The Interest Files

Geneva called yesterday and told me that she is cleaning her stuff out of her mom's garage and that she is trying to make files out of various items compiled over the years which correspond to 20 of her broad areas of interest.  As a journalist, she said that this is especially helpful in solidifying what information you have on a given topic.  I thought it might be helpful if I did the same, at least in the abstract, trying to organize my broad interests into neat categories and subcategories.  Here we go.

1. Displaced and Misunderstood Minorities

• The Jews
• Gypsies/Roma
• Zoroastrians/Parsees
• Adoptees

2. Zoroastrianism and its permutations

• Zoroastrianism's impact/shared features with Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Mazdaism, Manicheaism and other early Eastern faiths
• Remnants of Zoroastrianism in modern communities: Parsees, Iran, The Yazidi Kurds, Central Asian remnants
• Avestan and the Avesta, shared properties with Sanskrit and other IE languages
• The hedgehog in Zoroastrian theology and mythology 

3. Tribal Supremacism and Mob Mentality

• Northern European ("white") supremacist groups such as Nazis, Aryan Nation, StormFront, National Front, etc.  
• Religious supremacist groups such as Al Qaeda, Kahane Chai, Hindutva movement, etc.
• Caste systems such as in India, pre-Thatcher Great Britain, etc.
• Anti-miscegenation laws in religious and secular law
• Notions of race and culture

4. Poetry

• Forms of poetry
• Translation of poetry
• Performance of poetry (The Raven, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, etc.)
• Poetry slams
• Poetry games such as those we used to create "wacky tapes"
• Teaching poetry

 5. Linguistics

• Comparative Indo-European linguistics, Historical IE linguistics
• Endangered languages
• Second language learning and instruction

 6. Web Technologies

• Want to learn Flash to make instructional games
• Want to learn Joomla

I'm sure I'll think of more later, but these are the ones that come to mind the most right now.