Today's a day for the paranoid!

Sometimes I wonder if I'm too paranoid about not revealing statistics about myself like my full name and my employer, especially given that I work for a pretty cool university with people that do some pretty spiffy and forward-thinking things in e-learning.

Then I see something like this post from James Farmer, who has been warned by his (unnamed) university to "cease supporting and promoting weblogging, wikis or any other technology not officially supported by the University". It looks their admin is a little touchy on anything that might compete with their CMS, and does not wish to see commentary (read: criticism) on the topic. Never mind, of course, that blogs and wikis can be used to supplement and enhance a CMS; his research is apparently cause for disciplinary action.

That's a startling message from a type of institution, which is, in theory, supposed to be a supportive environment that encourages exploration and discovery. And of course, it may not be representative of the whole picture: perhaps it's just one or two members of the administration who are so short-sighted, and the other people there are actually quite reasonable.

But that's exactly why I don't make a big show out of who I work for and what we do; who knows if I've said something here, even unrelated to e-learning, that could piss off the wrong person. Perhaps Telus is a major sponsor of some program here and they don't want to see an employee of this university babbling about the TELUSfear. Perhaps one of the profs is a staunch Republican and wouldn't want to work with someone as anti-Bush as I am. I'd just rather be safe than sorry.

In other news for the paranoid, tonight's election night! Not that we're going to know the winner for quite some time, of course. The absentee ballots don't have to be in until the 9th, and they're expecting a large number of them this year. Besides, there'll be some recounts and some lawsuits and some appeals to go through in the meantime.

I don't really drink much, but I was thinking a drinking game might be appropriate for tonight: something like, chug every time you hear "too close to call", "a dead heat", or "neck and neck"... any other suggestions? It might make the process bearable.

I'm curious to see what happens after the election results are final, for either side. There's been an awful lot of pent-up emotions for the past year. Are we due for riots? I'm thinking there'll be some smashed windows, a few fights in a few cities. Nothing on a civil war level, hopefully. But it's been a pretty intense time, and people do have a tendency to vent when the pressure has been building... of course, the steam may very well die down over the course of the next few weeks while they decide the winner. We'll see.