Shane March 11th, 2008
It all depends on what the opinion of the majority is. In the US, the opinion of most people is that it is not good to pick on black people for say… their hair. Just writing this myself, I can feel the mobs getting riled up. It is simply unacceptable. Don Imus got fired for it. You just don’t do these things.
Shane March 4th, 2008
About 9-10 years ago, I found a website that was about the latest game that Gary Gygax was working on, and it had an email address for him. So I emailed him, basically a fan boy email, explaining to him how when I was younger i played a lot of D&D etc etc. I had read a book by him called Role Playing Mastery - Gary Gygax’s idea of Role Playing was way above what most people think Role Playing means. Very in depth book on something most people think is simple. I asked him a few questions about the book, etc.
Anyway, as I was wrapping up the email, I told him that in my circle of friends (all having outgrown D&D, kind of) he was a legend. I don’t remember much of the email unfortunately, but I remember the last line, he said.
“Not a legend, but thanks, just an over aged game geek. :)”
Really nice guy. RIP.
Shane July 25th, 2007
“It is worthy of remark that a belief constantly inculcated during the early years of life, whilst the brain is impressible, appears to acquire almost the nature of an instinct; and the very essence of an instinct is that it is followed independently of reason.”
—Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1871
Shane June 18th, 2007
This, I think, is a top question that people must ask themselves. Here is the dilemma.
People know that reporters are only to ask people like President Bush certain questions. Many people know that Bush has made documents pertaining to his father and other presidents Classified. In essence, he is re-writing history. People generally distrust reporters.
Yet when we see something on TV, or read it in the newspaper, we trust it.
On this site, I wrote an article and said ‘it would seem unlikely that the mainstream media could be controlled’ and yet a response here from one person said they thought it very likely that the media could be controlled.
Then… we get to the Internet. Since I have started researching things on the Internet, I have found a HUGE amount of information that you will never see on the TV, or in newspapers. Is it reliable? It’s hard to say. The traditional media would seem to be reliable because they are under scrutiny… but are they really, and when the amount of money involved gets big, it’s more and more likely that corruption will exist.
With smaller websites, people like me are looking into things, and doing as much ‘investigative reporting’ as is possible from home, and posting it for people to read. It would seem silly that people are ‘reporting’ just by sitting at home, and yet… don’t we all agree that the Internet has any information you could ask for?
Al Gore’s hypocritical electrical bill would never have become known if it weren’t for the Internet. Could it be that politicians and the people in power, being older, underestimated how the Internet would allow people to bypass the mainstream media, and get information they might not otherwise have known?
So who do you trust though? When I first posted Gore’s electrical bill on a forum I go to, one member said the website I found it on was a conservative biased site. Eventually, it came out that the info was in fact legit. Possibly the site was conservative, and they obtained his electrical bill as ammunition against him, but either way, the info was correct. (which by the way, the people that work for that website/organization received death threats for releasing it. )
bah, I’m tired. My point is: Who do you trust? The mainstream media that almost everyone ‘half trusts’ or the smaller websites that could be run by some guy like me, with no reason to tell the truth…(isn’t there some law or something that requires reporters to report what’s true? Even though they don’t…)
and yet, guys like me also have nothing to lose, or gain really, by posting news and articles they find. To me, the larger the site, the more likely it is being corrupted, because money comes into play. Everyone knows it. Power (money) corrupts. “Follow the Money”.
So for sites like this - we might not have perfect knowledge, but we also do not have a motive to lie, either. If anything, we are more likely to try and be truthful, because it is the *only* thing that might get people to come back.
not the most well thought out or planned post, but hey, take it or leave it. 
Shane June 14th, 2007
There is no evidence here, just a theory of mine.
Liberalism doesn’t seem to be easy to define. I think most people would consider Conservatism to be ‘trying to stick to traditional values’ while Liberals are usually considered those that want government programs to make sure people are taken care of. It doesn’t make sense, but that is what people think, in my estimation.
