"Sacred cows make the tastiest hamburger". - Abbie Hoffman

[curiouscliche]

Yeah, so I’m a pretty big fan of Wikipedia. I mean, how could I not be? It has an almost completely non-hierarchical structure, and it allows for the rapid and free flow of information/data. It combines some of my favorite things, namely: anarchy, communism, altruism, technology, and knowledge. However, about a week ago, I experienced a serious

Comments

[xmatt]

Wikipedia is great, but it's pretty far from perfect. Even notwithstanding the work of people with an obvious and counter-productive agenda like your coworker, the site itself has inherent biases that it'll never correct. The site usership has and actively cultivates certain values that color the way articles look at certain issues.

Now, I don't find that sort of thing a huge problem, because I don't believe it's possible for any statement made by human beings under any circumstances to be "unbiased" (which is why the cable news industry's obsession with so-called neutrality is idiotic) -- but that's another discussion entirely.

[curiouscliche]

Yeah, I agree that objectivity is a myth. What values do you see the site cultivating? My general impression is that it seems to have more libertarian-type info than you'd expect (they even have info on the symbol for anarcho-capitalism) and a surprising lack of information on feminism and labor issues.

[dialogue_mono]

I didn't know anything about Abbie Hoffman, and was surprised to find out that he was a he. And I'm not really sure I understand the quote. But if I do, I think you're very clever

Bart: do you know what this means?
Milhous: uh, yeah.. but you say it first!

[curiouscliche]

I think you may be attributing more wittiness to myself than I merit. Basically, the quote is pure iconoclasm. Something along the lines of, nobody/nothing is perfect, so we should stop idolizing and start relishing the recontexualizations of our most reliable mainstays.

So yeah, you're definitely the cleverer, because you noticed the cleverness that I missed. How did you interpret it?

[dialogue_mono]

that nothing's tastier than making trashy junk food out of whatever people hold sacred!