After a long delay, finally I’ve completed my short essay for NET12. From our 2 questions, I chose The Internet is a product of the U.S. military. Discuss. I’m praying our tutor will accept this and at least pass my essay. It’s worth 20 marks and about 1000 words.

I haven’t written an essay since high school! I found http://citationmachine.net a useful website for getting my citations and reference list in the proper format.

DARPA Challenger - One Motorcycle

I’ve enjoyed the essay writing experience, but the deadline really killed me. I must admit, it felt a little bizarre to listen to my own memories of what I’ve been teaching to my academic English students. Topic sentences, thesis statements, support your arguments, cohesion, summarise, paraphrase, quote, etcetera…

As an afterthought, I checked out the website for the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Google revealed the change of name to DARPA, and the history of that change becomes interesting around 1993 with President Bill Clinton restoring the non-military acronym, putting an economic twist on it. Technology for America’s Economic Growth, A New Direction to Build Economic Strength. Although that was soon reverted in February 1996 well before the November presidential election, in which Clinton was re-elected.

While DARPA haven’t got Luke Skywalker’s arm nor the bat-mobile on their plans, a Google image search reveals some other cool/scary stuff in the works.