Meandering by Gettysburg, the Bard, and Bierce

Computer Life column for July 4, 1998
by
Richard Gordon

It's time for another of my lunch-hour trips over the Web.

The turning point of the American Civil War occurred 135 years ago this week: The battle of Gettysburg. So our first stop is at the History Place's Gettysburg Address site (www.historyplace.com/speeches/gettysburg.htm).

There are many good sites on the subject of Gettysburg; I selected this one because it includes a link to a succinct summary of that historic battle and the text of the speech Lincoln delivered that November.

This site led me to dig up another Civil War site: Edward L. Ayers' Valley of the Shadow project (jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU/vshadow2/). Ayers and his colleagues have pieced together original source material-newspapers, letters, pictures, map data-about two communities on opposite sides of the war: Augusta County, Virginia; Franklin County, Pennsylvania.

Although this site promotes the CD-ROM version of the project, it provides plenty of free material for students to use as they learn, not only about the Civil War, but also about how historians sift through original sources. Ayers suggests that teachers use this information to encourage students to try "writ[ing] their own histories."

That's it for topical sites. The rest of these are pretty silly.

Has anyone ever called you a "script kiddie" or a "spamming Odie"? If so, they've visited PCWorld's Pretty Ultimate Cyber-Insult Generator (www.pcworld.com/columns/pcwarped/). Keep current with GeekSpeak yourself and increase your vocabulary of insults today!

Skewed Shakespeare

For reasons that would bore most readers, I looked up resources about Shakespeare's Tragedy of Julius Caesar. Both Alta Vista (www.altavista.digital.com) and HotBot (www.hotbot.com) pointed to a site called the Toxic Custard Shakespeare (www.toxiccustard.com/shakespeare/).

At this very funny site, we discover what Antony's funeral oration would have been like if he'd gotten drunk at the wake. Scouting around in the other Toxic Custard Shakespeare parodies, we glimpse what might have happened if Romeo had gone to the wrong balcony, or if Macbeth had attempted to cover up his role in the killing of the king. As Macduff and Lennox scream their grief, Macbeth calmly tells a Scottish TV reporter that the king was killed by rats.

I so enjoyed these warped versions of the Bard's work that I poked around furhter in the Toxic Custard Web site. It is the brainchild of an Australian named Daniel Bowen. Not all areas of this site are suitable for kids, but the Toxic Custard Dictionary of Computing (www.toxiccustard.com/computing/d.html) could be the cyber age's equivalent of Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary.

For instance, Bowen provides an accurate definition of a CD-ROM:

"A device fitted to a computer allowing it to access large amounts of data from a convenient portable glass disc. But mostly used so people can listen to music while they work."

This dictionary led me to search for Bierce's work on line. A plethora of web sites present versions of the Devil's Dictionary (e.g., home.navisoft.com/entisoft/devildic.htm).

Bierce's jaded view of the world still holds some truth nearly 90 years later. For example, in keeping with our Civil War theme, he defines Yankee as follows: "In Europe, an American. In the Northern States of our Union, a New Englander. In the Southern States the word is unknown. (See DamnYank.)"

And all who hire consultants should heed Bierce's definition of that activity: "Consult: to seek another's approval of a course already decided on."

And we close this column by returning to the Toxic Custard Dictionary's entry for "World Wide Web":

"An incredibly useful resource, where you can find all the advertising, propaganda and other useless information in the world, within seconds.

"It is also an excuse for the computer section of the newspaper to print a bunch of URLs and call it journalism."

Copyright © 1998, The News Journal Company

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