At least I don’t have to write that many words–or hunks even.

(And the Fingeroo/Ubuntu line made me laugh out loud. Wish I’d thought of that connection!)

fg: Someplace recently — it might have been while preparing this post — I came across a quote about the extent to which people simply do not tell the truth about things: not out of intention to deceive (themselves or others), just because it’s so easy to get the details wrong. It’s actually a natural genius which humans have, in a way — inductive logic, the capacity to look at a host of specifics and come up with a general truth. That final mosaic of truth is no less true just because it excludes some of the specific little fragments which went into it.

Or something like that. :)

Jules: Like I said, stuff about Halbritter lies sort of sparsely on the Web’s ground. But a Google Image search will turn up some pretty good results. (Note: he did an illustrated version of Mein Kampf, and maybe that’s one reason why there’s not much about him — even if he didn’t treat it remotely respectfully, it’s still an odd choice of subject.)

Squirrel: The entire Plant-and-Animal World book reveals a mind strangely obsessed with hands and fingers, feet and toes. With what I think is your professional background, you’re more likely than I to, er, grasp the significance of those choices (on HB’s page or in your dreams).

I do remember an exercise which we were asked to do at the start of an undergrad psych course. The professor asked us to draw a person; that was the only instruction he would offer, even after much pleading.

My result: a rather Charles-Barsotti-ish fellow, very plain and not particularly interesting… except for his hands, which I’d taken great care to depict as having a full set of fingers and opposable thumbs.

So then the instructor tells us when we’re done: You just drew a picture of your self.

A simplistic exercise, no doubt. But I’ve agonized over it for decades.

Now I want to see other stuff Kurt Halbritter did. I agree with fg: Curious, indeed.

Looking forward to launching the Robert Cray tune-age.

Of course ‘things which seem otherwise’ can be a fresh thinking and an exciting pursuit but somehow your title feels like a preparation for a deception. The older I get the more I gather I stumble on this ‘endemic human tendency for self-deception’, you refer to, to the point were indeed many of us if not all can’t see the woods for the trees or more precisely would find it more shocking to consider a truth.

(PS Truth comes up a lot in my profession, and my stock in trade has naturally enough has been to question it.)

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I myself haven’t read Faking It, but it seems to have attracted generally positive notices. And after reading the first few pages of the book at the Amazon site — or at Google Books (linked above), for that matter — I agree: it might be very hard to pass up. (His voice in those sample pages reminds me of yours, at least as it sometimes comes across online.)

Darc: Thanks again for the moral support! I have no idea on what basis cries for help on the Ubuntu forums are answered or ignored (the latter, in my case — two times over). But there comes a time when a guy just has to tell himself, well, the heck with it: I can probably figure it out.

Fingers firmly crossed, of course. :)

Hope you and Falc banish your own digital demons soon (and will let me know if I can help). You have a great weekend, too!

Have a great weekend if you can, and let Robert Cray sing the blues for both of us.