Christmas in Florida, originally uploaded by gtrefry.

There’s a beautiful line in Tom Stoppard’s new play, The Coast of Utopia. The frazzled Russian literary critic, Belinsky, in the midst of ranting lays it out:

When philosophers start talking like architects, get out while you can, chaos is coming. When they start laying down rules for beauty, blood in the streets is from that moment inevitable.

I can think of no more appropriate words for this Election Day eve. We remain embroiled in an intellectuals war in which reality continues to rebuke the hubris of strong ideas and poor perception.

Florida, originally uploaded by gtrefry.

CNet wrote a nice article about how we’re all geeks here to in New York. So take that West Coast. Apparently there was some question about our technology-loving credentials.

But others insist that people who think New York isn’t a geek’s playground just need to look a little harder. The Big Apple, they say, definitely has its geek crowd; they’re just not as easily defined by their love of technology.

Best of all though, Come Out and Play is beginning to look like an institution. After a recent mention and exhortation for GPS games at next year’s festival in O’Reilly’s Radar blog, we get this nice mention here:

Social tech has expanded beyond Meetup, too. Last month, the Come Out and Play Festival saw Manhattan’s streets as a platform for “big games”: large-scale versions of Space Invaders and Assassins, digital-camera-driven scavenger hunts and pay phone races.

The whole event had its roots in a course taught in New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, the master’s degree track that also spawned Dennis Crowley’s Dodgeball. And early in October, a whole host of New York techies, including Crowley and Spiegel, gathered for an overnight “un-conference” called BarCampNYC.

091206 004, originally uploaded by gtrefry.