Day of Judgment

The railways of our country pushed the infant boundaries back past the known frontier to the terrain beyond the wildest imagined. The American Joe Miller’s Jest Book sums the States up finely, “The boundaries of our country, sir? Why sir, on the north we are bounded by the Aurora Borealis, on the east we are bounded by rising sun, on the south we are bounded by the procession of the Equinoxes, and on the west by the Day of Judgment.” The “Day of Judgment” laid west with dreams of a unified nation from the last, early morning star over the Chesapeake Bay to quiet setting of the yellowish-roseate sun off the California coastline. America became a quilt of lives and cultures of the old world stitched together by rivets of iron and steel to forge the soon-to-be new world.

The Internet was the fitting end to the most productive century in record history. It capped off a century of flight, space exploration, and millions of other inventions that somehow worked its way into the American society and the world’s as well. With the assistance of the World Wide Web, billions of people communicate, study, research, buy or sell, and just surf the digital waves of information with freedom. In 1991 no one knew of the internet accept a few dozen scientist placed sparsely throughout the global, but by the century close billions were committed to the internet for the long haul.

Railroads open the tallgrass prairies and mountainous regions of the West to the cityward movement of the remaining decades of the 19th Century. The iron horses, which the Native Americans named the trains, thundered across the continent delivering food to the newly established Mid-Western and Western townies, along with raw materials and markets to sell to and trade with. In the textbook, The American Pageant, Volume 2: 1965 to Present, it mentions that “Time, itself, was bent to the railroads.” Time zones were based solely on the railways to bring order to the train schedules as well as to eliminate, if not only reproduced, the number collisions.

Alan Kay, Vice President of Research & Development and Disney Fellow Walt Disney Imagineering, said, “The commercial computer is now about 50 years old and is still imitating the paper culture that came before it, just as the printing press did with the manuscript culture it gradually replaced. No media revolution can say to have happened without a general establishment of ‘literacy:’ fluent ‘reading’ and ‘writing’ at the highest level of ideas that the medium can represent.”

The Internet, and even the computer, is still in its infancy as was the railroads in the 1800’s. It took time for the railways to efficiently adapt to its new undertaking of a new nation. The Internet has been adapting to the changes before it as well; some may say we have been adapting to it, but it was the same for the railroad. Any new invention or concept takes time for humans to become accustom to.


I apologize for getting behind on my posts, but I have been busy in the last several weeks. Here is paper I wrote for a history class. I hope you enjoy.

Innocence Again Today was Lost

I awoke to the news this morning--hearing of tragic attacks in London. Again, these terrorists struck precisely at another vein in our beloved Western Civilization. It is not only England that faces these violent actions organized to stall the economy and paralyze the spirit but the rest of the world as well. They stood beside us on the 11th of September four years ago, and so now it is our turn to affirm our stance with our ally. Yes, we have differed in our beliefs and personal doctrines, but what friends do not? These despicable and appalling displays of cultural genocide fail in comparison to the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, yet lives were lost all the same to this religious fundamentalism, which is spreading throughout the globe.

A man on the news today asked, “How should the U.S. respond to the London attacks?” I feel it is simple just the same as they did for us--with open arms. And together we will declare in one loud voice, as Prime Minster Tony Blair stated, “We are united in our resolve to confront and defeat this terrorism. We will not allow violence to change our societies or our values.” And as President George W. Bush added, “We will not yield to terrorists. We will find them and bring them to justice.”


I know I am running behind. I was planning on posting a piece on my 4th of July; however, the situation that occurred in London today made it seem improper. I might post it later, but this time I send my love and whatever else I can give to the families of the victims.