I had some blogs saved up complaining about a Web 2.0 meme I couldn’t finish (sorry), a Wikipedia Article, and the fact that I couldn’t find a suitable Time Lapse artist on the 2nd … So … Here we go …  

     Web 2.0 is an old concept.  We were using the term back in 1999 at a Web Design studio where I worked at as a lead developer… It had to do with the separation of form and function, an optimized user experience with nearly seamless transitions from Desktop to Web, and ability to allow clients to manipulate that experience in a way that helped them make sense of the data they were viewing.
     Despite the Wikipedia article which says O’Reilly Media quoted it in 2003, the term’s been around for more than 10 years… Seriously,believing that is like believing Al Gore created teh Internets.
     Also contrary to popular belief (especially to a lot of anti-Microsoft asshats), the first real “Web 2.0” app was Microsoft’s old Exchange Webmail client — thrown away due to its instability, instead of fixed and re-packaged — which boasted more features than even Roundcube Webmail can get away with now.

     This video, however, has only a little to do with any of that. Instead, it’s a great piece of artwork which highlights the things that’ve happened over the last ten years and gives us some things to think about as we go through our cultural transitions.

Tip: Sir Rantzalot, more commonly known as Rantz, who, for all practical purposes appears to be a gentleman and a scholar. Or something. heh

Today, on my way back to my office I happened to catch National Public Radio’s Evening Edition. The story was about a new web reference source in response to Wikipedia. Evidently there are a group of individuals who believe Wikipedia to be too liberal. I am not saying that this group of individuals is wrong, but they came to this conclusion based on the statistics of a poll by Wikipedia editors.

There are several bits of flawed logic with this idea. The assumption that the editors of Wikipedia aren’t human because as a straight set of data this poll would leave no room for human error or a lack of honesty. These facts are statistics. Statistics by nature can be used to sway one way or another. If not lawyers wouldn’t be so profitable. However, the major problem with consevapedia.com, is the misuse of the word conservative.

The main example can be shown by comparing the definitions of the word kangaroo on both sites: Wikipedia and Conservapedia. Okay, I am fine with either of them until I get to the Origins section of the Conservapedia definition. The first thing listed is a creationist theory explanation. That in itself was fishy enough for me to check the dictionary for the definition.

The Oxford dictionary (I would have used Merriam-Webster, but the link wouldn’t pull up) states that a conservative is “(in a political context) favoring free enterprise, private ownership, and socially conservative ideas.” If this is the case then where does interjecting religious beliefs into the origin of a species come into play? A true conservative world should not include religion. Religion is much more defined either one way or another.

Conservapedia.com even goes on to say “A conservative is one who adheres to principles of limited government, personal responsibility and moral virtue.” Where does this give them the right to inteject a secular religious viewpoint, much less stake a claim of moral virtue? If they are truly conservative should they not list the scientific information first?

With that in mind I would like to propose a new web address for this website: severelyscrewypedia.com