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anime, schanime  0

Posted on June 14th, 2006. About .

Perpetually confused by the production companies of recent blockbuster animated films, I post this here to help clear it up for my mind. Note that the Internet Movie Database does not list this information for some reason. At least not on the main page:

Ice Age: 20th C. Fox

The Wild: C.O.R.E Feature animation

Chicken Little: Disney

Cars: Walt Disney/Pixar
Toy Story: Disney/Pixar
Monsters Inc.: Disney/Pixar
The Incredibles: Disney/Pixar

Over the Hedge: Dreamworks
Madagascar: Dreamworks
Shrek: Dreamworks

Wikipedia vs Britannica online articles  0

Posted on June 14th, 2006. About .

In class today we discussed the difference between Britannica Online and Wikipedia.

Wikipedia currently offers 1.2 million articles while Britannica has 98,000 articles.

I still contend that Wikipedia’s strength lies in its currency and that it is a good “first step” resource. My prof made the good point that Britannica dropped the online-ball when it decided to map its print-based model of business onto the web. It would have done better, he suggested, to run something akin to Wikipedia and tout it as “not as good as the print version” but they would still have been able to build on the name.

Funny thing is, I *never* use Britannica online now. When in Japan, I frequently referred to it. I feel funny about this since I still think the print version is truly the best general encyclopedia on the market. But these days I am interested in more specific info and Wikipedia tends to be more on the ball when it comes to topicalness and currency. Accuracy may be a miss but I’d rather have a ball park article than none at all.

world war one  0

Posted on June 14th, 2006. About .

proving once again that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, here is the cause of WWI according to John Goodman’s character Glenallen Walken on the West Wing TV show:

“Franz Ferdinand, who was the nephew of the Austro-Hungarian emperor, was killed by a group called the Black Hand. And because they were a Serbian nationalist society, the empire declared war on Serbia. Then Russia, which was bound by a treaty, was forced to mobilize which meant that Germany had to declare war on Russia. Then France declared war on Germany, and that was World War I. Because the emperor’s nephew was killed.”

Now be honest: was that not a better summary than any history teacher ever gave you?

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