About

I love research. I still remember the first day in junior high when we were taken to the library to do our first real research paper. We were all neophytes and so the rules were lax. We could use encyclopedias, dictionaries, and any other book we found I the little library. We had to have three sources and write a whole page about the topic with each reference source carefully written out on an index card. I loved every second of it.

Research was part of the fabric of my mind. This was before the world was filled with computers and libraries listed everything in a physical card catalog. I was a master of the little drawers filled with cards. Give me any topic and I would find information on it that you didn't know could be in a small town library. Bibliographies and other tools expanded my reach all the more and I learned quickly how to use the inter library loan system.

As the years went on I fell into the I.T. field somehow. It wasn't planned, it just sort of happened. The Internet was just starting to give birth to HTML and I loved the world of Gopher, FTP, email, and eventually the World Wide Web. Information flowed in from all corners of the globe and a quick email could put me in contact with some of the greatest experts the world had to offer.

But the Internet became something else. There are multitudes of articles about the devolution of the Internet into a vast echo chamber of inanity. I won't add to that here. What I will say is that research, good research, is becoming a lost art. Science is overrun with agendas and poor statistical models. journalism is little more now than opinion pieces, echoed talking points, and ambush journalism designed to outrage the reader so she will click the "share" or "like" button.

I can't fix all that. The problem with democratized communication is that the majority of people have nothing more to say than to spew their emotional reactions. Nuance is not only lost on them, it's a word they can't even spell.

On the other hand, I'm convinced that there are still a few people out there who like "just the facts", faded though they may be by what the Internet culture has become. They enjoy solid broad information because they can then draw their own opinions and conclusions before they get emotional about it. My love of research often leaves me saying to friends and acquaintances something like, "Well, that's not entirely correct." Amazingly, most of them want to hear all of the facts. They want to be fair.

At the same time, they want my "opinion", but it's not really my opinion they are asking for - it's my thinking. They want to know what conclusions I've come to about a topic. They want to know why it is I know so much about some esoteric topic. For some reason they enjoy it.

Well, when a person can do what he loves and others enjoy the fruits of that labor then it's a win for everyone. And so this blog.

Those people who know me know that I am eclectic to a fault. My interest range far and very wide. What I research is more a question of interest and obsession than vocation or avocation. And so this blog.

Please enjoy. You are welcome to ask questions about existing posts, request new topics to research, or just discuss the information. I invite comments, but given the vitriolic nature of the web these days all comments will be moderated. I'm sure you will understand.

-Justin