Say What You Want

[Citation Needed]

If Popularity Determined Truth

That is how Wikipedia is often referred to but that is an outdated concept of Wikipedia. Anyone who claims that really needs to check where they are getting their information. No doubt Wikipedia has its issues but considering the neighborhood it lives in, the internet, they have done a great job limited the damage done to their property.

Curse Those Trolls

The Olden Days of Wikipedia

Having actually been a wikipedia troll in my youth I would like apologize. Now that said, those were the old west lawless days of  Wikipedia and then the site was academically a joke. On user-driven sites vandalism and trolls are to be expected and yet Wikipedia has gotten quite good at minimizing the impact of outright vandalism. 

It is this ability to eliminate outright nonsense, combined with more importance given to citation, which has allowed them to become a much more credible site. They have also accomplished two of the typical ideas for traditional encyclopedias, breadth and depth, however their past has made them notorious for their unauthoritative nature. In some ways that is great because you know going into a wikipedia page that this is not the end all be all on the topic. 

The Greatest Site Ever?

There is no true neutral position on many issues but Wikipedia generally does the best that can be reasonably expected. If you are really interested in the truth this can be a very good launching pad. In a well done article, which most now are, you can find very credible sources and often they are links directly to the information, something which no other encyclopedia really offers. 

Yes from time to time an article will pronounce some D-List celebrity who you haven't heard of in ten years dead but these errors are generally quickly corrected and honestly to be expected. I think the site is about as it can get considering how content is generated. And if you disagree, fine, just don't use the site or do and try to make it better.

Visiting Nebraska: You Won't Want to Leave

Natural Wonder

With natural wonders like these its no wonder Nebraska is internationally known. With beautiful scenery at every turn, you will have to come and experience them for yourself.

Legendary

Scotts Bluff

The original home of the historic marksman Buffalo Bill and his Wild Wild West Show, the hallowed battlegrounds from The Battle of Little Big Horn and the remarkable landmark from the Oregon Trail, the Scots Bluff. With 50 original frontier structures still standing reach back into time and walk or drive through history in the Old West.

Carhenge

Modern Brilliance 
Nowhere else can you find ingenuity like in Nebraska. Take a break the classic western trails and visit some some booming urban areas and have a look around some state of the art museums. Or just take in the creativity around every corner.

Simply Breathtaking...

  
...You just have to be there.

Class Review Part 1

How the Class Suits Me

I am a spur of the moment kind of writer and because all of the work of this class is online I'm able to translate that spontaneous inspiration directly into work. I can directly upload my thoughts, immediately, from anywhere instead of just jotting a few notes that I would have to return to later and would otherwise all reference for, and the inspiration behind, by the time I'm able to translate them into the correct format. This allows me the freedom to finish pieces in chunks, how I like to, and let time more time elapse between revisions.

Who needs tradition?

If this was a traditional class I think I probably would have learned more details of the strategies that professional blogs used. The specific tricks they use, the type of jokes they make, etc. but because this class is about the internet by the time you learn what has been effective, it no longer is. In fact I think the nature of the subject would almost render the traditional class format completely ineffective. It's kind of like driver's ed., you can't get good at it by reading a book on how to do it. 

Reviewing interesting points and what is and isn't effective in the class'work is extremely useful in providing guidance as to what is being asked of me. I think the the informal nature of the class sessions has been helpful in allowing the class to work through the ideas and I think the result is a much more relaxed class. 

Also I find it much more effective for my memory to hear many different takes on how to accomplish a single task than to hear a teacher give a couple of textbook examples. Of all the strengths of the format, I think the greatest two are the ability to view a video of the class if I miss, or just want to recall a certain point mentioned, and the ability to get instant feedback and be in contact with the entire class at any point.

Me, Me, It's All About Me!

Many Me

Note: All pictures are actual profile pictures I've used.

"On the web multiple personality disorder is not medicated, its encouraged." - Me

We're all at least somewhat different people in different places. Generally you can't be the same person at work that you are at school or when with your friends on a night out on the town. The difference between these different "people" can be summed up with the truism that we "act according to the situation," all parts fitting together to make a whole. The difference between internet personas can be them seemingly being their own different individuals, largely because they rarely, if ever, come in contact with each other or even are known to be the same person. 

For example, I'm a frequent commenter on numerous sites and while I often use the same or similar username, the content I'm commenting on can be anything from news to philosophy to sports to video games. These personas never overlap, to the best of my knowledge, and so each are essentially their own people with their own histories, profiles and avatars within each community. And if one chooses, every change of a username on any given site can be a death of one persona and the birth of another and soon you may have many, many faces.

