Brief technical excursus

One of the fun things about my job is that - just occasionally - I can do pointless things and pretend they are 'interesting' findings. This archive site is great example. I was looking for old versions of the BBC site yesterday - just type that into the Wayback box - and it's fascinating. We're so used to the current versions of things that we forget how recent it all is. I pulled up the BBC site from 1997, when I went to university - and it's mind boggling how bad it is (here's the news site from 1998). The first site at all I can find is from 1996, though I've since seen the 1994 version


Yet I don't remember this being the case at college, and if pressed would have said it was only a bit worse and clunkier than now.


On a second note, and one that I find amusing, the Internet also proves splendidly corruptible. This blog, wonderful though it is, is not an original phrase, but named for the injunction in Paul and in later councils that he who acts / believes otherwise be accursed. Here's Paul in Galatians 1.9: If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. So, it's a good biblical phrase with history, it's then picked up by the early church.


And if you search using Microsoft's Bing, this is what you find. Actually you find

1. Wikipedia's artcicle on the subject
2. Something about a band
3. An article about the Latin term and Greek origins



Tellingly, if you - like everyone else - search on Google, you get:

1. A blog, about how using human embryos is bad
2. Brilliantly, this blog
3. Amazingly, this blog again, highlighting the May 2009 bibliography (BOTM: Phineus Redux)

Google own blogger.com