At 11:17 AM 8/19/2002 +0200, Bruce ONeel wrote:
>NTK is at www.ntk.net.  It's fairly funny most of the time.

Methinks you confuse wit with humor.  The two are quite distinct, and Mr. 
(?) NTK is clearly aiming for jaundiced, world-weary, biting wit.

I have to ask: who is this coprocephalic (and, I might add, 
coproencephalic*), such that I should give a good goddamn about his 
oh-so-superior, isn't everyone else so stupid compared to my infinite 
wisdom, attitude?  I browsed through some of his previous stuff, and it's 
all in the same monotone: infinite self-love combined with infinite scorn 
for everything and everyone else out there.

If I want a dose of that kind of 'tude --- unbounded sense of entitlement 
coupled with zero actual accomplishment --- I can get it in spades on MTV, 
VH-1, the WB, and various other tee-vee preserves of the terminally clueless.

I know, I know, I should lighten up and not take it so seriously.  It's not 
the criticism of Squeak, or anything else in particular, that infuriates 
me, it's the unearned sense of superiority, which keeps cropping up in 
various media personalities with what seems to be increasing 
regularity.  It's a knee-jerk negativism that seeks to pawn itself off as 
critical thinking and reasoned skepticism.  It's all pose and no content 
(no thought, either).  And, by a kind of Greshamite law, bad thinking 
drives out good, so the continued viability of NTK & co. as media fixtures 
bodes ill for real thought, about anything.  So meditate on *that* at 
second level.

* "Benefits of a classical education."
         --- Alan Rickman, as Hans Gruber, in _Die Hard_


-30-
Bob Ingria
As always, at a slight angle to the universe