Self Control

The ability to reinvent yourself and distance yourself from your physical self, everything from your style of dress and your current haircut to your facial expressions and age, and all the perceptions people make based on these things gives internet writers much more control over their image than you have offline.

Personally, I've often dealt with age bias when discussing things face to face. I long ago reached the age of reason yet my insights into life, no matter the topic, are often passed off by elders as being largely a product of my age and how easy everything is nowadays. As a result I have to go beyond what would otherwise be necessary to prove the extent of my understanding in the physical world. 

Conversely by not presenting a picture of myself online, or even listing an age, I can end this fallacy before it begins. But this is merely one aspect of the unlimited control web personas present to people and I've gone through great lengths to make use of this control, even for this class.

Material Boy

Hand-Crafted?

For years the writings I hold closest to me were written in classic composition notebooks. But even those have slowly found there way away from the their spined Mead homes to notes in my phone and eventually, as of two weeks ago, to word documents on my digital notebook.

I still am considering going back to the material world because real notebooks have one I like: limited space. Though we all enjoy the mistakes made capable by "Ctrl+z" or "Apple+z" that ability combined with (functionally) infinite space can cause some problems.

Writing on Infinity

What is the consequence of having unlimited space and pristine, error-free writing? Logistically writing has become easy but composing has never been more difficult. Before the days of spell-check and backspace existed the strike-through, scratch-out and white-out. Fun times? Of course they weren't, everything was either sloppier or tediously composed in order to be error-free. 

The digital age, in more than one way, has all but eliminated the incessant, but necessary, attention paid to grammar but it has produced an one major problem: infinite, fast re-writes. The ability to easily go-back and change a work is nice, and that's why white-out was invented, but the ability to do this infinitely, backspace and delete, can create unending second-guessing. 

We are no longer have to commit to anything we have written and while this certainly increases the speed of construction it also allows us to be totally indecisive on the blueprints, potentially redrawing them half-way through a project. Changing the layout on the fly can allow for much more creativity and instinctive decisions but for writers who obsess over every word, sometimes its good to have things written in stone.

Still Growing: Ever So Slowly

My Reputation Precedes Me

I'm scary. Or at least that's what you would think if you would have seen the faces of the people I've asked to help me with this project. Those that know me they seem unwillingly to help and I think the primary reason is things I've said in the past on the topic. I knew this topic was toxic to most people but I figured I could sell some on the toxicity (these people must not have been comic book fans). Not so fast my friend or so I've been told.

I'm all ready to interview people if only people would agree to my interview requests. Those pious select who have agreed to sit down with me have done so reluctantly. Fortunately, for the success of this project, there are simply so many religious people that even if I only hit at a ten percent clip I still would have plenty of specimens. Conversely while me of little of faith has little pull with the religious I've had little trouble getting those non-faithful few to agree to help.

You Can't Please Everyone

A wise man once said: 

"Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." - Yoda

Ok it wasn't quite a man,  nevertheless I must fight hard to break up this horrible cycle. If I am already inducing fear at the mere suggestion of the product what will the actual product do? I know I am destined to upset some people so in this struggle to not incite anger so I must be careful to not approach the topic with kid gloves nor be too insensitive. I've been told many times there is no neutral on the subject of religion but I'm not susceptible to Jedi mind tricks.

What is Faith? Asking the People

Where to Start?

Any conversation of religion usually begins and ends with a discussion of faith (besides those that end with "And I hope they burn in hell!"). So before you can move forward to tackle the issues of communication between faiths this needs to be addressed. Besides everyone has some kind of faith. 

We all have faith that the buildings we are in are not going to collapse or faith that the chair you're sitting in right now can support your weight. Without this faith, which is built upon evidentialism, it would be near impossible to live our daily lives but this is not what we mean when we speak of religious faith.

"Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." - John 20:29 KJV

To me that is faith in the religious sense: believing with limited evidence, no evidence or even when the evidence says not to. But there is nothing worse than an someone defining a group of which they are not a member. Of course I could scroll to the appropriate page in each holy text but dictionary definitions just state it and don't live it. So I asked some religious friends of mine...  

Faith in their Words

"FAITH is Knowing and Believing with out having to see or touch"

"Faith is the real feeling of blind trust"

"Perceiving the reality of something known as unreal, the access to something intangible, the possibility of something impossible, and the expectation of the unlikely."

Now we can begin.