The Cost of Conspiracy “The hope of impunity is a strong incitement to sedition; the dread of punishment, a proportionally strong discouragement to it.” -Alexander Hamilton A conspiracy is broadly defined as a covert plan by two or more individuals to commit some unlawful or harmful act. The more people involved in the conspiracy…

How it Started Greek mythology sought to explain humanity’s role in the world and the forces surrounding it. Two of Zeus’ sons, Apollo, representing reason, order and logic, and Dionysus, representing wine, fertility, emotion and chaos, encapsulate for me the basic struggle of man between his nature and pursuit of something beyond self…

It was called Web 2.0, a movement from static domain-generated content to user generated, empowering the individual over the organization. By the early 2000s, online purchasing had begun to disrupt Brick and Mortar sales while online publishing chipped away at print sales and Web 2.0 …

It all started with a site called SomethingAwful. Created in the late 90s as a comedy site, it would give birth to many core aspects of internet culture later propagated on 4chan. There were forums where users could post jokes but rules were enforced and a membership fee was eventually…

For a sliver of time, pagers were the rage. They could be stuck in a pocket or clipped to your belt. You’d call the pager number, enter your number and the person’s pager would alert them so they could then call you back. …

Ted Turner, a man famous for creating the first 24-hour-news network, CNN, and marrying Jane Fonda, was the keynote speaker at the National Debate Tournament my senior year of high-school. Truth and Conspiracy His speech was a chaotic mess that bounced from dubious claims about third-world countries to peculiar first-world conspiracies. I remember…

Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern and I all share the same birthday, this has always irritated me. My first serious girlfriend, Katrina, also shared the birthday so I guess it balances out. Limbaugh got his start in radio while living in Cape Girardeau, Missouri where he briefly lived off welfare. He…

The late 70s and early 80s was a cool time to be a kid, our days punctuated with Star Wars, Dungeons and Dragons, parachute pants, ninjas and moonwalking; breakdancing was just around the corner. In 1981, my mom signed me up for a summer class on another neat, new thing…