Memoirs: The Great War

It's hard to believe that World War One happened almost one hundred years ago. It has faded more and more into memory. Last I checked there are only three veterans from the conflict still alive.

I was recently reading Mr. Punch's History of the Great War (and it's here on google books as well) and then came across an article about photos of the Gallipoli campaign that were saved from the trash heap in, of all places, Vancouver. To quote the article:

He said the fortuitous find is a reminder of how important it is to ensure historic images are properly archived.

The Great War is well archived of course. There are any number of memoirs and accounts that help give the perspectives of the combatants on all sides. firstworldwar.com has diaries and memoirs among other information. Heritage of the Great War is a site in English and Dutch that is filled with stories, histories, and accounts. It has a large section on Great Writings of the Great War which links to novels, memoirs, and other books from the Great War and about the Great War. You could get lost in those links for days.

Even though the war started almost a century ago it still holds some surprises. One of the biggest for me is the number of colour photos that were taken during the war. Yes... colour. While Heritage of the Great War has some of these, the best collection I've found is the aptly named World War I Color Photos. Even in the small number of colour photos that survive there are surprises. Among the pictures that you'd expect there are pictures of the African soldiers who fought on the Western Front. We don't expect to see Senegalese or Algerians soldiers.

Men who lived through the war took the time to explain what they went through. To tell us what they thought was important and to share what they experienced. Usually with the hope no one else would have to go through the same experiences again. If we want to learn from them we better start paying attention to what they were trying to tell us.

Reading their words is the first step.

Follow Up: The Head of The Khan Academy Speaks...

I wrote about the Khan Academy as a magnificent obsession. Considering how big it is I could have written about it as if it is one of the net's obvious sources.

Sal Khan gave a presentation at Gel 2010. He gives more insight into how the Khan Academy was started. And as he talks with the audience he points out some of the things he ended up doing right even if those things weren't intentional or planned. It's a good place to start knowing more about the person who's going to end up having taught a lot of the world a lot of subjects.

History: Secret Documents of an Evil Empire

It was over 25 years ago that Ronald Reagan first publicly referred to the Soviet Union as the evil empire. Certainly on the list of regimes that have done horrific things during the twentieth century the Soviet Union ranks at or near the top. But how evil was it?

A Hidden History of Evil by Claire Berlinski is an article that covers two archives of pilfered soviet era documents. The article itself is based on the assumption that the Soviet Union is an evil empire. There is no equivocating on that score. The article's last paragraph begins:

We rightly insisted upon total denazification; we rightly excoriate those who now attempt to revive the Nazis’ ideology. But the world exhibits a perilous failure to acknowledge the monstrous history of Communism.

Under the occasionally heavy rhetoric is a tale about thousands of documents. Documents from the inner circles of soviet power. The two archives in question are most likely treasure troves of new information on what was going on in the mind of the soviet leadership. They may help clarify and explain lots of actions and decision of a previous era. They also seem to implicate a number of politicians in the west as being overly sympathetic to the soviet cause.

But do they offer a fair picture? And do they give any insight into a bigger question. The question of whether evil exists. Or more precisely - whether Evil, with a capital E, exists.

Which is a question for another time.

Back on the subject of the documents let me leave you with a simpler question. If the private notes, letters, discussions, and behind the scenes wheeling-dealings of your country's politicians were collected in a large pile for all to peruse and read.... how would your country appear? Saintly? Evil? Incompetent? How would your country come across?

The Current Financial Meltdown Explained

Trying to understand the basis of the current economic crisis seems almost impossible. It seems so esoteric and convoluted that there seems to be no good explanations in the mainstream press. The people who should be helping us by explaining what happened haven't been doing a very good job.

So let me point you to Shocking Fraud from Financial Scum from Good Math, Bad Math. It turns out the best explanation I've come across is from a science blogger.

An earlier and just as useful explanation of the sub-prime mortgage mess comes from two comedians - John Bird and John Fortune. Here's a video explaining the Subprime Banking Mess. What's amazing is that the reason they propose for why a bailout is necessary was not actually used. I almost expected politicians to use it to explain the need to spend billions on people and companies that created the crisis that stole billions.

Reminisces: And Then He Was Gone...

It's hard to disappear off the 'net. We're tied so tightly to our online presence. We like our email, blogs, websites, calendars, and social networks. We may dream or threaten to leave once in a while but I think most of us have come to accept that some part of our lives is lived online. We have a presence in cyberspace and we don't wish to leave it.

Plus it's hard to imagine how to pull the plug and just leave. How would you do it? How would you erase most of the traces of yourself online? And don't just think about abandoning things. I'm talking about removing as much of your online presence as possible when you go.

So when a well known hacker, writer, programmer, and all around online personality just dropped off the face of the earth the shock was immense. He not only disappeared, he took with him most of his work.

Smashing magazine's _Why: A Tale of a Post-Modern Genius is a good synopsis of what we know of the person known as _why the lucky stiff, or just _why. It's the tale of a person who threw his personality and offbeat way of looking at things into all his work and who one day... just disappeared.

In August 2009 as soon as he disappeared there was article, after article, after article all wondering why _why had gone. Aside from lamenting the loss and wondering why it happened the online community, especially the online community around the Ruby programming language, started to collect the copies of his work they could scrounge up. An effort was made to make sure that his digital legacy didn't completely disappear as well.

The Ruby programming language owes a lot of its current popularity to _why. Why's (poignant) Guide to Ruby is as weird an introduction to a programming language as you can read. It's personal, interesting, and uses cartoon foxes to help along the way. It's filled with great lines (some from the cartoon foxes) such as "Addiction is like Pokemon. Let's collect every cigarette ever!". It goes beyond being just a simple tutorial. It's a reflection of the person who wrote it. Ruby's spread from its homeland of Japan was hastened by _why's work.

We may never know why _why left. We may not know who he is. But he did have an impact while he was online. A community has saved his works and continues to keep his memory alive. And after all... isn't that all we can ask for when we go?