For the Love of ...

Okay, I know I said I wouldn't go on about this any more, but I just saw this TV ad for Lynda.com (which I would post here, but no one has it on YouTube yet).  The theme is that you can be whatever you want to be, just go onto Lynda.com and watch the appropriate tutorials to learn how.

Fair enough.

That is, until they start having the happy actors list off what they want to learn: "Business  management," chirps a woman dressed as a baker.  "Spreadsheets," says another, and then a man with a consumer DSLR on a tripod says, "Photography!" and they move on.  Photography?  So someone who is a professional cook and wants to learn a few tricks in managing her business and expand it, and that's the same as starting up a profession I've spent 30 years working at?  Yeah, just watch a few video tutorials and you're the next David Hume Kennerly!  Start working on that Pulitzer acceptance speech now, friend.

And why am I upset (again)?  Because: look at the other things they list.  Learning about spreadsheets  is a technical thing involving a tool.  They don't say, "Learn how to be a sculptor!"  Rather, it's like saying "Learn how to choose a good piece of marble."  One is a skill that is part of a profession, the other is a profession.

Ugh.

Still Not That Smart

But I do seem to have some support in my opinion that one should not approach things feeling superior.  This was Sunday's Gospel reading in the Catholic Mass:

And he put forth a parable to those which were bidden, when he marked how they chose out the chief rooms; saying unto them.
When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room; lest a more honourable man than thou be bidden of him;
And he that bade thee and him come and say to thee, Give this man place; and thou begin with shame to take the lowest room.
But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room; that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go up higher: then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with thee.
For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

Luke 14:7-11

So, as the joke in "Caddyshack" goes: 

"So I got that goin' for me, which is nice"