October 2002 Archives

I have this constant, low-level fear that I really don't want to know anything - that I'm simply going through the motions and finding out where information is kept, but resisting building a knowledge base in any particular area because I'm just too lazy to bother. I have many proof points for this assertion, including my bizarre ability to skim a bunch of stuff and then sound like I know what I'm talking about. It just seems suspicious that with a shallow understanding I can convince people that I'm knowledgeable about just about anything, but I have yet to store a reasonable quantity of information about any specific topic.

However, today at work something just happened that causes me to think I might be redeemable. My boss asked me what the child poverty rate in Texas was, and I *knew*. It's a very small fact, and I couldn't tell you any others off the top of my head, but it was a fact, and I knew it. I didn't just know how to find it. I knew it.

It was cool.

Nominations for Stupidest and Most Heartless Thing to Say Ever When People Are Dying In Front of Their Husbands in Parking Lots:

Besides, added White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, when it comes to new gun controls generally, "How many laws can we really have to stop crime, if people are determined in their heart to violate them no matter how many there are or what they say?"