I believe there are two major types of wrongs that people commit in this world. There are passive wrongs, and there are active wrongs. While that separation makes great material for philosophical debate, the fact remains that both types are exactly what they say they are—wrongs.
Shades of Grey
Billy Joel once wrote a refrain, “Shades of grey wherever I go / The more I find out the less that I know / Black and white is how it should be / But shades of grey are the colors I see.”
Many of us, at least on some level, choose to see the world in black and white. I’m not talking on a racial level—I’m saving that for a later rant—but rather on a metaphoric level. Many people choose to see their opinion on an issue as the right and only valid argument, and everybody else is just pissing in the wind.
Unnaturally Repressed Young Adults
We live in an odd, odd world. I’ve said it a million times, I’ll likely say it a million more. Despite all of our studies, all of our psychologists and psychiatrists, all of our open minded liberal attitudes, all of our political discourse and newfound naturalist tendencies, I have discovered that our society is by its nature creating monsters of repressed—and/or dangerously unrepressed—balls of human mental deformity.
Who Violated That Copyright?
(Written for a Public Law & Judicial Process [GOVT301] class at George Mason University.)
Napster, a once-promising new system of sharing files over the internet, is now essentially dead. After losing its monumental court case against representatives of the music industry and failing to win on appeal, the site today consists of a message declaring the site a “work in progress” and links to Napster merchandise. The file sharing program and its infrastructure no longer seem to exist.1
The Missing Bad-Driver Badges
In a previous rant about driving (“Driving the Point Home”), I was sure to mention that the most dangerous drivers in the northern Virginia area are those with NOVA stickers on their cars. These attendees of Northern Virginia Community College are consistently cutting me off, making illegal lane changes, running or nearly running red lights, and I’ve even witnessed one rear-end somebody before the driver tried to weasel out of it and changing her story six times.
Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.