Pretend you know better.

September 5, 2008 3:10 PM

"Smugopedia is a collection of slightly controversial opinions about a variety of subjects. We offer you the chance to buy a fleeting sense of self-satisfaction at the small cost of alienating your friends and loved ones."
posted by PM (28 comments total)

this is tailor made for metafilter.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 3:15 PM on September 5, 2008 [3 favorites]

I already knew about this.
posted by nevercalm at 3:53 PM on September 5, 2008 [11 favorites]

Smugopedia is a blog, not a 'pedia. Their lax use of the language is disappointing for purported smugmongers.
posted by adamrice at 3:59 PM on September 5, 2008

I have no attention span for these things any more...
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 4:18 PM on September 5, 2008

My friends and loved ones pay me to host this glorious, permanent sense of self-satisfaction. Monthly.
posted by carsonb at 4:19 PM on September 5, 2008

The Vikings section badly needs expanding.
posted by Artw at 4:27 PM on September 5, 2008

If Nancy's baldheaded pal wrote this blog, they could call it 'Smuggo,' but he probably dosen't.
posted by jonmc at 4:45 PM on September 5, 2008

Two pages? Meh.
posted by oddman at 4:53 PM on September 5, 2008

MetaFilter: a collection of slightly controversial opinions about a variety of subjects
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:09 PM on September 5, 2008

I am undoubitively the most well mannered aristocrat on MetaFilter.
posted by clearly at 5:10 PM on September 5, 2008

The Vikings section badly needs expanding.

Not necessarily. "Vikings: always literal" would seem to fit the bill.
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:13 PM on September 5, 2008 [2 favorites]

oddman: there's another dozen or so if you look through the archive. I don't know why you can't next your way over to them.
posted by aubilenon at 5:16 PM on September 5, 2008

MIT's most far reaching contribution to contemporary culture is arguably the fact most of the LSD on the east coast during the 1960s was produced at MIT.

86 percent awesome.
posted by philip-random at 5:42 PM on September 5, 2008

So, they've re-branded the Conservapedia?

And Nancy's pal is SLUGGO, not Smuggo. Same name as Mr Bill's arch-enemy. And there was a KROQ who called himself 'Doug the Slug' who was quickly re-christened 'Sluggo' by Jed the Fish. And the first time a garden slug found its way inside my bathroom, I called him "Sluggo" as I gingerly picked him up with a Gopher reaching tool and tossed him out the front door.
posted by wendell at 6:03 PM on September 5, 2008

...a KROQ Disc Jockey...

Anyway, Nancy's Sluggo was (and is, the comic's still running) NOT smug.
posted by wendell at 6:06 PM on September 5, 2008

I guess this is nice for those who need a website for such things.
posted by Snyder at 6:15 PM on September 5, 2008 [3 favorites]

Here are my favorites:

Iliad

Although the Robert Fagles translation is modern, popular, and easy to understand if you've never studied Greek, Richard Lattimore's classic translation captures the feeling of the original Greek more accurately.

Central Park

Prospect Park, not Central Park, ought to be considered the gem of the New York parks. Frederick Law Olmstead, after all, designed both, but he considered Prospect Park to be his crowning achievement.

Julius Caesar

Caesar's pomposity -- such as his propensity for referring to himself, in his writings and accounts of his wars, as "Caesar" and not "I" or "me" -- makes him unbearable even today.

George Orwell

1984 and Animal Farm are classics, but a much more accurate portrayal of contemporary life than 1984's 'Big Brother' is the middle class despair captured in Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying.

Clueless

Amy Heckerling did a great job of updating Emma into Clueless, but she lost the powerful subtlety of Austin's novel by entirely eliminating certain things, like the character of Mrs. Weston -- the wise governess and Frank Churchill's mother.

Harvard

It is rather smug how Harvard alumni, when asked where they went to school, respond with, "In Boston."

Victor Hugo

Although Victor Hugo was a talented playwright, it is really his political activism that mattered. He could even be credited with the abolition of the death penalty in Switzerland.

David Hume

Although Hume's classic Treatise on Human Nature is a key work of political philosophy to come out of the Scottish Enlightenment, Hume's forgotten masterpiece Of the Standard of Taste, in which he argues that judging art is not arbitrary, is probably the most important work in aesthetics before Kant.

