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And there was nothing remotely like a "service", i.e. a discussion or social networking site. Who would pay for it?

No one had to. If you wanted social networking, you hopped on IRC or Usenet.

Back in those days, great sites were constantly disappearing just because the webmaster got sick of paying hosting fees.

*Shrug* I dunno, one of my favorites was the Witches' Voice, and that's still around.

It's a damn shame that the Libertarian Party had to go and nominate some closed minded jackass as their standard bearer. I disagreed with Ron Paul on many important issues (abortion) but I never got the impression that he was a bigot or a religious zealot. Bob Barr strikes me as both of those things.

Could the Libertarian Party really do no better than him or are his previous outlandish statements just not that well known and/or remembered?

On the other hand, I desperately want to keep John McCain's paws off of the supreme court over the next 4-8 years. There are a lot of old liberals barely hanging onto the bench by their wrinkled, scrawny, arthritic claws that should not be replaced by a Republican nominee.

I'm not convinced that the Liberal wing of SCOTUS really deserves to be saved. It was the Liberal wing of the court that decided Kelo v. New London, which basically gave municipal/state governments the right to use eminent domain to seize property for private development.

I'm also not entirely convinced that more conservative justices == automatic end of Roe v. Wade. Roberts has seemed willing to defer to established case law and has shown a reluctance to take on high profile and divisive cases.

In any case if abortion rights teeter one vote away from elimination then I could make the argument that gun rights are also one vote away from elimination. The current balance of the court actually seems to be about right to me -- though I realize that the Liberal justices are the next to go and on that basis I probably should be rooting for Obama -- but I'm not overly eager to see a shift to the far-left in the court either.

Also, I wonder if this guy is any relation to the nutjob Peters Brothers, whose 30 year campaign against satanism in rock and roll has yielded similar results to 'Morality in Media,' ie. zero.

A news story I read the other day about Podcasting being picked up by churches used the word "Godcasting". I wanted to puke. http://www.sltrib.com/faith/ci_2596528

Via one of my fav. news sites, right up there with /.
http://www.witchvox.com/xwrensnest.html

I like 60's, The Dead, The Who, etc.. I also buy modern Pagan music http://www.witchvox.com/xpaganmusic.html/ I am a Unix, Linux, and Network administrator. The first pagan music that I purchased, http://www.wiccabilly.com/lyrics-chantrant.shtml/ has referances to "Bob Dobbs", http://www.subgenius.com/ and the best Linux distribution, Slackware, also uses Bob's likeness in some of its logos.

wicca google links

I, for one, am sick of searching material only to find that the page is some asshat's blog. Nothing against blogs, but you never know where this material came from.

OTOH, what constitutes a 'blog'? Is Slashdot a blog? Is this a blog? The lines are constantly being blurred, and I'm not sure it'll be easy for google to make that distinction.

an excellent site to find out about Samhain and other pagan holidays is witchvox

Sorry, You just hit a nerve there bud.

Not gonna be preachy, but perhaps, sometime with an open mind, you check out
The Witches Voice
Or, for the short and sweet... A basic FAQ on modern Witchcraft

And, on a more personal note, just some points I like to make when painted in the light *you* just shed...

1) Paganism (Not specifically modern Wicca) has been around as long as there has been agriculture. They were our Holidays first.
2) Pagans, as a general rule, do not try to convert others, nor force any way of thinking on anyone. We prefer you think for yourself.
(as for myself, I am just impressed when some people *think* at all)
3) Sorry, no devil here. Thats *your* religions creation. You deal with him.
4) Well, I could go on for pages about this, but it's pretty redundant. check out *my* page for more information.
5) Oh, well.. There is *one* bad thing about being Pagan/Wiccan. We've never had those wholesale "convert or die" parties like y'all had, so Mel Brooks has never had a chance to make up snazzy songs about our past..
(Humming.. "The Inquisition... here it comes...")

Oh, in case you are wondering, my credentials on this one...
yes, I've read the Bible. In 3 languages.
My Grandfather and Father are Southern Baptist Ministers.
I myself was a Royal Ambassador for the Southern Baptist church.
I am also an ordained Minister...

Oh, by the way, by *your* religions rules, You're supposed to love the sinner, and try to help them find forgiveness for their sins. "There's no such thing as a good witch" doesn't follow in those footsteps y'all seem to love so much very well at all.

Sorry, You just hit a nerve there bud.

Not gonna be preachy, but perhaps, sometime with an open mind, you check out
The Witches Voice
Or, for the short and sweet... A basic FAQ on modern Witchcraft

And, on a more personal note, just some points I like to make when painted in the light *you* just shed...

1) Paganism (Not specifically modern Wicca) has been around as long as there has been agriculture. They were our Holidays first.
2) Pagans, as a general rule, do not try to convert others, nor force any way of thinking on anyone. We prefer you think for yourself.
(as for myself, I am just impressed when some people *think* at all)
3) Sorry, no devil here. Thats *your* religions creation. You deal with him.
4) Well, I could go on for pages about this, but it's pretty redundant. check out *my* page for more information.
5) Oh, well.. There is *one* bad thing about being Pagan/Wiccan. We've never had those wholesale "convert or die" parties like y'all had, so Mel Brooks has never had a chance to make up snazzy songs about our past..
(Humming.. "The Inquisition... here it comes...")

