Unlike most people assume...most of my time spent online is reading .... usually when I first get online I start with the news....then go from their to various other places I have enjoyed over the years. Usually when the net and myself is mentioned by 3rd party people it involves gaming or porn. Now I love to game..Since February of 2005 I've played World of Warcraft...and am generally known on my server as an elite player. Because of the various guild affiliations and the fact it is not nor ever will be a driving force in my life my toon doesn't always have the best gear or do the top of the line raids or pvp... but i do hold my on against better equipped foes (at level 60 in green gear I killed and camped 6 level 60 horde horde outside Arathi Basin after it opened... I was during my first year playing the game the most wanted alliance member by the top horde guilds and even though often outnumbered on occasion 40-1 ended up giving better then I got...I can go on and on...like at level 70 in kara gear with some guildmates with another guild in T-6 and T-5 gear we led the dps and damage meters ...seriously 12 of us 10 of the top 11 were us..I and my friend Paul were 1 and 2...at 80 I was often the only alliance fighting horde when they attacked our cities and always had more kills then deaths though i never wore pvp gear or used weapons.) Currently I am not playing due to finances. As for porn..yes I've looked, but not a lot..see I have a wife and 2 kids so the time just is not really there. Now as for reading...My favorite sites are baenfreelibraryand baenfreecd...lots of free sci-fi/fantasy books here, I like coast to coast am, the darwin awards, scopes, so on and etc. But for pure intellectual enjoymeny nothing beats Bad Astronomy (badastronomy.com). This guy goes out and points out where the media gets a lot of things wrong astronomy wise in a very intellectual way and doesn't resort to insulting anyone to do it. He also makes sure to link both side of the arguments when facing pseudoscientific claims. This is the real enjoyment (he does straighten out common mosconceptions in movies and tv shows...Star Trek and etc.). He'll debunk claims by such figureheads of pseudoscience like Richard C. Hoagland who among many things has wrongfully claimed to be the originator of the plaques attached to the pioneer probes, the oceans of europa and possible life in them theories, so on and etc. Basically by reading the articles on this guy, his own website, and the other sites and people supporting him and against his claims if he was anywhere near an idea (a lot of science is often discussed at scientific announcements and lectures and Hoagie has a habit or did have in the 70's of hanging around any of these lectures or announcements he could so overheard a lot) it was his idea and he was the first to come up with it. bad enough he uses extremely bad methods to actually support his ideas and theories, but to claim so much that wasn't his to begain is extremely bad...then to top it off when confronted with it he dodges and denies, and even starts insulting those who criticise him... or has his associate Mike Bara do it. Now I'm no great scientific genius, but do know in a debate or difference of opinion (in these cases the people criticising Hoagie had solid facts where as he and his supporters had nothing), the person who starts slinging the insults is usually the one without a leg to stand on anymore. This guy also had the gall to claim another scientist was stealing his ideas and plagiarising, when said scientist credited him in his work. So basically this guy actually gets treated legitimately by a "peer" and goes off on him.
Now this scientist Hoagland uses bad methods to prove his ideas..like taking small pictures and blowing them up to "prove" their are artificial structures on Mars, using math to also prove a city is on Mars..when he played with the numbers until he got the proof he wanted...and etc. His worse action is ignoring anything that does not prove what he believes and insulting those who prove him wrong or playing the conspiracy card. This isn't only his MO...it seems so many of these pseudoscientist do the same thing. If you debate them instead of using the main points they try to get you on the small details most people, even real scientist will not have prepared for or dodge the issue with pseudo-scientific speak as I call it. Now these guys are not all crazy... alot are just people who look at the evidence there and see things mainstream science misses (in this case astronomy) and see's problems in various information released and want it clarified. But some when their theories are proven wrong take it to extemes and start claiming conspiracies. Others use mass fear to spread their messages...(I believe so far every the "earth is gonna end on this date" theory has so far been squashed, except those who's dates have not yet arrived.)...What's funny is as soon as one fear monger's theory is busted debunked... there's always someone else who follows and actually takes their work and adds it to their own...and it's franklu amasing how totally wrong they are and yet make money when their wrongness is so easily debunk.
We are not talking about UFO conspiracies here, or how creationism is often overridden... but other theories that are so totally wrong in the face of not only real science but common sense as well.
I'll give two contrasting examples...Okay we all know about area 51 and the supposed government conspiracy to cover up the fact Aliens may actually exist and are behind the advances in technology since WWII. This is actually a plausible theory to me...but not for a deep dark reason. 1) An advance intelligence would not tend to trust it's tech to "primitives"..Imagine Rome having nukes. Bad idea. 2) The sudden appearence of said beings would more then likely cause panic and mass hysteria. (Now it does my human heart sadly that most of these conspiracies tying our advances to Aliens totally ignore human ingenuity) 3) It would be the governments job to protect us from said beings and their tech and the best way would be the "ignorance" is bliss solution. But then again conspiracy theories have been around a very long time..think Andy Jackson and the US Bank conspiracy...before he was president he and a bunch of his friends speculated in public land and got burned. (Basically they sold public land at a price they believed they would profit at when it actually came up for sale...except the government actually charged more then they did so they lost money) So instead of blaming himself and his friends for their stupidity he blamed the US Bank and when he did become president busted it...hence the periods of feast and famine until the fed reserve was made...they continued after, but not as bad until corporations became involved).
Now we have another conspiracy theory..JFK's death. Now any modern or even at the time scientifific forensic analysis of the whole happening would show how wrong the Warren Commissioon was. A pristine bullet going through various people and bones? Man where was this ammo in Vietnam? I mean come on..you could just sit in a bunker and rake the forest with gunfire and the VC wouldn't be safe behind any trees. Then Johnson locked everything up for what 100 yrs after his death? Okay that was actually 2 examples of good ones..now the bad. The moon landing hoax. Not very plausinle because all the evidence the conspiracy people claim is easily debunk..but the most telling one is the story of various astronauts and NASA employs killed to keep the secret. Now if NASA and the government was willing to kill all those people...why aren't those spreading this bull dead also? Come on..people are killed all the time. All they'd need to do is make it look like a breaking and entering and leave a passed out meth head their with a gun and GSR on his hands. The meth head's brain would be to fried to come up with anything for his innocence.
But seriously guys this is an awesome site...go enjoy it.
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