h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ah - perhaps I missed something. I'm half English and half Chinese, and a British national. That said, the British did some bloody awful things in Malaysia (where the Chinese side of my family come from), so I'm certainly not fond of our foreign policy in general...

I'd be willing to do the article (after my A-levels!), perhaps in collaboration with Administrator-General?

sure.
you can expect als cooperation from me.

Thanks.

By all means, Emily, go ahead. I'll stick around and help review (gee, that's big of me), but it sounds like you're anointed to the post.

And that's just as well. As an American, I try to avoid involvement in parts of the world where I'm likely to be called "Great Satan".

Hey - the British are the evil b******s of the universe. Just look at all the pink bits on the map...

I'm not denying Britain's dodgy history, but who still prints maps with pink bits?

Canada's still pink on a lot of *my* world maps. In fact, the maps usually show a goodly bit of Ontario pointing like a pink dagger toward Indiana (the only ancestral homeland I can really claim, and even then my claim is dubious, since all my ancestors are dead).

Speaking of which:

1. It's good our nations get along. I wish there wore more of this in the world.

2. More people should abandon their claims to ancestral homelands.

I suppose if I'm going to review the article for content, I might as well start now. In my opinion, the article's missing some things:

1. It doesn't mention the Palestinian Authority, or life under its rule. The latest issue of Time Magazine (18 June 2001) has some mention of this.

2. It doesn't mention the Gaza Strip at all. Gaza is a rather important part of the Palestinian Authority. Reportedly, there's considerable rivalry between Gaza and the West Bank.

3. The original partition plan of Israel/Palestine deserves some mention. The British divided their mandate like a checkerboard with six squares. Each prospective nation got three tiny chunks, with crossing points to be under international control. Each side fought against this plan. Gaza and the West Bank are the remnants of two of these chunks; the third bordered Lebanon, and was entirely absorbed into Israel.

Perhaps I'm wrong in this, and if so you can ignore me and go on your merry way, but wasn't the spirit of nominating someone to take over the project an effort to re-write the entire article, turning it into a uni project or perhaps an un-biased treatise to both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

I personally think a uni project is best as the topic would make a rather long entry. We are gonna have to dig up history, cultural differences, present day concerns, how they even got into the mess they are in in the first place, and where the conflict is heading.

Again perhaps i am wrong

Actually, I'm thinking the topic could make *several* long entries. There seems to be room for everyone here.

For myself, I'm thinking of listing all the nations which ever had a claim to the territories currently known as Israel/Palestine. In rough order of first claim: Canaanites; Egyptians; "Sea Peoples"; Hebrews; Syrians; Babylonians; Persians; Greeks; Romans; Arabs; Seljuk Turks; Franks; Mamelukes; Ottoman Turks; British.

Sure, the person who produces the Guide entry might throw the original out and start over. Or, she might not; it seems to be the only input we're going to get from the Palestinian side. In any case, I got the urge to comment.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A585407 - Historical Claims to the "Holy Land". I finally got a first draft on that article I'd threatened.

Would anyone like to start up a University of Life project on Israel/Palestine now?

Hi.

Nice start, a lot of inaccurices though, I'll get to writing something organised and post it for you to review.

As to the university project, the problem is the time limit, and the massive lode of real life (Work, the other work, family, friends etc.)


Dancer

I know the dates need some further research. And some stuff in the article may be debatable, depending on which ancient historian you ask. (My source for a lot of this stuff was "Asimov's Guide to the Bible".) If there's anything else that's blatantly wrong about the entry, I'd like to hear it.

As for this University time limit stuff, if several people each write an entry or two, and we get our entries ready first, a six-week limit isn't really a problem.

Well, maybe if we really have several entries, then we can do this and use the UP as a way to skip PR and create something nice.

Now we're talking. For my own part, I'm researching another entry on refugee movements of the 20th century. Just for starters... One of my sources counts about 2 million Palestinian refugees in the 1980s. Cambodia had 4 million in that same period.

Well, I won't have time to put to it until after july 9th, but then I'll have less stress IRL and be able to worksomething out.


Dancer

How's the uni project going Peeps?
Just been reading an entry on general custer, and was struck by some similarities between nations coping with 'hostiles' on their 'settled' terriority reminded me strangely of the israel / palestine situation!


Z.

Perhaps the best solution would be to relocate the Israelies to Nevada... or Utah?

The Moromons would never allow it!

Don't even get that started again!



Dancer

As we have all learned but all seem to forget: Nobody's perfect. This entry makes the Palestinian's out to be nearly so. Comments made about the entry make the Israeli's nearly so. I highly doubt that either group are perfect or even nearly so. The Americans love to think of themselves that way, conveniently forgetting the tragedies practiced on the Native Americans, Africans, Mexicans, and Japanese. I agree that this should be a University Project; its too big for anything else. However, the Guide is not written by experts but by the average person; bias, and non-objectivity are an inevitability and should be. This isn't an encyclopedia, this is h2g2, based on the idea of the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy where the researchers were average types too (if you can call Ford Prefect an average type). The best way to get the most accurate information AND opinions is to turn it into a Univ. Proj., in my opinion. The Guide is supposed to give the humans' general perception of their world and universe, I thought. Is that not accurate?