A word from your blost [blog host]

This is the first entry, so an explanation of the blog's purpose may is in order.
I have an inbred dislike for just about anything "most people" accept as a given fact. Indeed, I don't know that I accept the notion of "facts."
Some of our working assumptions are superb and qualify as givens in science; others are indefensible. However, I can't think of one fact that is truly objective in nature and free from change or interpretation. Could be wrong, but that is not the point here.
We need assumptions for our brains to work things out. Some of these assumptions are almost religious in nature - the notion of questioning them does not even arise. Indeed, if you do, others look at you with distrust or amazement.
The more we hear our own opinions mumbled by others, the more we tend to identify our opinions as fact. Being the demigods we are, our facts are never subject to being called into question. Such is heresy. Like the animals we are, if our ideas are questioned, we turn to fight or flight, but the confrontation is in the mind.
Both f's eventually occur in all my conversations that go beyond baseball, beer involved or not. Once I put up a fight, like quoting a real scientist's name and study, nearly all visiting intellects opt for flight to another topic, usually after one ad hominem pot-shot.
This reaction is so predictable, that I no longer fight or chase. Trading blows with another's conclusions is pointless. The real game is to sneak around the battleline and chat with the soldiers about their assumptions.
If you can't get to a pow-wow, the battle of 'facts' will find both sides refusing to yield the field. You may think the jihad and crusade is about truth and honor, but it is really about the greatest sin of all - pride.
This blog, then, is merely a place to send friends when thye are on R and R. Only there, in a dark room with the comforting glow of a PC, can assumptions be reviewed without fear.
I question my assumptions as a rule. To me, questioning one's own assumptions is the key to growth, to civilization.
I can already hear the counter arguments that some source I have listed has a web site that is cheap-looking or published by a right wing paper [the coup d'grace blow for those who think they are liberals.] All I can say is read the message, don't judge the messenger. That is just not intellectually honest, it is childish.
The only truth revealed over the body of a messenger is that of the nature of the killers.
Lest your open-minded finger reach for the censor's delete button, as you withdraw from heresy, let me assure you my position on political discourse is pretty much as the prince's view at the end of Romeo and Juliet, "A plague o' both your houses!"
The yin/yang idea wars that grace our TVs are entertainment, a diversion from real life and the real course of history.