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Showing posts from January, 2012

Thoughts on This Year's Super Bowl

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Basically I could care less. What a waste of a great football year.

A Brief History of Pirates, Piracy, and Freedom

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Many years ago, when Europeans discovered a new world, a golden age of commerce sprang up like never before seen. The Spaniards hit the gold mine, literally, the French found luxurious furs, and the British found their next cash crop, tobacco. With wealth growing at a fever pitch, a scourge began to grow within the seas. Pirates. Pirates were a criminal element that used brains, muscle, and speed to find any weak link within the inter-sea commerce trade. They accomplished this by ripping off ships, ravaging port towns, and creating overall fear and havoc. With the passage of time, better technologies, and stiffer penalties, piracy as it was known in the 16th century slowly died out. It exists even to this day, but that is another topic for a different time. My mention of these pirates in this context has to do with modern "piracy" or the theft of music, movies, and other media and then distributed freely over the internet. Over the years we have seen many vehicles for t