At last, the circle is complete

No, there's no video in this post. Instead, I found a story on slashdot that I really enjoyed:

"Germany has a new minister of economic affairs. Mr. von und zu Guttenberg is descended from an old and noble lineage, so his official name is very long: Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg. When first there were rumors that he would be appointed to the post, someone changed his Wikipedia entry and added the name 'Wilhelm,' so Wikipedia stated his full name as: Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Wilhelm Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg. What resulted from this edit points up a big problem for our information society (in German; Google translation). The German and international press picked up the wrong name from Wikipedia — including well-known newspapers, Internet sites, and TV news such as spiegel.de, Bild, heute.de, TAZ, or Süddeutsche Zeitung. In the meantime, the change on Wikipedia was reverted, with a request for proof of the name. The proof was quickly found. On spiegel.de an article cites Mr. von und zu Guttenberg using his 'full name'; however, while the quote might have been real, the full name seems to have been looked up on Wikipedia while the false edit was in place. So the circle was closed: Wikipedia states a false fact, a reputable media outlet copies the false fact, and this outlet is then used as the source to prove the false fact to Wikipedia."

It was only a matter of time before this happened. I guess when you don't want to pay for your newspaper (and therefore the news reporters) then you shouldn't be surprised when wikipedia becomes one of their major research resources.

Part 2 of the "cultural games I don't want to participate in" series

Small Talk

I can shoot the proverbial shit, I just don't like it. It's not the case that I don't want to talk to people, I actually enjoy it quite a lot. I just want conversations to be more meaningful.

I'm supposed to believe that when someone asks "How are you" the culturally appropriate response is "Fine, and you?". People don't want to know about my back problems or the stress resulting from my lack of sleep or missing my loved one. This is true in a lot of cultures. I guess in Korea the typical greeting is "where are you going?" and the socially appropriate response is "that way", where the demonstrative 'that' actually has no specified referent. After all, who wants to know that you're headed to the proctologist, except, maybe, the proctologist?

Certainly, I agree that there should be some kind of limit to the amount of information that is exchanged in short encounters. These limits should be set by the level of the relationship between the two participants. I just happen to be more permitting of this level with respect to complete strangers.

Let's just assume that these conversation are to remain as meaningless as possible. I'd like to propose, then, a completely new topic of small talk which should replace weather-talk, sports-talk, and traffic/public transport-talk.

Wikipedia articles.

Before starting out each day, hit the random article link on wikipedia's website. Read it in as much detail as time allows, and then begin all consequent small talk with the phrase "I read on wikipedia that X". Then the goal is to use up the small talk time by engaging the other person into the most bizarre yet topical conversation possible.