Yesterday I watched a movie called "Shattered Glass". It's a movie about journalism. I don't wanna say too much, because I feel the movie was much better not knowing what it was about (yes, I was told, but I forgot, and I don't want to assume you all have the memory I have). I just checked imdb and watched the trailer, and realized the plot outline and trailer give the whole movie away. So avoid them. And don't search the Internet for Stephen Glass either, you'll probably find some Forbes articles that the movie is based on.

Anyway, it was about journalism. Then I remembered my parents were talking about William Randolf Hearst, since they had apprently seen his house. I remembered that I had learned about him somewhere, and wondered if he was the guy that started the Spanish-American war with journalism.

So I started looking into Hearst, and I discovered the secret to time travel. Just kidding, but your were probably wondering where I was going with the title of this entry weren't you? I'll get there.

Anyway, I was looking into Hearst, from what I found he didn't "start" the war, but he definately used his publication to stretch the truth and sway the public towards supporting the war in an isolationist time. "Yellow journalism". Some people beleive the reason for having fact checkers stems from this.

Anyway, somehow I ended up on the wikipedia entry for hoaxes. I started reading about some of them, and then on caught my eye. One that was listed as only a "possible" hoax was a pretty recent one, from the year 2000. It was about a man named John Titor, who posted on message boards and claimed to be from the year 2036. He spouted all kinds of science, even had pictures and diagrams of his time machine.

This man claims that 2005 will mark the beginning of a 10 year civil war in the United States. Tensions will grow around the 2004 elections and blossom into full scale war by next year. It will not be North vs. South, though. It will be Farms vs. Cities (a somewhat modern equivalent to the rural South vs the industrialized North in the original war). The war will be ended when Russia nukes all the major cities.

Now, ultimately he'll be proved wrong or right by next year. But I don't beleive him. Besides the ridiculousness of it, he did not predict 9/11. You'd think that would stand out. And it has changed a lot of things.

Before 9/11, we were a country with no major wars. We just had a huge military stationed on peacekeeping missions all around the world. And the US has a long history of rural vs urban relations, in government. I can see this building into a war, if we had nothing else to think about.

But now we do. The news is all about Iraq and Afghanistan. Foreign affairs is what we are divided on right now. No one cares about the farms and cities, we are looking at the rest of the world. That's where the splitting is.

But I guess time will tell with this guy.

Oh, by the way, a site that has his stuff archived is johntitor.com

See ya in the future.