Introductions

Hi.

My name's BJ Shaffer, I commonly go by Vasagi on the internet. I'm 32, married, father of two. I work full time at a small company writing & supporting computer software; focusing mainly on web applications, SQL, and data presentation... so yeah, I'm a nerd.

Now that the handshake is out of the way, on to why I'm firing up this blog: I'm tired of the level of ignorance that I see around me every day. I need a place to come rant and rave and bitch and moan about the closed-minded people, ideas and concepts that I run into. Now ... keep in mind that I'm purposely not saying 'stupid' people. I believe that there are very few genuinely stupid people. Stupidity is the incapability of learning. A stupid person cannot pick up a concept no matter how it is presented to them, or how many ways. In politically correct terms, a stupid person is mentally challenged. An ignorant person is one who refuses to learn. They have the capacity for learning, but for whatever reason refuse.

Ignorance is a dangerous thing. In today's modern world, people will use your ignorance to their own ends. You will be misled, lied to, manipulated and taken advantage of. Technology driven mass-media just makes it that much easier. The only defense that we have against these manipulative forces is to educate ourselves. To learn who is trying to do harm, and who is truly benevolent. The quote at the top of this blog struck a major chord with me - if we are ignorant and fail to question authority, we are in the control of people above us. If we know and understand, and look at new information skeptically, then the people in power work for us. Absolutely.

There is no excuse for ignorance. You are reading my words. Just by opening a browser and getting to this blog, you've demonstrated the ability to use the internet, which is most likely the single largest body of knowledge in your grasp. If you don't know a term, google it. If you want to know how a nuclear power plant works, you can find out with 3 clicks or less. Information that was imagined by the world's greatest minds 30 years ago is at your fingertips if you have so much as a library card. You don't need a college education to be "smart" - a degree is not a measure of your IQ. It just proves that you've spent a lot of money to take the intelligence directly from an expert. The only thing that it's good for is a line on a resume.

Just because the information's freely available doesn't mean that it's any good, though. In your search for enlightenment, you're going to run into mistakes, contradictions, deception; you need to look at everything with a skeptical eye - or a gain of salt as my mother likes to say. You need to be selective about what pieces of information you accept into your personal world view. You need to challenge ideas, question authority - never take 'because I said so' as an acceptable answer. Check the citations, research the sources - was the man who did the study qualified, or did he go straight from clown college to the lab?

All of this junk I just wrote can be summarized in 4 words: Educate Yourself. Question Everything. And that's the reason I'm here. To rant and rave about ignorance and lies in one hand ... and to try to find my own truth with the other.