And I call an excessively tangential session a "wikiwalkabout", after the Australian walkabout tradition introduced to Americans by "Crocodile Dundee", or, more recently--the Locke character from "Lost". And boy, did that show have a letdown denoument. But I did like the colossus foot in the later episodes, because it reminded me of "Ozymandias", by P.B. Shelley. And did you know that he wrote that as his shot in a poetry duel with another poet--Horace Smith? (I guess he won, right?) Anyway, they picked that as a topic to honor a new museum exhibit of the Younger Memnon statue of Rameses II. Those British museum-goers were just mad for importing cultural artifacts from distant lands and never sending them back. Like the Elgin Marbles, from Greece. And when I think about Britain and Greece, I can't help thinking about their palace guards--Greece with their poofy-footed Evzones and Britain with their Beefeaters. And one of those Beefeaters is the Ravenmaster of the Tower of London--literally in charge of the welfare of the tower ravens. One of whom is apparently named Merlina, and is allowed additional latitude in how far she may fly, because she always comes back. And speaking of ravens and 19th-century poets, boy was Edgar Allen Poe a gothy li'l guy. He had a lot of inspirational company, though. Including Mary Shelley, wife of the aforementioned P.B., who won a 3-way ghost story duel between herself, her husband, and Lord Byron, who only managed to invent the vampire romance genre. So between the two of them and ol' Rameses II, we're almost all primed to scare the crap out of Laurel and Hardy with Universal Pictures monster movie staples: Frankenstein's monster, Dracula, and the Mummy. But we still need the Wolfman....
And hopefully you see how it works now. Before wikis existed, there was "Connections", by James Burke.
And I call an excessively tangential session a "wikiwalkabout", after the Australian walkabout tradition introduced to Americans by "Crocodile Dundee", or, more recently--the Locke character from "Lost". And boy, did that show have a letdown denoument. But I did like the colossus foot in the later episodes, because it reminded me of "Ozymandias", by P.B. Shelley. And did you know that he wrote that as his shot in a poetry duel with another poet--Horace Smith? (I guess he won, right?) Anyway, they picked that as a topic to honor a new museum exhibit of the Younger Memnon statue of Rameses II. Those British museum-goers were just mad for importing cultural artifacts from distant lands and never sending them back. Like the Elgin Marbles, from Greece. And when I think about Britain and Greece, I can't help thinking about their palace guards--Greece with their poofy-footed Evzones and Britain with their Beefeaters. And one of those Beefeaters is the Ravenmaster of the Tower of London--literally in charge of the welfare of the tower ravens. One of whom is apparently named Merlina, and is allowed additional latitude in how far she may fly, because she always comes back. And speaking of ravens and 19th-century poets, boy was Edgar Allen Poe a gothy li'l guy. He had a lot of inspirational company, though. Including Mary Shelley, wife of the aforementioned P.B., who won a 3-way ghost story duel between herself, her husband, and Lord Byron, who only managed to invent the vampire romance genre. So between the two of them and ol' Rameses II, we're almost all primed to scare the crap out of Laurel and Hardy with Universal Pictures monster movie staples: Frankenstein's monster, Dracula, and the Mummy. But we still need the Wolfman....
And hopefully you see how it works now. Before wikis existed, there was "Connections", by James Burke.