I was starting to get furstrated with my attempts to keep up with the news, so I'm setting that approach aside for now. A couple of years back, someone commented that my knowledge base seemed all outline and no content. That was a perceptive remark, and in spite of my efforts to catch up, it's still too much that way. So much of my making links seems rather dry and mechanical.

One of the problems with keeping up with current events is that I don't really have enough background in history. I decided to take a look at earlier periods, including classical and medieval and early modern history, and the biggest problem is that many of my links are still too general. I have lots of links to nations, but not many to regions or cities within those larger nations.  I don't have details on religion, government, or economics, cultural events, groups, or biographies.

I decided to go back through earlier periods and start creating some of those links...and things started getting interesting again.  Before I do much with classical and medieval history, I need to do more with the 16th and 17th centuries. This is helping develop a skeleton for the history of Abrahamic religion in general, and Christianity in particular.  I'm makeng progress on international government including colonial empires and modern compacts, and on national government. Government activities and forms, economic systems, and various elements of culture and technology are also starting to get more of a historical sketch. I've even begin updating biographies, some of which I haven't touched for four years. 

This is more like how it's supposed to be going. I will be taking several passes through history. Each time through, I will have a little more to add.

So I'm going to have a happy new year.  One way or another.

I finally got caught up far enough on the analysis of the last two weeks to begin digging a little more into the other aids; government, economics, culture, particular groups, and biography. Some of these have to be brought down to the level of the current year, quarter, and month, but that has to be done only once for each period, so the next one will go faster.  In the meantime, I have found that it is hard to develop a subject in a vacuum, which prt of why I have moved toward analysis of history and away from the science end over the last few years.

Author Larry Correia offers an-opinion-on-gun-control that presents some of the best arguments against restrictions on gun ownership that I've seen in some time.

One of the problems with violence in movies and video games I see is that  no how matter how visually "realistic" it is, it is still fantasy. It seems to desensitize those who induge in it excessively, There's no need to clean up or deal with the aftermath,  there's no pain, there's no lasting consequences. I'm not advocating censorship. I'm advocating greater discrimination and better judgement in what media and entertainment we consume. Although moviemakers claim to be giving the public wht they want, the money people who decide what movies get funded, made, and advertised have their thumb on the scale.

It's been years since I went out to a theater to see a movies, but I wanted to see what Peter Jackson did with the Hobbit.  Not bad. He was resonably faithful to Tolkein's story...there were a few additions and a few of my favorite bits left out, and there is the potential for some serious twisting of the story in the next movie, but we shall see.

I'm still going to complain about the cliffhanging cliche in action movies; I didn't count how many there were, but I spotted more than one. Good employment for stuntmen, I suppose.  I was going to comment that at least there wasn't a car chase scene, which is practically obligatory, but then there was Radagast's rabbit-powered sleigh which got chased around a bit. I suppose that counts.

For some time I've been resisting, or putting off, the analysis of government.  I give up. I surrender. If the reportage of historical events demands it, then that's what I'll do. I still think religion is more fundamental, but since there isn't the coverage of it, I'll have to get by on scraps.

I don't have a great deal to say about last week's shooting in Connecticut. Between those who want to ban all guns, and those who vociferously resist any restrictions whatever on their right to keep and bear ams, there has been more heated debate than I care to participate in. I offer the opinion that mentally unstable, irrational, hate-filled individuals who engage in suicidal plots to take as many innocent people as they can out of the world with them will find a way to do so: It it isn't guns, then something else will do.

Last Sunday, a group of feminists proposed a "Wear Pants to Church" Sunday. I don't have a problem with women wearing pants to church.  I recall my grandmother in the 1960s wearing pants suits to church. What matters is what's in their hearts. But on those grounds, using worship service as a form of political or cultural protest instead of for worship does not deserve approbation.

After a long trip through nations and peoples, a foray into religion and government, and another rewview of interconnections of historical periods, I'm just about ready for nother look at recent events, and it feels like about two weeks behind. At least, this time there's less of the overhead involved, so it should go a little faster. 

I'm falling a bit behind on current events, since I;m notfinished going through nations. France, Ukraine, Turkey, and Japan have a little more history of recent events to them.