Gratis and Libre Inaugural Post

Alright folks! It's taken me a very long time to get this here blog started. Most (read: all) of the preparatory work has been trying to find a name and URL that satisfied my vision of what I want this blog to be. So, as an introduction, let me explain...


The Title - Gratis and Libre

This is pretty simple and comes from the expression "gratis versus libre" which is commonly invoked in the discussion of the open source movement, which I am a big fan of. You can read more about it here, but here's the simple version: gratis means "for zero price" and libre means "freedom". So, in this context, people in the open source movement often simplify it to the rather witty and convenient phrases "free as in beer" and "free as in speech", respectively.

As I said, I'm a big fan of this movement, and I'm sure I'll be using this blog to talk (read: rant) about it in the future.


The URL - Dear GloboChem

This is more silly, but might carry more meaning for this blog, though maybe I don't know how yet. This comes from a Mr. Show sketch (alas, it isn't on YouTube) wherein David Cross writes a couple of letters to Mr. Show's catch-all big evil corporation, GloboChem. In the first he expresses dissatisfaction with some product he bought from them and requests that they send him "as many free products as possible" in compensation. In the second, he has just received a death threat from Bob Odenkirk (for not having replied to his letters) and writes

Dear GloboChem,

Someone is trying to kill me! Please send me as many free products as possible.

Love,
David Cross

Hilarity. Relevance. Ripped from today's headlines.

So, this is what this blog will be. Me talking about things that interest me, ranting about things that piss me off, and generally dicking around in the blogosphere, blogocube, and blogodrome with about a million links to Wikipedia as reference (more on that later). Subsequent posts will be, without a doubt, much more well put together than this one -- I was just too excited to get started.

The next couple posts will include something like an autobiography and my first substantive post which will probably be on some of the things I've been learning and thinking about in my Gender and Inequality class.