| new glasses. essjay. |
[Mar. 5th, 2007|02:53 am] |
Carin and I went out to the mall today. I got a haircut, and I got my eyes looked at. I curse my lack of health insurance as well as my lack of coupons for eyeglasses. The exam was enlightening--I'd forgotten that my eyes have resolution that high. The optometrist would point to something, I'd say "oh, I can't read anything that small", he'd flip a lever on the machine, and suddenly I had an "I can see forever" moment. My vision has gotten about three-fourths of a diopter worse since I last got new glasses--I don't remember when that was, but it was well before I took that machine shop safety course, since my current pair has scratches on it from that.
I was told that I shouldn't get the high-powered glasses that allow me to see forever, because I'll wind up with headaches and (he was fuzzy on this) it may make my vision worse. My current glasses are sharp out to several feet; I may end up with new glasses for driving, but the old ones for typing. He also put me down for some other options on the lenses; I had thought that glasses were specified solely by spherical and cylindrical diopters, but apparently there's more to it than that ("prism", specifically). I'll pick up my new lenses next weekend; hopefully I'll still be able to type while wearing them.
It doesn't make much sense, but I get cranky when I have to spend significant amounts of cash. I know I need new glasses--I can't read road signs--but it feeds into my issues with my father never quite being prosperous while I was growing up, and... bah.
In any case, Carin and I agreed that hanging around the mall wasn't the best of free-time activities, and resolved not to go back there unless we had some reason to. I suppose picking up my new lenses next week counts.
There was some Serious Business over at Wikipedia over the last few days, and I think the story bears repetition:
Some time ago, Essjay appeared on Wikipedia. Essjay was a diligent editor, and a tenured professor of theology. He racked up nearly twenty thousand edits, acquired a panoply of privileges, and was appointed by Jimbo (founder and de facto GodKing of Wikipedia) to the ArbCom, one of the few positions of real authority in the Wikipedia power structure.
At the beginning of this year, Essjay was hired by the Wikimedia Foundation's for-profit spinoff, Wikia. A few days ago, it was revealed that Essjay is, in fact, not a tenured professor of anything, but rather just some guy in a basement. This wouldn't have been such a big deal, if not for a few things: Essjay had a habit of bludgeoning people with his credentials. Wikia either didn't do a background check on him when they started mailing him money, or Jimbo decided that the plebs were better off not knowing that Essjay had been using fake credentials. This is clearly troubling, not only because Essjay was a liar (and tried to get away with a half-assed non-apology at first, making an excuse about faking his biography to dissuade stalkers), but because Jimbo covered for him.
On the other hand, it's not as troubling as one might think, because credentials don't carry much weight there, attempts at waving them around aside. Eloquence, who I've seen writing a number of times and who's always struck me as a particularly decent guy, said it better than I could. The funny thing was Larry Sanger's take on it; Larry was a co-founder of Wikipedia who left in 2002 when he discovered that people wouldn't roll over for him just because he had a degree. He took his ball and went home, and now he's sad that he didn't get to be GodKing like Jimbo. He's now attempting to recreate the glory of Wikipedia, only he'll be in charge and he won't take crap from peons. Really--his "Citizendium" project is like Wikipedia, only your work gets vetted by Larry. I can't imagine why contributors wouldn't flock to that.
In short, Larry's message was: See, you got faked out because Essjay had fake credentials--come over to Citizendium, where we have real credentials. I have seldom seen someone miss the point so stunningly.
I went up to Rick's tonight--Carin stayed home to paint--and we walked around campus, speaking about Essjay (I related the story, essentially as above) and philosophy. There's a name for the school of thought which holds that you can work with very few assumptions, restricted to things like "I exist", and get useful conclusions about the material world from that. It sounds Cartesian.
He also made the occasional statement to the effect of "religious people are stupid", which I strongly disagree with. The most one can say is "religious people don't apply rigorous skepticism to the religious aspects of their lives", which doesn't give one that same frisson of superiority, but has the advantage of not making the speaker sound like a dick.
Did You Know that those huge complicated things that optometrists use to test your eyes are called phoropters? I sure didn't.
Comments: Slashdot 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 |
|
|
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
grendelkhan's journal