PANIC!

Swine flu is going to kill us all! You must get vacinated! Now! Preferrably twice!

My television told me and I read it on the interwebz so it must be true.

Oh wait. Those pesky facts got in the way again. Nevermind.

Truly More Information Than You Require

It is a source of unending amusement to me that people anonymously read Delicious Animals. I’ve been told some of you have even done it more than once. Apparently on purpose.

People baffle me.

Anyway, welcome new lurking readers.

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One of the semi-stated purposes of this site is reduction of guilt for my lack of journal keeping. Since I doubt the requirements of prophetic counsel will be satisfied by sharing the economic value of spider drawings or the best weapon to fend off zombies (pro-tip: it’s not a shotgun), today I will share something personal about myself. In this way, my posterity will have extra motivation to secure my salvation. Get ready future generations still snickering at your ridiculously named ancestor.

Are you ready?

I am a geek.

Hodgman, during this summer’s abortive uprising in Iran, explained why better than I could have myself:

ON THE SUBJECT OF JOCK v. NERD.
ESSENTIALLY [it's] a difference of philosophy that sort of begins in high school, around the time most people are exposed to team sports and math, and they choose a path.
JOCKISM IS NOT ABOUT ATHLETICS per se. It’s a philosophy – of certainty vs. endless nerdish questioning; of happy conformity, vs. nerdish loner ostracism. Jockism is suspicious of complexity, because that’s how you lose games. It’s more comfortable with what it can see, touch, feel, punch.
JOCKISM is actually a great way to win a sports game or a ground war. But, gratefully, in this country at least, that’s not what most adults ever have to do in their lives.
NERDISM conveys a certain comfort with technology, a certain faith in science to be sure, but also, it builds its teams around abstractions, ideas, weird enthusiasms. From Battlestar Galactica to cosplay to steampunk; from spirit photography to antique cocktails; from political news to even sports*, paradoxically, and, as well, the idea of free and fair elections in Iran.
AND AS THE INTERNET is the greatest idea propagation engine ever invented, It’s no surprise that global geekism is on the rise.
I SAID ON FRIDAY HOW CURIOUS it was that the fate of the protesters in Iran is so strangely entwined with the sleep schedule of the geeks maintaining the servers at twitter and YouTube.
THAT THE PROTESTERS’ STRUGGLE IS VISIBLE, on a granular, person by person level, gives those protesters crucial optimism that their efforts are not wasted; and it gives we viewers a new window upon a remote land and culture.
AND WHAT WE MOSTLY SEE is similarity.
YOUNG PEOPLE, CLOSER TO US in wardrobe, vision, and optimism than we might have thought. And though great divides may yet separate us, the protesters are similar in at least one way: they all use the internet. And not in the insidious, demonizing way we were warned of, to recruit terrorists and plan attacks on civilians. But in the most geekish way: to subvert authority with an idea.
WHEN IT HAS COME to democratizing the Middle-East, we’ve now witnessed two different approaches.
ONE, INCREDIBLY JOCKISH: an invasion, a top-down imposition of a new kind of order.
THE OTHER, IS DIFFUSED, SPONTANEOUS, founded on ideas and spread by technology. If the protesters in Iran have never heard of Doctor Who, their efforts now are undeniably geekish.
WE’LL SEE which effort is more successful. And I mean this truly, for it is the essence of geek to admit: I do not know.
WE’LL SEE.

*(AS I’VE MENTIONED BEFORE, any fantasy baseballist has more in common with someone who dresses as an orc on weekends than an actual athlete, because they are analyzing and processing massive data, and communicating with unknown others on the web.)

Oh, there's a little political commentary in there too? Huh, imagine that. Consider it a bonus of extra information about me.

This has been your who-is-Daniel update for the benefit of future generations. Now get off my lawn you kids.

Polar Bear, Polar Bear

A two-year old boy who knows lots of animal sounds and enthusiastically produces them on command is cute.

A two-year old boy "reading" himself Eric Carle books and making loud sounds for each animal is charming.

A two-year old boy who knows the books well enough to recite them from memory is endearing.

A two-year old boy who decides during sacrament meeting that the pages of the hymnal are a good proxy for Polar Bear, Polar Bear is problematic.

In case you weren't sure, there are a LOT more pages in an LDS hymn book than in a child's board book. He didn't exhaust his repertoire of sounds until somewhere around More Holiness Give Me.