Thursday, November 29, 2007

Tweaking the Newsreel

One of the things that I like about the blogspot system is that you can integrate headlines from Google News into the page more easily than you could do something similar on Scoop. I used to go through Google News searching for articles on magick, witchcraft, and the occult to comment on and it's kind of cool to be able to bring them up automatically. That being said, you will notice that every so often something will show up there that really doesn't belong. The biggest offenders for "magick" are bands, some of whom like to use the Elizabethan spelling to make their album titles more interesting. I can't put "magic" in at all, because the top stories tend to be about the Orlando Magic and I have no interest in basketball. It would be nice to add a feature where you could exclude certain categories or subjects, but so far the Newsreel seems to be limited to simple keyword searching anywhere in the article.

Here's also a chance for me to point out that Aleister Crowley was way ahead of his time in suggesting that the spelling "magick" be used "to distinguish the science of the Magi from its counterfeits." Obviously, as the Ipsissimus he foresaw the rise of World Wide Web and the need for a specific term that would make keyword searching a whole lot easier. Do you buy that?
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