WikiLearning #8 (the Mafia)

Things I've learned from Wikipedia, and sometimes other places.

This is commentary. And this is really good.

"We know from Gay Talese's book Honor Thy Father that being a professional mobster isn't all sunshine and roses. More often it's the boredom of stuffy rooms and a bad diet of carry-out food, punctuated by brief, terrible bursts of violence." Roger Ebert.

LDS History in Context of the Strauss-Howe Generational Cycle

In 1991, William Strauss and Neil Howe proposed a system of generational cycles, each cycle having four distinct stages that lasted twenty years give-or-take. Each generational stage took its nature by reacting to the generations that preceded it, most especially by reacting to faults in the generation that directly raised it (these reactions, of course, produce other faults that cause a similar reaction in the generation to follow). All countries go through this cycle, but Strauss and Howe were specifically interested in America's.

WikiLearning #2 (aestheticization of violence, &c)

Things I've learned from Wikipedia, and sometimes other places.

This is commentary. And this is really good.

Blueseed is or was a "company working on launching a ship near Silicon Valley which was to serve as a visa-free startup community and entrepreneurial incubator. The shipstead planned to offer living and office space, high-speed Internet connectivity, and regular ferry service to the mainland. The project aims included overcoming the difficulty organizations face obtaining US work visas, intending to use the easier B-1/B-2 visas to travel to the mainland, while work will be done on the ship."

Full disclosure, I accidentally typed "sheep" instead of "ship" the first time around.