I had a cunning idea for a series of blogposts earlier this week. My cunning plan was to go to Wikipedia, click on the random article link, then write about whatever comes up.
The first article was all about Seth Material. Not, as I first thought, an American actor, but a collection of metaphysical texts dictated by the American psychic Jane Roberts to her husband from late 1963 until her death in 1984.
Hmm. Try again. A list of awards received by Loretta Lynn. She seems to have won a lot. Still nothing to really dig my teeth into.
Maybe I should pick, say six articles. I can click the random article button six times, and have to pick one of those that come up to write something interesting about.
Two down, four to go. Nerves a-jangle, I click.
First up, we get the Deben Registration District, a British Registration district in Suffolk, England.
I’m starting to wonder if this is a rubbish idea. I’ve had a whole host of rubbish ideas, so have come to be able to spot them fairly easily. Not one to give up at the first (ok, third) hurdle, I click on.
Next, we have Rotoitidae, a very small family of rare, relictual parasitic wasps in the superfamily Chalcidoidea.
Parasitic wasps? Worst kind. Horrible things, wasps. These ones have little stubby wings.
Click.
Vasantdada Patil, an Indian politician from Sangli, Maharashtra. He was known as the first modern Maratha strongman.
All very interesting, but I want to know more about this Maratha strongman thing. Wikipedia lets me down on this score.
Last, but by no means least, we have Phillip Carter, a Senior Foreign Service American diplomat and the incumbent United States Ambassador to Ivory Coast.
Nope, I’ve got nothing.
Ah well. Interesting idea. I might play around with it a bit more – I seem to recall a wikipedia game which revolved around the old ‘six degrees of separation’ game – I forget the exact details but it went along the lines of picking a wiki page at random, the trying to get to the page on Sherlock Holmes (or possibly his violin) in the fewest number of clicks possible. Anyone recognise it?
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