Friday, December 16, 2005

Adam Gurri from Sophistpundit

This weekend, we've got two more great interviews lined up. Today, it's Adam Gurri from Sophistpundit...
Adam Gurri

Our interview panel is set...
crowd

And now our first question...


Don
What was your worst day blogging?

Adam Gurri
I don't know if I had a worst day as much as I've had a few really bad weeks here and there, where everything I put up seemed cheap and superficial.

bachman
What is your favourite book?

Adam Gurri
American Gods by Neil Gaiman--though I actually thought that his graphic novel series, The Sandman, was even better.

Gaiman is, in my opinion, the best living fiction writer. Though his stuff can have a bit of the dark edge to it, they characters are always sympathetic--something that's important to me--and they always do the right thing in the end, no matter how difficult that might be.

Sherlock
Recommend a movie.

Adam Gurri
Collatoral. Great writing, great acting, great everything. Not a remake, and the good guy is actually a good guy (you might notice that this is something of an obsession of mine). Has been described as taking the Hitchcock "ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances" formula to an extreme.

I would say Serenity, but at this point it would just make more sense to get Firefly beforehand. And yes, I am a Firefly nut (we prefer the term "Browncoat")

DonW
Pat Robertson? Or Jerry Falwell?

Adam Gurri
Robertson, just because I recently found comedy in some statements he made.

basil
What is your favorite nude statue?

Adam Gurri
Dav--I mean, uh, the Venus de Milo.

DonW
What is the most profound thing anyone ever said to you?

Adam Gurri
The first thing that comes to mind has a bit of a story behind it. I was in Connecticut with my family one year, and there had just been a draught. We saw some trout attempting to jump upstream, except there was no water upstream for them to get there, so they were just clustering together and jumping to nowhere.

I said to my father, "Wouldn't it make more sense for them to just spawn where they are right now?"

To which my dad replied in characteristic fashion, "It isn't about what makes the most sense. It's about what has always worked."

Took me a while to get my head around that one.

There's also my grandfather, who always said "Everything is luck. And the first, and most important luck, is who your parents are."

Don
How much cash do you have in your wallet, right this second? What are the denominations?

Adam Gurri
Zilch. In denominations of nada and--oh, here's a receipt. I have a total of $receipt.

Sherlock
What are you, nuts?

Adam Gurri
It's the popular theory.

DonW
Prince Valient? Or Hagar the Horrible?

Adam Gurri
Hagar all the way. Just the right combination of pillaging and marital spats.

basil
Use "protagoras" in a sentence.

Adam Gurri
Protagoras was the Sophist of ancient Greece--the first and greatest of the lot. So obviously, when naming my blog, I was half stealing from Reynolds, and half from one of the greatest minds of all time. The origin of my blog's name hasn't compensated for the content quite as much as I'd hoped that it would :D

bachman
What person you never met has had the most influence on your life?

Adam Gurri
Fellow named Karl Popper. Gave me a fresh perspective on just about every subject, and instilled in me a near obsession with making a concerted effort towards intellectual humility. A difficult task when you're born with an ego like mine.

Even where I have ended up disagreeing with Popper, it's the questions that he posed that helped me figure things out for myself.

Sherlock
Where is Atlantis?

Adam Gurri
It's in the back of my car, along with Elvis.

Don
Ovaltine or Nestle's Quik?

Adam Gurri
Neslie's Quick! Duh. What do you take me for?

DonW
In a fight between Ann Coulter and Michael Moore, who would win? And who would be rooting for?

Adam Gurri

bachman
What is the greatest civilization/society of all time, excluding the present?

Adam Gurri
Greatest civilization of all time? I'd probably go with Ancient Athens. They gave us so much of what we consider to be Western Civilization, and they were just an interesting society, t'boot.

basil
Stan? Or Kyle?
Stan. Kyle has too much sand in his vagina.

Thanks, Adam, for being a great sport and answering these questions. And for sharing some serious stuff with the fun stuff. We all learned something.

Tomorrow, we have Sadie from And What Next to face the panel.

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