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filkerdave,
Jun. 5th, 2003 11:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynthe interview:
1) What do you hate most about living in the NY area?
The financial aspect. Gas prices in the local counties. Insurance costs on my car. Rent on any apartment I happen to look at that isn't in an El Stinko area. There's too many people creating an amazing amount of demand for a restricted supply of all the Big Things around here, and the laws of economics dictate that the prices go up when that happens, which sucks if you work for a nonprofit.
2) If there's one song that sums up your life at this moment, what is it?
Show Me The Way, by Styx. Every night I say a prayer in the hopes that there's a Heaven / And every day I'm more confused as the saints turn into sinners / All the heroes and legends I knew as a child have fallen to idols of clay / And I feel this empty place inside - so afraid that I've lost my faith / Show me the way / Show me the way / Take me tonight to the river and wash my confusion away. . . And if I see a light, should I believe? Tell me, how will I know? / … Show me the way / Show me the way / Give me the strength and the courage to believe that I'll get there someday. . .
I'm not talking solely about religious faith there, although that's a big part of it. The world in general has done an awful lot to beat the crap out of my faith in the ability of decent people to outdo the really crap people, and there is a certain part of me that periodically looks at what I’m doing for a living and wonders exactly how much it's worth or how much of a difference I’m making, when what I always wanted to do was help people. I remind myself that what I do helps the folks who help even more people, but it's still kind of a tenuous connection between swearing furiously at the server until it works and seeing flood victims gotten back on their feet. So. . . one wonders about the Way, y'know? Hence the song.
3) If you could cause any one person, past or present to have NEVER EXISTED, who would you choose?
Oh, my. So very, very many possibilities, ranging from the obvious (Saul of Tarsus) to the bloody obscure (Svend Foyn, inventor of the harpoon gun that made large-scale whaling really viable in the late 1800's). Sadly, the people I despise the most in history tend to have been merely the focal points of very large movements that would have found themselves another head one way or another, so wiping them out wouldn't do much. But it would be interesting to kick Amenhotep IV - better known as the heretic pharaoh, Akhenaton - out of the time stream altogether. Given that he was the first known monotheist, and that the Amarna records from his reign are the first mention in any historical documents of a group of dissidents and escaped slaves called the Habiru, it would be fascinating to see what came of it. Besides, given that the next guy on the throne was his son Tutankhamun, I'd be stripping the boy-king out of the historical record too - and depriving future generations of some fairly silly speculation over cursed tombs.
4) If you were granted the power to do it, would you actually do it? (And what would the ramifications be?)
Probably not. If I did, however, the major ramification would be that we'd get to see whether monotheism was a viable idea without a king to throw it around. The Egyptians didn't much go for the idea themselves, but the neglected and largely ignored Habiru and their associates had roughly the same ideas at the same time; did they get the idea that YHVH was the primary / only god from Akhenaton, or was it revealed directly to them, or what?
It'd be interesting to come back a thousand years after the never-was Pharaoh's time and see what the region looked like.
5) What's up with this weather?
Every prayer about ending the drought from last summer or the summer before has finally taken effect. All at once. It was either this or a Category III hurricane.
A'right, you wanna be interviewed, ping me and lemme know.
1) What do you hate most about living in the NY area?
The financial aspect. Gas prices in the local counties. Insurance costs on my car. Rent on any apartment I happen to look at that isn't in an El Stinko area. There's too many people creating an amazing amount of demand for a restricted supply of all the Big Things around here, and the laws of economics dictate that the prices go up when that happens, which sucks if you work for a nonprofit.
2) If there's one song that sums up your life at this moment, what is it?
Show Me The Way, by Styx. Every night I say a prayer in the hopes that there's a Heaven / And every day I'm more confused as the saints turn into sinners / All the heroes and legends I knew as a child have fallen to idols of clay / And I feel this empty place inside - so afraid that I've lost my faith / Show me the way / Show me the way / Take me tonight to the river and wash my confusion away. . . And if I see a light, should I believe? Tell me, how will I know? / … Show me the way / Show me the way / Give me the strength and the courage to believe that I'll get there someday. . .
I'm not talking solely about religious faith there, although that's a big part of it. The world in general has done an awful lot to beat the crap out of my faith in the ability of decent people to outdo the really crap people, and there is a certain part of me that periodically looks at what I’m doing for a living and wonders exactly how much it's worth or how much of a difference I’m making, when what I always wanted to do was help people. I remind myself that what I do helps the folks who help even more people, but it's still kind of a tenuous connection between swearing furiously at the server until it works and seeing flood victims gotten back on their feet. So. . . one wonders about the Way, y'know? Hence the song.
3) If you could cause any one person, past or present to have NEVER EXISTED, who would you choose?
Oh, my. So very, very many possibilities, ranging from the obvious (Saul of Tarsus) to the bloody obscure (Svend Foyn, inventor of the harpoon gun that made large-scale whaling really viable in the late 1800's). Sadly, the people I despise the most in history tend to have been merely the focal points of very large movements that would have found themselves another head one way or another, so wiping them out wouldn't do much. But it would be interesting to kick Amenhotep IV - better known as the heretic pharaoh, Akhenaton - out of the time stream altogether. Given that he was the first known monotheist, and that the Amarna records from his reign are the first mention in any historical documents of a group of dissidents and escaped slaves called the Habiru, it would be fascinating to see what came of it. Besides, given that the next guy on the throne was his son Tutankhamun, I'd be stripping the boy-king out of the historical record too - and depriving future generations of some fairly silly speculation over cursed tombs.
4) If you were granted the power to do it, would you actually do it? (And what would the ramifications be?)
Probably not. If I did, however, the major ramification would be that we'd get to see whether monotheism was a viable idea without a king to throw it around. The Egyptians didn't much go for the idea themselves, but the neglected and largely ignored Habiru and their associates had roughly the same ideas at the same time; did they get the idea that YHVH was the primary / only god from Akhenaton, or was it revealed directly to them, or what?
It'd be interesting to come back a thousand years after the never-was Pharaoh's time and see what the region looked like.
5) What's up with this weather?
Every prayer about ending the drought from last summer or the summer before has finally taken effect. All at once. It was either this or a Category III hurricane.
A'right, you wanna be interviewed, ping me and lemme know.
