Introduction/explanation

    Two things you should known about me...


1. Unlike a lot bloggers, I know how to write.
2. Politically, I'm a registered independent, though i've yet to vote for a Republican.
   
  I worked as a professional freelance journalist for about twelve years and won a National Newspaper Association award (third place) for a profile piece i did, a Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists award (first place) for a piece on UFOs, and First Place for Overall Excellence from the University of Missouri School of Journalism (shared with other freelances) for a newspaper to which i contributed regularly.
     I am generally known among my friends as a very intelligent, observant person who speaks without editing himself and shoots his mouth off without thinking.  I admit this is true. Although I have gotten better at toning things down.
     I started a few blogs over the years and ended them for several reasons. Mostly they weren't well done, bottom line. This blog is intended as nothing more than a repository for some of my writing.  My friends don't want me to constantly send them long diatribes or essays, so I'm posting them here for anyone to read when they are up to it.
     This blog is aimed at giving you reference sources and general information about "stories of the day," the real story behind the story that people overlook, hear once and forget about, etc.  People are literally assaulted at every turn by stories and opinions about the economy, war, social issues, etc. but very little of the discussion is informed, based on fact or makes any sort of sense.  There is far too much stupid - and i mean stupid - discourse out there; too many people with middling IQs and no facts to back them up shouting and screaming.  They should sit down and shut up and learn something. Would you take your watch or car apart if you didn't own any tools and never fixed anything in your life? Of course not. But this doesn't stop people with no real understanding of law, economics, history, etc from taking a handful of unrelated facts and trying to shove them down your throat as if they were Moses coming down off the mountain with his tablets.
     The sad fact is that most of us are too busy to become truly informed or educated. But if you don't, your only sources of "information" are self-serving blowhards, liars, marketing experts, fanatics with an axe to grind, religious zealots and generally dumb people who really shouldn't be allowed to have the jobs they have.
     If you follow this blog, you will read concise pieces (something i wasn't generally known for in the past) that lay out simple arguments/discussions based on the principles of logic and research.  If you're one of those folks that doesn't like to be confronted with research that contradicts your ideas, you will be, to say the least, disappointed by me. If you are one of those people who isn't open minded enough to consider an alternative paradigm or a change in the social order, you will find your brain bruised by the writing you find here.