Concerning the Internet, Researching Nazi Occultism, and the Online edition of the Liberty Champion

Two semesters ago I was given a history assignment, with the goal of researching a historical event/period using only the internet. The topic my group chose was "WWII" (a very specific and narrow topic). Every group member got to choose their own subcategory. I chose Nazi Occultism.

I'm not sure what the lesson of that online-only assignment was, but it did teach me that there is a lot of crap on the Internet. The number of 10+ year old geocity, earthlink, and homestead sites concerning Nazi Occultism, Historical-Revisionism, Anti-Semitism, Anti-Religionism, Anti-Evolutionism, and a number of other poorly-cited subjects -- many of them defined in the negative -- was astounding.

And the text was always finely paired with an appropriate aesthetic, with many of the early-day web publishers employing such techniques as colored backgrounds, multi-colored text, multiple fonts on the same page, non-working hyperlinks, and lots of animated gifs, often in columns or rows.

While I think our project ended up being a poor excuse for a history presentation, I think it did achieve her other goal: teaching students that if you only have one resource for real research, it should not be the Internet.

On a similar note, let me quickly address some issues I recently found on the Online edition of the Liberty Champion.

Whoever is the site's webmaster is poorly qualified. They do not know how to integrate their stories online without random HTML code showing up. The stories that don't have HTML paragraph breaks have no paragraph breaks. And don't forget the spelling errors; I found the following ones by searching under headlines alone: (Ashville is Asheville; Fadford is Radford; elecrtic is electric, etc).

For such errors a website is the most forgiving format, as it can be edited at any time -- Even The Washington Post sometimes has errors, but they are always corrected within an hour or so. If the text online is the exact same as the print copy's, most of the Liberty Champion staff need to reexamine their career goals.

MS

Morgan Stanley chief says global credit crisis may be waning reports Bloomberg News and the AP.

Keypoints:

- "I don't know if this is the bottom or close to the bottom, but at some point it will be wise to invest there," - John Mack, Chief Executive of Morgan Stanley.

- "The bank wrote down billions of dollars worth of securities linked to risky subprime mortgages and other debt since last year."

- "... the firm's overall compensation and benefits expenses rose 18 percent in 2007 even though revenue dropped 6 percent."

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I'm holding my breath on all that. I can imagine things "righting themselves" in the short-term. Long term is another story.

Blurbs

It's come to my own attention that it's been a long while since I've been able to come up with a particular topic of which I could comment on at length. This is probably due to a number of things, such as too much blog reading, too much multitasking, being employed in a data-entry job, being out of an academic environment, being in less contact with people who are thoughtful, not caring to write things purely for my own pleasure, etc.

While knowledge is a good within itself, I feel it needs to be applied, or it is loses a lot of its value (or at least appears to). So, I find myself in a bind that I'm learning quite a bit, considering my current circumstances, but with little room for application. Hopefully my non-paid employment situation will help solve this problem.

Realizing that I didn't fall asleep until at least 2:30 am (which is extremely late for me now), and that I did wake up at 7:20am, I'm tired now. Later I might be able to focus on a topic of which to write later on, but not for the moment.

Future topics I should write on:
-Connection between Childhood's End and Evangelion, (and Ghost in the Shell)and if Clarke really believed in all that modern mysticism.
-What will be the biggest issues for the next president.
-Why no president, without overriding the Constitution 10x more than any previous president, will be able to fix America in four, eight, or twelve years (for if Obama is the next FDR).
-Why any president who does override the Constitution that much will probably contribute to ever-growing number of "alarmist" media to contain "The End of" in their title, with this book being titled The End of America.
(Update: I just found out there already is a The End of America, which "is a harbinger of an age that may finally see the patriarchal realm of political discourse usurped.")
-Figuring out how much oil is being used to create alternative energy; figuring out if any alternative energy is being used to create alternative energy; figuring out how much of the problems are infrastructure-related, etc.
-Thinking the government should take all the money they plan on investing in alternative energy and instead invest it in the "Modern Amish" (Amish who own washing machines), since that is probably the real direction of where we are heading.