My Humble Opinions on Hockey

My Favorite Hockey Players:

1. Alex Ovechkin (This is bold by the way)
2. Scott Hartnell
3. The Staal Brothers

My Favorite Hockey Teams:

• Washington Capitals
• Los Angeles Kings
• Colorado Avalanche

A link to help you learn about my favorite player. It helps if you speak Russian

Russian Machine Never Breaks

I was looking forward to this little experiment where the entire class has to Google something at the same time, and then post the results. I was also a little apprehensive. I mean, what if I got another search result pertaining to Vampires like what happened in class when I Googled good old Abe Lincoln? I’m sure I would be mortified. I’m really not one of those Twilight girls. Though, I did enjoy Interview With the Vampire. Mmmmm… Brad Pitt.

(Image from: favim.com)

Anyway… I was relieved when my search for Calvin Coolidge (The Sphinx of the Potomac and our 30th president) yielded no mention of sparkling, blood-sucking creatures. However, I was not expecting the first result to be his wikipedia page. I suppose my expectations were a little naive. After all, as I stated in class, America is a country of convenience. And what is more convenient than wikipedia? Everything is summed up nicely and divided into sections with helpful headers and there’s even a picture sometimes! It boggles my mind that www.calvin–coolidge.org/ was the FOURTH result. I suppose this means I should stop checking wikipedia as a default and start perusing more “scholarly” sites.

And I leave you with one of the photos that came up in my search. Warning: it’s a little graphic, and I don’t intend to harm sensitive eyes. If you’re offended, I sincerely apologize and will continue to sit here snickering to myself…

In the article Promises and Perils of Digital History, Cohen and Rosenzweig examine our digital presence, focusing on how we “preserve” history on the web. I found this topic to be incredibly interesting, and a little unsettling. It is something that I have pondered myself for a long time now. I believe the most poignant example of the flaws in “preserving” digital history is something we all either love or hate: wikipedia. I know I’m not the first person to point out the massive problem that arises when we allow anybody to re-write history however they may choose, but what gets me is that when I look at my peers, and even myself, we STILL continue to use wikipedia for scholarly papers, even though we know of times when the information was blatantly wrong. (The 2008 election is a good example – all the ridiculous things that were written on some candidate’s wiki pages). The thing is, it’s easier, quicker, and less costly to just search something on wikipedia than it is to do extensive research at the library, or to pay for a database like JSTOR. And as a nation we are big fans of convenience.

The good news is, the authors of this article offer a solution, a call to arms for all historians to take the act of digital preservation into their own hands. We can only wait and see how successful this endeavor turns out to be. I hope that people take this request seriously, for as we saw in the news just today, when a group of Mali rebels fleeing Timbuktu torched a library full of ancient manuscripts, we may not always have the physical, tangible remains of historical artifacts, so we must preserve our knowledge in a permanent way.

Three things I would like to learn about this semester are:

1) About some of the Anti-Piracy laws in the United States and other countries

2) About Internet Privacy Laws (especially as they pertain to user information stored by Google, Facebook and other important players)

3) And about some of the big people in the creation of the internet as we know it today.

Welcome to onMason. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

So… I was going to include the Lionel Richie music video to accompany my post title… but I watched it again before I posted it, and it’s a little creepy, and more than a little 80’s. So here’s an iconic internet video instead:

My name is Christine Caputo and I am 22 years old – but please don’t call me Christine. I have always gone by Chris. However, if we are speaking in Spanish, you may call me ‘Cristina’ because it’s hard to pronounce ‘Chris’ in Spanish. I am (predictably) a Spanish major here at George Mason, and a transfer student. This is actually my first semester as a degree seeking student at Mason. I grew up in Fairfax, and then went off to college at Ohio University. After three years as a Bobcat, and a short stint in the working world, I am now proudly a Patriot. “Once More Into The Breach” refers to this, my second foray into the scholastic world.

All throughout High School I was involved in Theater, and it took up most of my time. Now, as an adult I have taken up ice hockey, and it is one of the most grueling, but rewarding things I have ever done. I accompanied my classmate Kelly to Ecuador over winter break, and also enjoyed the trip immensely. But, I am also glad to be home, and excited to start my journey toward graduation. This IT class seems much more fun than I had imagined when reading the description -the subject matter is intriguing and I can’t wait to learn about a topic that is obviously a big part of every facet of our lives nowadays.

I look forward to our many adventures to come, and I apologize to whoever may be hurt when I steal their seat tomorrow morning.

Love, Peace, Chicken-Grease,

Chris