I owe the gang at Google an apology! Why? Because: I just signed into Facebook and tried to answer about a zillion questions, all but three or four of which are, in my humble but considered opinion, absolutely none of their cotton-pickin', chicken-pluckin', guitar-playin', nose-pickin' business!!! They've got more angles than a college professor's geometry text, and I even know a couple of professors who can testify to that, if we get right down to it. And now
I know why Mark Zuckerberg is always smiling. He's hit on a method for picking the brains of the unwashed masses even surpassing that of the GoogleBots!
Fortunately, I have an excellent defense. I can just play stupid. What books do I like? There wasn't one on that Facebook sampling that even came close. Have they ever heard of E.A. Wallis Budge, former Curator of the Egyptian Antiquities Section of the British Museum, and his many books about Ancient Egypt? Or maybe Adolf Erman's 'Life in Ancient Egypt'? Admittedly rather obscure these days perhaps, but a little more authentically educational than Stephen King's stuff. Another book I like, but loaned to a friend and wish I hadn't, is on another of my pet subjects, outer space. It's titled 'Beyond The Moon' by the Italian Astronomer Paolo Maffei, and if you can find it, you're in for a treat. He takes us
on an imaginary spaceship flight from here to the outer limits of the known universe, with frequent stops at all the interesting and unusual phenomena along the way. And there's lots of them, trust me.
Books! Want a 'pot-boiler'? Try Tom Harpur's 'The Pagan Christ' if you want to start a riot in the Bible Belt....Or a treasured 'oldie' perhaps? 'God and the Astronomers' by Robert Jastrow. A home-grown adventure? Stephen Coonts tale 'The Cannibal Queen' about his flying a restored Stearman all over the lower 48, making at least one landing in each of the states, and describing it
all for us. Famous movie stars? You can't do much better than A. Scott Berg's
book 'Kate Remembered' about his wonderfully talented friend Katharine Hepburn.
My point? If Facebook is going to pick our brains about our likes, dislikes, desires and aversions, would it kill them to use a little intelligence arranging their selections? Or am I expecting too much from the nouveau riche?
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