The Great Wiki

I was going to explain how The Great Wiki, an extra-dimensional being of massive intelligence, was the origin of science, how she has gradually leaked knowledge into our world until we reached a point that she could directly intervene in our affairs--through her medium of choice, of course, which is Wikipedia--and how she's generally benign, except for her preference for '80's fashion (which means you can expect it all to be coming back, including the jelly bracelets).

But then The Dog and I got into an argument about pronouns.

"The Great Wiki isn't a 'she,'" said The Dog.

"I know that," I said.

"Wiki is genderless."

"Yes, but I thought it would be nice to tip my hat to any female readers of this blog, not to mention women in general, and have us all imagine a great Marie Curie in the sky who didn't die from aplastic anemia."

"Women don't need that kind of artificial respect.  They can stand on their own two-to-four feet, if we're including female dogs in this discussion, which I feel we should."

"Should we use the proper name for female dogs in that case?"

"Not necessary," said The Dog.

"So we're acknowledging the achievements of women and lady-dogs, but we're not artificially inflating them."  I paused.  "I think I just said something wildly inappropriate."

"How?" asked The Dog.

"I'm not explaining," I said.  I might have been blushing.

"It sounded to me you had the right idea," said The Dog, "and we do need to watch how we refer to everyone to avoid offense."

"I'm confused," I said.  "Are we being respectful here or politically correct?"

"I'm not sure anymore either," said the Dog.  "How did this all get started?"

"Wikipedia and science."

"I think we've dealt with that adequately.  Write more tomorrow."

And since I always do what The Dog says, that'll be it for today.

--Pete