Crusading in the News

I would just like to comment on how common the term "crusading" has become these days. Just by searching the term in Google News, I ran into several articles describing some more 'modern' crusades: Obama's health care crusade, a crusade to provide food and shelter for the homeless of New York City, a crusade against junk food (seriously?). In my opinion, I think that the term "crusading" should be reserved for describing past crusades of the Middle Ages, where the term was originally coined, or even to describe modern religious warfare. But when I read an article telling me a chef is launching a CRUSADE to promote healthier eating, I can't help but feel a little frustrated at how common and poorly-used this word/concept has become.

Google Timelines

I was poking around the internet as a young adult is apt to do, and I discovered that the creative geniuses at Google have come up with another cool search engine. With this one you can search a key word (I used crusades, go figure) and then it will search the web for articles or pages that mention the keyword and a date. The timeline is also very adaptable and you can search specific years or look over a specific time period. I always love timelines to help get my dates in order and see what events could have affected each other and which ones are chronologically separated. So enjoy this new feature and I'm sure this will come in handy in other subjects besides the Crusades.

http://www.google.com/search?q=crusades&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&sa=X&tbo=p&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbs=tl:1,tl_num:100,tll:1200,tlh:1209&ei=-zJ-S9CFL4W1tgeU1MzEDw&oi=timeline_histogram_main&ct=timeline-histogram&cd=1&ved=0CLwDEMkBKAE

(Disclaimer: I might be the only one who does not know about this and as my girlfriend has informed me it has been around for a while, but I just found it so it seems exciting to me)