, not knowing why or what I am looking for. If it were up to me they would call the NYT website, the New York( all the) Times. I find myself searching. Sometimes I look for clues to the mystery of me. I take the path of least resistance and google myself.
My brother showed me the Blog of his long time friend, Ashley Pond. His site is Sedition.com It’s a good site, entertaining and as deep or shallow as the reader is willing to go. Also, Ashley has published what I assume is the best of his query log. Just in case you don’t know what that means (as yesterday I did not), people type words into their search engine and when they are directed to Ashley’s site, he can see what words they typed to get there.
Most of the queries he’s published have a humorous element. Often proving that there is in fact such a thing as a dumb question.
Should the president be impeached?
is it correct young people donot pay attention to correct language?
but naked girls
However the ones that caught my attention were more heartbreaking than stupid, more earnest than salacious.
Why are some kids smarter than me?
It’s crazy to think that the answers to our deepest questions could be found on the internet. Or is it? It’s an old tradition. People have employed profits and oracles since before recorded history. Why should we be different? We do not come with instructions, and when we do they usually apply to an earlier model of humanity.
Maybe it is part of our nature to ask whatever oracle is available to us to favor us with a few answers to life’s mysteries, be it Delphi or Desktop.
There are those who believe that as human knowledge comes online we get closer to creating a real oracle, one small step from creating a god. Sure, some of the answers are false, most even, but it’s always been that way.
Ignore the man behind the curtain (he is no more than a man after all).
