Right, I has a blog.

Life is moving in a pretty alright direction as of late. Going down the list:

School: I go to Columbia. I am a functioning human being, so I get A's. 'Nuff said.

Work: Ha ha! I am officially the props run crewman for The Brown Paper Box Co.'s production of Reefer Madness! at the Viaduct Theatre. It's their first show, with a design crew populated with mostly U of I grads. By that I mean the design elements will probably be pretty grand. You should probably go and see it.

Sadly, I won't be getting paid, but hey, it's the first show for a new theatre company. As long as I get to eat (which I was promised!), I'll be happy to do whatever they like. It's been a long while since I've been backstage in any meaningful capacity, bonding with actors through the trials and tribulations of liver performance. I miss it. Working shows is how I've met some of my best friends, gained great stories, and felt like I was actually doing something in the world.

Warhammer 40k: 6-0-1! Since I've started playing Tau, I've had some close fucking games the past few days, mostly against Mr. Sullivan. So far I've played Eldar, The Imperial Guard, Chaos Space Marines, and Orks. Time and again, the Tau have proven to put shots where I wanted them when I wanted them, save one lengthly tank duel two games ago.

I feel bad for the Guard. My basic troopers carry rifles that negate their save, wound on anything but a 1, and outrange them by 6". It's fucking brutal. It's all about getting in close, but at 750 points I bring a Devilfish, so I can usually stay pretty mobile. Crisis Suits, similarly, are barely ever hit. Come to think of it, I've only ever lost one suit in all of my games. And in that case, Billy had to level the building they were hiding behind for a clear shot with three heavy weapons teams. With the onset of a fairly large Planetary Empires map-based campaign, I'm sure my time will come, but when, and against who?

Other: A friend of mine posted this article on my wall the other day, I was going to dissect the article in detail, but the almighty Luke Kaiser beat me to it. What follows is his (brutal) response to the piece:

"This article is silly and I hate the person who wrote it.

"The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author’s words but for the intellectual vibrations those... words set off within our own minds."

Reading off of a printed page is the same as reading off of a backlit monitor. The only difference is that one machine is associated with quick and efficient organization of source material and the other has to be checked out at a library. All the Internet does is etch in us a desire to do things as efficiently as we have become accustomed to do them, but he's willfully ignoring a lot of the implications of his points.

Let's say that you want to find a quote in a book you read. You're writing an essay and you want it for support, and you only remember a paraphrased version of it or perhaps a few words. Would ANYONE ON THIS EARTH rather look through the entire book instead of just finding a digital copy and hitting CTRL+F? No. The internet is to information what aircraft are to travel; anyone who understands that taking a covered wagon to New York in the year 2010 is a stupid idea will also understand that there are better, faster avenues through which to seek information. This does NOT mean, however, that we must necessarily be intolerant of the "work" entailed in deep reading. Anyone who's going to contribute anything to the world will want to form their own opinions, and you don't do that by googling "opinions." You do it by reading things for yourself. The difference now is that one can find a book in 10 seconds instead of after an hour of scouring dusty library shelves.

Nicholas Carr is obviously easily swayed and is demonstrably a poor thinker, having composed an argument out of swiss cheese; the ridiculous holes are a problem, sure, but his entire argument melts under the gaze of even a marginally accomplished student. If anything, the incredible bounty of information that search engines provide will enhance the intelligence of those who will actually produce value; their production is now solely a function of their potential and can no longer be limited by a lack of intellectual resources.

TL;DR I'm sorry you're afraid of the internet, Nicholas Carr, but please just get yourself diagnosed with ADD and stop blaming your distraction on anything but your shriveled husk of a brain."

I thought you'd all enjoy that.

I did.