carp and stereotypes

This weekend Navan sang for a Burns Dinner. We have ended up at a few of these over the years and they are one of places where we get a straight dose of one Celtic country as far as the origins of the people who attend. This makes it easy to start stereotyping, but now we can turn to Google to make sure we really know what we're talking about. Enter the prejudice map. (Yes the links really do work the way the author meant them to work - I would have given you a direct link if one existed.) And if you haven't crossed a Burns Dinner before you now have the formula to learn more.

This week has been a week of carping. Well, just Friday mostly when I woke up half an hour late and was running full tilt from 7am until 1:30am when we got back from said Burns Dinner, and all three of my meals for the day went weird (carp, carp). Just last week the Washington Post had to shut down comments on their blog because people were being too nasty and vicious, and David Pogue at the NYTimes sent out his weekly tech newsletter on the topic of internet jerks, largely in response to the nasty emails he receives. (sorry - I think that link won't work after his next column comes out) His best find was this from Benjamin Franklin in 1750 - people haven't changed so much with the coming of the intranet. It's just that we all have easier access to each other.

Interesting in light of all this that carp comes from Old Norse "karpa" meaning to boast. The primary annoying thing about people who carp at/about other people is that they assume they know more and that you are clearly wrong. Seems obvious now, but I'd never connected the two words before.