Quote of the day/week/however long


"Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does."
~William James

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

America's Desk Drawer

 Social media?  Ho hum.  MySpace is history, your mom is too cool for Facebook, YouTube still has its moments - mostly capturing people doing stupid things they shouldn't tell their best friends about, but put on line for millions to see instead.  (Famous last words in the US:  "Here, hold my beer and watch this!")


But there is another web site that is not so personal, yet is still more than worthy of exploration.  It's vision, it claims, is 'to liberate the written word.'  What does that mean?  It means, it appears, that if the Smithsonian is the nation's attic, this place aspires to be the nation's bottom desk drawer.  (You know the one, at home or the office, where we dump the things we're going to sort out some day very soon - the hotel receipts, dog licenses, half-finished letters, birthday cards, manuals for electronic toys, broken pencils, half-used 2003 calendar pads, new fillers for long-lost pens, obsolete forms, printouts of thinky cables we really meant to read and think about, dead calculators, expired Cup-of-Noodles, old shopping lists, new panty hose, the first draft of The Novel - which turns into years and years).



Consider:

A scholarly look at modern Estonian death cults

The 1934 study of psychic phenomena in Jamaica

The 1944 report on intelligence activities on Saipan


No interest?   Then how about...

ICE's 2009 lesson plan on consular notification

The top secret CIA OIG report on interrogation and torture of Al Qaida suspects

The memorandum of conversation between two State OIG inspectors and the consular officer who issued visas to 11 of the 9/11 hijackers.

An article on the murder of a key witness, the Clinton dictatorship, and a shot spotter device.   Put on your tinfoil hat.

And enjoy.



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