Tuesday, September 30, 2014

THE LONG SHIP

I have lost my faith in wikipedia and I say that even though I edit wiki articles. However, as an online repository of startling depth, I still like to delve into it in the wee hours and the hyperlinks can take me hours away from my starting point. I'm afraid my philosophy can be reduced to: read rather than sleep, sleep rather than eat, eat only when you must. I came by it naturally. At 8 all flashlights were confiscated and I wasn't stupid enough to read by candlelight so I hot-wired a D cell battery with a flashlight bulb and carried on reading. If I was hard to wake in the morning, so be it.

This is pretty cool. It is like so many of the wonders of a different age. I, for instance, never thought I'd find the Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee. What a wonder that is. I really like the remnants of the World Fair and Exposition in San Francisco and Treasure Island. Very little is left in either place.

A replica of the Gokstad ship, named Viking was sailed across the Atlantic to the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893
The ship above was built and sailed to the World's Fair in Chicago to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Columbus and his men in the New World. The picture called to mind The Architect's Dream.


6 comments:

Buck said...

Why have you lost your faith in The Wiki? Enquiring Minds© wanna know.

HMS Defiant said...

I suspect that I am a 19th century kind of guy. I was a sergeant-at-arms of keeping the faith with actual facts a long time ago. I accept that the people I emulated were as filled with flaws and biases as the people today but wiki allows naked partisans to hold fief to whole tracts of wiki.

Partisans are OK. I am one. I am, in fact, a pirate, but lately wiki seems to have given full rein to the communist and fascist wings of the left and surrendered control of many entries to their control. Nobody is allowed to edit except the wingnuts who seized control of the article.

Anne Bonney said...

Nice boat.

HMS Defiant said...

Yep.

Buck said...

I was aware of the "editing wars" at Wikipedia but didn't realize it had gotten to the point you describe. I use The Wiki a lot for stuff that doesn't have a whiff of politics around it/them but I also employ Reagan's motto: "Trust but verify."

HMS Defiant said...

uh oh. I might write again.