On May 1st 2003 I began my second course on computers and the internet with the Open University. It was a level 2 course and at 65 years of age I was very pleased at my ability to cope with the coursework.
Students who had personal web sites usually posted their site address to one of the course conferences and some students posted a number of messages regarding my site here at www.gerryrice.com

In reply to one student's comments, I sent the following message:

"As a society, we are in a real mess here in Northern Ireland despite the worst of the atrocities being over. My story is only one of loads and the 'good guys' operating the 'peace process' here are staying silent on them all.

That is why I had to write my book. Thank you for your interest Sammi. This is what drives a middle-aged man to learn HTML. I suppose it could be said to be the latest weapon to be used in Northern Ireland :-)))"

To my great surprise one of the moderators on the course, Mr. Rob Parsons, replied to this message and I considered this message so relevant and contained such insight that I asked his permission to include it on my web site. Here is the moderator's message.

"More true than many people might think at first.
The web is a way to get the truth out, if only to a limited audience, when the "media" won't listen because it's not a "story". Thinking about the discussion that is going on in Teach (this was the main course conference), about content and presentation, another way of looking at it is content and distribution.

You have the content.

Until the net come along distrbution was either very hard work or cost a lot of money. The web makes it cheap, which means, (a) almost everybody in the developed world (very important caveat that) can get access if they want it and, (b) we are starting to have to learn to use our judgement again.

Because there are no gatekeepers anybody can publish anything, so we have to learn to sort the gems, like www.gerryrice.com from the dross, like... well, name any one of millions of sites. Though it's harder work, I think its potential for democracy is huge, because if people are going to benefit from it in the long run, they're going to have to think.
Rob.
TT280 co-moderator.