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Yes, I understand that is a danger, but I would have a hard time believing that it would occur between two states. Between two nations it is much more likely, and because international law is sometimes murky it might be hard to get back items that have been borrowed. However, in the U.S., one state could get a court to enforce its claim. Now, I suppose Virginia could be hoping that some court would agree with the findings that the law school students came up with and thereby nullify any contract between Virginia and Minnesota to lend the flag, but that could be risky. Would a state really want to project to the world that its run by people who make contracts in bad faith?
That is an interesting story, and it seems right that Minnesota would be able to keep it. Still, almost by default I disagree with whatever comes out of the mind of Gov. Mark Dayton, so I can't say right away that his refusal to do the loan was a good thing. 😉
It seems to be an almost mandatory event in the typical modern doomsday scenario. I'm guessing it's attractive as part of doomsday writing simply because of the obvious reliance society has on electronics, and the seeming inability for people to survive using basis skills without a cell phone or electric can opener.
Here is WillyD's last goodbye:Wally seems to drop by periodically to read posts, or so I gather, but doesn't participate anymore. I suppose that's the ebb and flow of life, and all earthly things will eventually come to an end anyway. Once the EMP strikes, there won't be any more forum anyway, right?
There is an rss feed that automatically updates based on forum postings built into the forum software:http://www.westerncivforum.com/index.php?action=.xml;type=rssThe problem is that it updates based on every post made. I think to be useful, an rss feed should only show news stories. Here is the kind of site which is essentially a blog-news aggregator, which has become quite popular:http://www.ablogabouthistory.com/Maybe what I have in mind is not worth the effort, or is a distraction.
I have not sent out an email to members. Last time I tried to do a mass emailing Donnie scolded me because I shut down his forum for a day or two. 🙁
I have another idea which could go along with WCF, but am not sure exactly how to implement it. I have seen a few other history sites be successful as historical news aggregators which don't have much comment, but post links to history news around the internet with areas on which to comment. I wonder if WCF could host something like that as well and gain readers. It would be ideal if anytime anyone of us saw an interesting history news article, it could be easily posted to WCF and enter into an RSS feed that people could follow. Just thinking here…
As I see it, here are my options with the forum, along with some negatives for each option:1) Keep the forum as is [negative: slow growth]2) Abandon it completely [no growth]3) Hand the reins to Donnie with the hope that a new perspective/vision will enliven it [uncertain growth]4) Revamp the forum - maintain the history categories as most prominent, but consolidate; add additional categories for posting, such as politics, perhaps sports [uncertain prospects of success]5) Revamp the site - add a front end to the site to feature blog posts/other content, and the forum continues as another feature rather than the main star [much more work]Perhaps I'm leaning toward #3 or #4. I feel that the forum has a wealth of information that I like to consult from time to time, and it's also a good place to go when I have questions about history that are out of my area of knowledge. Yet, I also enjoy having a place to discuss politics, or other areas of life (e.g. things discussed in some of Donnie's other forums, such as ILS). I think the trick would be to maintain the primacy of the forum's history role while expanding its scope to help bring in new members.
I have a page on Facebook for the forum, but I haven't really exploited it for promotional purposes.
I do not understand why no one has registered here in the past three months. I did install an anti-spam component on registration, but I just did a test registration and it worked. This is what frustrates me.
I say your observation about it degenerating into a political forum is right, though I don't think there is anything wrong with that per se. For some time, I kind of wished that I could make our political discussions publicly-accessible so that they would bring in more members. For whatever reason, the forum has not succeeded strictly as a history place. I don't know if this is for lack of interest, or because I made it too hard to register, or what. In any case, if there were life to be had in this forum in the future, it would probably need to be broader than just history.
I heard someone at the WSJ more or less defending the surveillance of phone companies, and that surprised me. He basically said that based on a 1979 ruling, people don't really have an expectation of privacy with phone numbers anyway, so it wasn't a bid deal. I think the facts of the present situation are significantly different than what was going on 30+ years ago, so one shouldn't apply the same standard.With that said, the journalist did raise an interesting point. He felt that the NSA scandal was not as troublesome as the IRS scandal. While the NSA scandal was about hypothetical or potential violation of privacy rights, the IRS scandal was about actual violation of rights. In other words, we don't have to wait for something "scary" to happen down the road via abuse of power, since it already happened in our midst. I think that's a good way of thinking about it.
Well I am trying to get my family on Twitter, so let's see how well that works out. Basically, I created a personal account and am having them create their own, and how we can chat, post photos of where we've been, etc. If there's personal information that we don't want to get out into the open, we can always protect our tweets from being made public. It's taken me a while to find the value in Twitter, and I think it needs to be viewed at as:1) a purely social form of communication2) a news aggregator and discussion forum3) a commercial marketing tool I think Twitter doesn't really work when those are all combined. Whatever can be done on Twitter can also be done via email or even text message, but the audience is much larger and it's easier to accomplish.
