I’m a romantic. I can admit it.

I believe in love at first sight. I believe in soul mates and romance, in couples that have been together 50 years still wooing each other and people holding hands walking through the park. I think people fall in love- sometimes quickly, sometimes taking decades, hopefully somewhere in the middle.

And yet… I kind of hate Valentine’s Day. I’ve never liked it. It’s always felt like such a contrived holiday, made up by the marketing people to sell flowers and jewelry and cards and stuff like that.

If you’re not in a relationship, you feel like a big loser, because you’re supposed to have a sweetie. If you ARE in a relationship, you’re supposed to spend money, but be sure you spend the right amount- too much and you’re overdoing it, too little and you’re a cheap bastard.

Even as a kid in school I wasn’t a big fan of the day. We used to do those stupid little Valentine’s Day cards and the teachers kind of had rules about if you were giving them out, you had to give them out to everyone… which totally defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?

(And what the heck are kids in grade school doing giving Valentine’s cards, anyway?)

So what’s a romantic who hates Valentine’s day supposed to do? Sigh.

In other news… it appears that I’m not a big fan of poetry, either.

I’m taking English 101, Composition. (As the course catalog says… Introduction to the writing process. Writing assignments focus on major strategies of non-fiction prose, with subject matter drawn from firsthand experience and observation.)

I went to college for about a year and a half, and it didn’t go really well (I bombed out of Arizona State, made a brief comeback at Washington State University, and then petered out again) but I kind of need to get a degree for things I’m thinking about doing when I retire from the FAA, so it’s back to school- and I need to pound out a lot of basics right now.

Despite the fact that I write a lot (too much, many would say) the class is turning out to be quite a challenge for me, primarily due to the instructor’s style and to my own personality traits.

One of the things he has us do is take a poem and paraphrase it; then sum up our paraphrased version; then write an essay on that summation. And I hate this.

I’m just not a big fan of poetry. I read all kinds of stuff, but have never gotten into poetry; it’s just too self-conscious, too artsy-fartsy for me.

To me, good writing might take a lot of time and effort and energy, but not in trying to find fancy words or be sure that everything rhymes; if it takes a long time it should be because the writer is really crafting the writing so it conveys a story (or a theory or whatever) as well as possible while still retaining the author’s style.

Poetry, on the other hand, strikes me as not being about telling an entertaining story or conveying information or making an argument. Poetry always seems (to me, anyway) to be about showing off- clever wordplay or evocative phrases. Yawn.

So the class is both good and bad. It’s bad because I’m losing interest and don’t really want to do the work; it’s good because when I DO manage to get off my ass and get it done, I’m challenged, I have to think, and it probably is making me a better writer- or at least a more widely trained writer.

I was thinking of this today while I was trying to decide if I’m a romantic or not. Don’t romantics like poetry? Discuss.

On a web bulletin board that I use, I recently read the following quote:

Don’t forget the internet. Algore is responsible for the internet too…

This bugs the shit out of me, because it’s just not true. I can handle political people conflating things or whatever, but outright lying bothers me- they deserve to get called out on it. (Just like I do when I do it. )

In actuality…. Gore never really said that. It’s one of the most commonly repeated lies about him, and it’s a good example of how the sound-bite-media takes something out of context and runs with it in a dishonest manner.

What Gore actually said was this:

During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.

This was in answer to a question about what differentiated him from Bill Bradley, who was also in the Senate at the same time.

Gore’s answer, when taken in the context of the question and the full answer, seems pretty clear- he’s saying that when he was in the Senate, he took the initiative on the Internet. He pushed measures that helped build and grow the net, the economy, protect the environment, and improve the educational system.

Now, whether you agree whether or not the measures Gore pushed actually DID those things doesn’t really matter; the point is that he never said he “invented” the internet. He just boasted that he’d helped build or “create” it. He’s a politician, of course he’s going to try and boast- it’s what they do.

And there’s lots of people who actually do give Gore lots of credit for what he really claimed- that he helped build/create the internet. Geeks (or semi-geeks like me) will recognize the name Vinton Cerf; he’s often referred to as the “father of the Internet”. (He’s one of the guys who really DID invent it.)

Cerf, in an article with Robert Khan (who worked closely with Cerf and could also be said to have invented the Internet- if you know about ARPANET, he built that), said this:

Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development.

No one person or even small group of persons exclusively “invented” the Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among people in government and the university community. But as the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore’s contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President.

No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time.

…No one in public life has been more intellectually engaged in helping to create the climate for a thriving Internet than the
Vice President.

from http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200009/msg00052.html

That’s some pretty high praise indeed. You can read about Cerf, who’s pretty interesting in his own right.

And you can read about Kahn, too.

Anyway, it always bugs me when people say that Gore claimed to invent the Internet. He did no such thing.

At worst, Gore boasted that he helped to create and build it, and many people involved in the early development of the net agree with him on that score, so it’s not really an empty boast. Guys like Cerf and Kahn agree, saying things like this:

The Vice President deserves credit for his early recognition of the value of high speed computing and communication and for his long-term and consistent articulation of the potential value of the Internet to American citizens and industry and, indeed, to the rest of the world.

Gore’s problem is that he’s too brainy for his own good, because he trips over his own tongue. Compare and contrast that with George W Bush, who’s too stupid for the nation’s good and who can barely form actual sentences.