This past weekend has been a time of soul searching, of looking back and reflecting on things I've said and done yesterday. There were two major projects I was working on: writing to colleges about past misdeeds, and writing a script that would automatically keep the fodder archives neatly index. I failed miserably at the first, and did very good at the second.

The first seemed easier then it would be, as I had done an outline, and had been putting a great deal of thought into it the past few weeks. It was to be a chronological index of what happened and my choices and their results, but it wasn't that simple. I was mired with question of looking back and trying to understand my words and my thoughts at the time, often hard to do. The words simply did not have the same meaning, and my current perspective blinded me in seeing them. It was painful.

The second, the seemingly impossible programming project was doable, and I got results that were far better then I ever imagined. The code is still spagatti like, but it works great. When working on this code I often had to check the format of certain old articles to find out how things were laid out and how best to parse them with perl. Programming doesn't require a deep level of personal reflection, though certainly it helps when re-writing old code. I often find myself re-writing such code to make it more consistant with my current knowledge and skills, and to make it generally more compact and efficent.

Not only was the code often foreign to me, but so was omy own words. Some pieces like the wone on civil liberties seemed immediately relevant and I didn't think I had changed too much from what I said then and how I feel know. Some looked more youthful, and varied from what I would say today, but I could easily still support their text. Then there were articles that I almost fealt as though should be destroyed, taken down, repudidated. Somethings were just so different to how I see the world.

In general, I did not destroy any of these fodder articles that I did not like. I kept them for historical purposes, and to see what kind of reaction they would generate today. Few things truly bothered me to the point where I felt compelled to totally remove the article, occassionally a sentence was added to delted for completeness or to make me feel more comfortable with my words in the current climinate and world around me.

I am engaging in revisionism. I hate the notion of revisionism, as it changes the past and how we understand the past. Nevertheless, I relalize that the past doesn't not really exist as an indepdendent body as it both influences actions today, and changes as our view of the past changes. The words of yesterday ought to be kept, but their crudest bumps rubbed off to make things more relevant to today.

Some people would strongly object to this idea of revisionism. They would say it's no better then breaking the penises off Roman sculptures as the British once did. Certainly, revisionism that totally changes the meaning of something is not acceptable unless that meaning is so explosive and problematic in modern society that it must be repressed and denied from ourselves. The truth is a good thing, but viewing raw history and words denies the truth.

The great thing about having your own website and having total control over it, is you can easily revise it and make changes to words you no longer like. In contrast paper media and internet postings (be it UseNet without the X-NO-ARCHIVE heading or a forum like Kuro5hin), once a word is out there, you can never change it, you can't delete it, modify it or make it understandable in contemporary society.

You can chasise me as much as you want for going back into history and re-writing it to ways that I see benificial. Some people will remember the earlier versions and revisions, and inevitably some web archivers will store it forever, but it seems best to occasionaly give a timely spin to some articles.