Yale

Although Yale has a good law school, Yale itself can feel more like a retirement community for geniuses than a stimulating university: The great Yale faculty members get tenure there decades after doing their brilliant work elsewhere.

Tango

Although the Tango greats like Carlos Gardel and Astor Piazzolla are first rate musicians, Tango doesn't capture the "everyday man in the street, letting himself go" sentiment as well as its oft-forgotten contemporary, the Murga, does. You can still see it, with its eccentric Carneval-like costumes and dances, in the provinces of Argentina and Uruguay today.

Ivy League

The Ivy League universities happen to be good schools, but academics has nothing to do with the Ivy League: the Ivy League was founded as a football league and still today remains merely an intercollegiate athletic league.

Voltaire

The extreme degree to which Voltaire was hated by the great men of his era is surprising--hated even by the likes of Mozart, who wrote to his father after Voltaire's death, "the arch-scoundrel Voltaire has finally kicked the bucket."

The Riviera

Everyone goes to the French Riviera. The Italian Riviera is just as lovely, and so much more exclusive.

Rio De Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro is wonderful, but right across the bay is Niteroi, which is even better. The view of the city there is spectacular, and the Oscar Neimeyer museum is a real perk.

Aristotle

Aristotle rose to prominence not through his ideas but as the academic favored by the most powerful man in the world at the time, King Philip II of Macedonia. Philip II loved this unknown philosopher and fellow Macedonian so much that he chose Aristotle to be his son's tutor--and his son was Alexander the Great. Aristotle was a guy beloved by kings who conquered the world and spread his ideas.

Dartmouth

It's curious how, when people list the Ivy League schools, they tend to forget Dartmouth.

Go

Although a lot of fun to play, Go isn't as realistic as another ancient strategy game, the Viking "Hnefatafl," in which one of the two sides is the attacker and the other merely vies to help its own King escape.

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology (MIT)

MIT's most far reaching contribution to contemporary culture is arguably the fact most of the LSD on the east coast during the 1960s was produced at MIT.

Venezuela

Venezuela, although beautiful, bears strikingly little resemblance to Italy, which is surprising given that the word "Venezuela" literally means, "Little Venice."

Bickering

Such departmental bickering always reminds me of Borges' observation on the Falklands War: It's like two bald men fighting over a comb.

James Madison

Although James Madison was perhaps the most under-rated President, the degree to which the history and thought of the ancient world--from Athens and Rome to the Hebrews--permeated every aspect of his life is striking: even after completing his studies at Princeton in two years, he remained on campus for one more year just to study Hebrew.
posted by popechunk at 7:09 PM on September 5, 2008 [1 favorite]

Bah. Henry Root's World of Knowledge puts this feeble effort to shame.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 7:29 PM on September 5, 2008

Now why do I care?
posted by JoeXIII007 at 7:59 PM on September 5, 2008

Meh. Ambrose Bierce did this over a hundred years ago.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 8:01 PM on September 5, 2008

In the spirit of Ambrose Bierce, an updated version of his Devil's Dictionary
posted by bodywithoutorgans at 8:20 PM on September 5, 2008

So popechunk, your favorites are... all of them?
posted by George_Spiggott at 8:26 PM on September 5, 2008

Meh. Ambrose Bierce did this over a hundred years ago.

Did he? I thought he was witty & insightful.
posted by UbuRoivas at 1:32 AM on September 6, 2008 [1 favorite]

Here's my best smug opinion: Although Murakami himself may disagree, Alfred Birnbaum's 1989 translation of Murakami Haruki's novel Norwegian Wood better evokes the story's emotional arc than Jay Rubin's 2000 translation.
posted by Faint of Butt at 5:02 AM on September 6, 2008

they both might have done better to have translated haruki murakami instead.
posted by UbuRoivas at 7:34 AM on September 6, 2008

In the spirit of paradox, the user with a lot of favorites has no favorites.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:53 AM on September 6, 2008

metafilteropedia
posted by Zambrano at 9:13 AM on September 6, 2008

they both might have done better to have translated haruki murakami instead.

Are you making some kind of crack along the lines of "FoB got the names switched around"? If so, you have failed at smugging.
posted by thedaniel at 4:41 PM on September 6, 2008 [1 favorite]