Oh, in case you are wondering, my credentials on this one...
yes, I've read the Bible. In 3 languages.
My Grandfather and Father are Southern Baptist Ministers.
I myself was a Royal Ambassador for the Southern Baptist church.
I am also an ordained Minister...

Oh, by the way, by *your* religions rules, You're supposed to love the sinner, and try to help them find forgiveness for their sins. "There's no such thing as a good witch" doesn't follow in those footsteps y'all seem to love so much very well at all.

Well, Cliff,

There's plenty of good stuff out there, but you'll have to do some editing. As somebody who grew up around teachers and has worked in textbook publishing I can assure you that teachers all have to do it too. Their stuff sucks far worse than anything referenced here.

While Project Gutenberg is great, you should also check out on-line encyclopedias like NuPedia, and Everything2 which are all open source, as is The Open Directory Project . A great source of fiction, which can be a wonderful learning tool, is Baen Books who have put hundreds of book online and are eager to have them downloaded and spread around.

For science materials, there are lots of great sites for kids done by educators pursuing whever they're into. All of which you'll want to use to spice up access to sites like Science Daily that are handy but a bit too serious some days for young minds.

Which brings me to Make Stuff which should fill in quite nicely for the "arts and crafts" part of most school curricula.

For biography I'ld check out American National Biography and for history a good start can be made with pages like Anyday which can be amazing or useless, all based on where *you* go from the starting point that they provide. Places like Colonial America are designed just for this but again, check out more than one.

For reference material you should check out Theodora which, while not meant to be open source, is very handy, Geographic.Org, which is open source and student-oriented, should do the rest. I've found that the CIA sourcebook is terrible, as folk should have long since figured out. Biased, misinformed, and sometimes just wierd; leave it behind. However if you hunt you'll find that within various.gov sites there's tons of great stuff, from manuals on camping to stuff on solar panels.

The space science community is very kid friendly, from NASA down to the local Mars Society chapter, having plenty of materials on quite a range of topics that you're free to reproduce and spread around. If you can handle it, the neopagan community is reliably eager to provide information and links on ancient indo-european history, from the government of Sumeria, to Celtic ironwork. (You might be surprised at how many neopagans have advanced degrees in history and/or literature.)

Speaking of limits, you'll always have to be careful that your kids aren't ending up places they shouldn't be but again, every teacher and librarian faces that one.

Lastly, the reason that I've got all this ready to hand is that I took it from my source database, more of which can be found on my web site, which is primarily oriented towards adults and older kids but does have plenty of other links like the ones here.

Best of luck to you and be sure to post back to slashdot in a few years about how it's going.

Rustin H. Wright - Information Geek
"It's all about the information, Marty. Little ones and zeros!"

Problems with the site:
1. I'm doing it manually. I'm a moron. I'm gonna set up everything using PHP, mySQL etc eventually (soon? I've just been lazy...) because one of the points of a community site, is that the info is contributed by the community, and I'm not making it that easy.

2. Because I'm doing it all myself, and manually, it only gets updated every month or so. This is a major problem, as people tend to only regularly visit sites that change at least every week.

3. I have no message boards etc (how can I possibly think of it as a community site!!!). Originally my purpose was to direct people to the existing online groups etc, but having a community forum on a site itself, means people visit more often, and, since Yahoos Clubs & Groups merger, theren't aren't many nz pagan message boards anymore, only e-groups.

There's a bunch of stuff I should do on the site and haven't, but even if I'm doing a bad job, it's still better than me not doing it at all. :)

And, if I ever do get the site running as I wish, I was thinking of starting a site for Geek Pagans :D
There's a weirdly high percentage of us - the only big-name geeks I've found so far are Eric Raymond & the guy who created (co-created?) VRML but there's probably a few more...

Oh yeah, and critique's of site, design (what design?) etc are welcomed.

well... here's a news flash for you..... pay attention....

Just because you read something doesn't mean it's true

it's ignorant people like you that have made our lives hell for the last 2000 years.

Oh, and btw.... any TRUE Pagan values life above all else.

Also, take a look at this if you don't want to have to don your asbestos suit the next time you make a statement like that.

Blessed Be

Yep particularly relevant due to the recent legislation to restrict pagan ritual rights... wait, there isn't any.

How about Bob Barr's 1999 attempt to forbid Wiccan soliders from practising on bases and ships?

References:

• The Atlanta Journal-Constitution archives
• The Witches' Voice archives of the Barr incident.

Thank gods it was defeated, but Bush has stated that he agrees with Barr's position.

fearbush.com

Yep particularly relevant due to the recent legislation to restrict pagan ritual rights... wait, there isn't any.

How about Bob Barr's 1999 attempt to forbid Wiccan soliders from practising on bases and ships?

References:

• The Atlanta Journal-Constitution archives
• The Witches' Voice archives of the Barr incident.

Thank gods it was defeated, but Bush has stated that he agrees with Barr's position.

fearbush.com

check -- THIS -- out

ugh, I screwed up one of the links..

The Witches Voice is really here.

When do we get the option of editing our own comments after they've been posted Rob?

-- iCEBaLM

Well First Off Cyber Patrol/cyber Sitter and the all of those 'filtering' software thingys are racist, anti Non-Christian (jewish sites are blocked or so i'm told so shrug.) and espically anti- Pagan. simple solution? Delete the software, unless you really want to use software created by bigots for bigots. -Shanoyu