I’m amused by this author “bio” on Harpers.org, which was clearly created by a computer geek in love with taxonomic classifications:
This is Ford, Paul, an author and a human being. He is part of Authors, which is part of Human Beings, which is part of Connections, which is part of Harpers.org.
Reading it, I was surprised to discover that human beings are part of “Connections,” whatever that is, which in turn is a subcategory of Harpers.org. I consider myself to be a human being, which I suppose means then that I, too, am subsumed in the plentitude of Harpers.org — clearly some very high order of metaphysical being.
BTW, it appears that “Ford, Paul” of Harpers.org is the same as “Paul Ford” of Ftrain.com, a site that has long puzzled and fascinated me for its mix of eloquent, lyrical writing and a kind of in-media-res intimacy that gives all of its posts a weird decontextualized bizarreness. I wonder if that taxonomy is one of Paul Ford’s little jokes.
