I’m still working on that wiki.com website, and have learnt a few things about embedding maps, and other things. The days are difficult, but with the help of a friend, it seems I’m getting somewhere.
This is the new logo I came up with:
I think it looks sharp, but I might be just out of my mind. I’m of two minds about the usage of the anime-characters, but I think they give it a happy look – something that a lot of wikis just lack entirely.
It is the idea which founded our nation and has guided our development as a people. Confidence in the future has supported everything else — public institutions and private enterprise, our own families, and the very Constitution of the United States. Confidence has defined our course and has served as a link between generations. We’ve always believed in something called progress. We’ve always had a faith that the days of our children would be better than our own.
Our people are losing that faith, not only in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy. As a people we know our past and we are proud of it. Our progress has been part of the living history of America, even the world. We always believed that we were part of a great movement of humanity itself called democracy, involved in the search for freedom, and that belief has always strengthened us in our purpose. But just as we are losing our confidence in the future, we are also beginning to close the door on our past.
In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/filmmore/ps_crisis.html
I’ve always respected Jimmy Carter. He seems to be, to me, the last president who ever tried to speak to the heart of Americans.
A nagging feeling, if you will.
When I was a kid, there was my world – toys, affection, school, et cetera. At the time, I always believed there was an “Adult” world, where responsible people had discussions, and made rules that I couldn’t understand. I waited a long time, passed through many different stages, and in the end I am 27 years old and sitting here – and find the world around me has reverted to the Child world, leaving the problems of the Adult world to a small group of politicians. Why do I say this?
First, discussions with average people are usually based on racial benefit, or who the person knows. Let me use the hot potato of Zionism for an example. You rarely meet Jews who are not fervrent Zionists; the ones you do generally have had Arab friends for a while. You will not meet a Zionist Arab, except for a few Christian Lebanese who were helped by Israelis during the civil war. Among average Canadians, I generally find the network of friendships is more important than anything else. Make friends with a lot of Arabs, and you will appreciate their point of view. Make friends with a lot of Jews, and you will appreciate their point of view. In neither case will arguing or talking make any differences – and that is bullshit. That isn’t adult. That is a child protecting his friends, without care for reason or logic. An adult shouldn’t be prisonner to ignorance and a mob mentality.
Can we say that our politicians are any different? Replace friends with lobbyists, and you get the same thing.
This isn’t a world for adults, perhaps it never was.
So today I went over to Wiki.com and registered a site. I actually have a couple of very promising domain names there that I plan on developing, but before anything I would like to see how much of it can be modified. Call it a trial by fire on my part, to see what can be done.
The Templating system is awesome. It is a lot like using WordPress – and pretty simple to use. It seems to be possible to do plenty of direct HTML editing, which sounds like a great first step for me. I am going to lay out a hotel site, and see waht I can do with that.
Hrm, it looks like off-site linking for images works fine, but CSS doesn’t. That is irritating, I will have to find a way around that..
‘Rather than moving to Britain, what they’ve actually done is moved back in time’
This is why our infrastructure is so dreadful. It’s why the M20 is as rough as the surface of the moon and why the roadworks on the M25 take so long. Because government agencies don’t work. And that’s the bitter irony of today’s immigration problem.
You have thousands of people coming here from behind what was once the iron curtain, only to find that behind Mr Blair’s smile lies half a million Bolsheviks.
This sounds so similar to what I have to say about Quebec it isn’t funny. It just goes to show Quebec is not unique, nor is it special in the rights it confers its citizens – nor is it alone in realizing it can’t afford the welfare lifestyle it wants to give.