Articles Posted in August, 2019

Published on: August 20, 2019

Save Your Webpages for Posterity, Please: Internet Archive Wayback Machine

By Laura Orr

The Internet Archive serves as, among other things, a repository for webpages. Lawyers (especially), historians (always), librarians (of course), and everyone else can save their webpages to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. (Ue their Save Link Now box.)

I save many of URLs I link to in my blog posts and am frequently astounded to find that too few of those URLs have been saved to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. These government, nonprofit, NGO, official document, and other URLs should be preserved in the Archive.

If you build, update, rely on website content, please SAVE the URL to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. Websites come and go and you never know when you might need to reconstruct, recall, provide evidence based on, or otherwise want to view a retrospective snapshot of a particular website.

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Published on: August 8, 2019

Learning How to Lie: a Lesson Well Taught (Washington Post article)

By Laura Orr

“DNA Tests Show Southern Members of Congress and Constituents are 65% Mexican (and 20% French): Results Surpass Congressional Dining Hall Chef’s Prediction Based on the Popularity of “French Fries with Salsa” Side Dish”

“Members of Congress Fail American History Test: Only 13% Earn a Barely Passing Grade (60% or better).”

Hmmm. Telling lies, making up part-truths, or simple obfuscation is clearly very difficult for some of us, but a piece of cake for others, e.g. Onion writers, Andy Borowitz, advertisement authors, drug and tobacco company CEOs, etc., etc., etc.

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