Reality with K.I.S.S.

Ok... lets get it on out there right up front: I tend to be just a tad cynical when it comes to dealing with people. This may well have to do with my history of interacting with deviants or dealing with misfits in my work but it has left it's mark on me. I am just not the optimist when dealing with people in general. Having said that, I am also not judgemental until I've been given something which to give me pause or cause me to judge (like lying or presenting pseudoscience or false information as factual). You can be the Chief Unicorn duster of the Faerie People of La-La land and high priestess of the Holy Sauce of the Spaghetti Monster for all I care... your beliefs are just not important to me. What you believe is how you deal with your life; How you act towards others is when I take note . This was my typical mindset when getting ready for my wife's trip to Canada. I have been there before a few times so this was not a big deal for me. I had experience. I revie...

Spotting false information is not easy to do when you've never been taught how to assess information and its reliability. This is something ingrained into the typical investigator but even the most advances investigator sometimes fails to comprehend how to differentiate between reliable source information and anecdote. This is just one reason I continued this blog series. So many intelligent people fall for misinformation simply because they are not able to spot the subtle cues. In the last blog entry ( before the rant), we left off with this comment: ... we will discuss how to spot the obvious liar as well as the subtle one who can demonstrate proof of education. The second is by far the harder to spot, but there are techniques you can use to catch them with their "knowledge pants" down... if you know how to look for information. The easiest to spot liar is the one who posts blatantly false information. This is the one who says that the government is working with al...

I promise I will get back to the topics I promised in the last blog entry as soon as I vent a little... I need to vent because I received a request to sign a petition in the e-mail just today. My sincerest apologies. If you don't like talking about religion then please check back next week. Terrorism comes in many forms : Sometimes it dresses up and makes you think it's patriotism or religion and the cause is justified So long as you force your beliefs onto another, what makes you different from ISIS/ISIL*? That isn't meant to scare you, but it should at least make you consider some things. This is meant to make you think. Why do I want you to think about it? Here is a good start: I got a petition that started off stating " A group called the "Military Religious Freedom Foundation" is fighting to have all copies of the Bible removed from displays honoring U.S. POWs . " They follow this with  " My name is [deleted] . I am a retired U.S. Sen...

We're starting with some basic stuff because this basic stuff is relevant to almost everything else you will learn in my future blog posts. Some people think that having knowledge is the epitome of success, but I will disagree simply because there is no way to contain all information. Instead, knowing how to find answers is what I would consider far more important. Well, knowing how to find answers, validate information and think critically about a subject while removing your bias or emotional disruptions... but that is for a later post. I hope to help you learn some basic techniques to find information about things you may need or just want to know. (Like how to understand what your Grandchildren just texted you, or what that really means on Facebook) So why start with text speech? Text speech is creeping into everyday conversations. It is everywhere you look from advertising to Facebook posts. So how does one know what that person is talking about? How does someone unfamiliar ...