Now scrolling: The Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Saturday, June 30, 2007

Week 4, Thing #9: Merlin and Other Wizards



Trying to find Lincoln-dedicated newsfeeds has been an education and an adventure. Many history websites feature a page on Lincoln, but their RSS feed is usually on the homepage, and is very general in content, not focused on Lincoln at all. Even a great quote site I found wanted to offer me several authors, not just Lincoln. So tracking down a dedicated newsfeed was not easy.

Feedster and Technorati are extremely powerful search engines. Typing in "Abraham Lincoln" gave me over 86,000 hits on Feedster ; over 57,000 on Technorati. Not since Veronica have I seen so much information pulled in on one search. Because keyword is inclusive rather than selective, I got every single website even mentioning the two words Abraham Lincoln. So I probably won't be using these servers in the future.

Signet8.com was just the opposite, bringing up only three RSS feeds on Lincoln. Only one of the blogsites was "approved" by Signet8, and none of them featured what I was looking for.

My best resource was Blogsline, which brought up about 370 searchable sites. I added four more sites to my reader by searching Lincoln on Blogsline. But I had my best luck simply typing in "Abraham Lincoln RSS feeds" on Explorer. This is how I tracked down HighBeam and the New York Times.

Anyway, I also added Merlin to my Blogline reader and opened an account with them. I like that page very much and almost registered for the geocaching teasure hunt. These days you can go anywhere in the world without leaving your desk. Geocaching is very lively and offers lots of activities for students.

I also explored Topix.net and found it user-friendly, with lots of appealing graphics. Plus, news can be searched by city.
I did find one great blogsite on Technorati about the Kennedy/Lincoln parallels. I've always loved this topic and would like to devote a future blog to it. There are over forty parallels total, not all of them mentioned here. Some similarities between the two Johnsons as well as Booth and Oswald are very chilling. http://dannofox.blogspot.com/2007/06/history-mystery.html

In general, I enjoyed exploring the various ways to track down newsfeeds and would like to keep practicing and expanding on these methods.
Posted by at
Labels:

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)