Practical advice for managing Imposter Syndrome.

The Linux folks have their penguin and the BSDers their daemon. Perl's got a camel, FSF fans have their gnu and OSI's got an open-source logo. What we haven't had, historically, is an emblem that represents the entire hacker community of which all these groups are parts. This is a proposal that we adopt one — the glider pattern from the Game of Life.

About half the hackers this idea was alpha-tested on instantaneously said "Wow! Cool!" without needing any further explanation. If you don't know what a glider is, or why it would make a good emblem, or if you're dubious about having an emblem at all, read the FAQs page.

I first proposed this emblem in October 2003. It has since entered fairly widespread use, as you can see by the number of international translations over on the left. Not universal, because many hackers object on principle to the idea of having an emblem at all, but it appears to be a successful meme.

Cat-v.org hosts a series of sites dedicated to diverse subjects that share an idiosyncratic intellectual perspective, questioning orthodoxy and fomenting elitism and high standards in topics from software design to politics, passing by art and journalism and anything else interesting.

Other than total and complete world domination, the overriding goal is to encourage and stimulate critical and independent thinking.