A few days ago, when I wrote about that pirate attack on a cruise ship, I pooh-poohed the idea that the liner had used a futuristic weapon to drive off the bad guys. At the time I wrote my blog entry, I’d seen only one mention of this weapon among several news articles and, because of the early lack of coverage on this aspect of the story, I felt justified in my skepticism. You have to admit, it does sound pretty far-fetched; even the name used to describe it in that one article, “sonic blaster,” sounds like something out of the old Buck Rogers TV series. And even though blogs like Boing Boing and DefenseTech have documented the development of such weapons over the last couple of years, I guess I remained unconvinced because I was seeing it on the Internet instead of a more traditional news source, like Time magazine or something.
It turns out that such weapons apparently do exist and were used in that incident with the pirates, as a reader named Eric was all too eager to inform me. My exchange with him got pretty snippy, and it’s just as well that it was among the comments that did not survive the server upgrade. However, our argument has left me thinking about my responsibilities as a blogger, and what my readers — whether I know you personally or not — need to understand about what I’m writing in this space.
I am not a journalist. I don’t even play one on TV. I’m just a guy who has a small-time online presence and who chooses to share the things that catch my fancy. I do this for my own amusement and that of my friends and whatever strangers may enjoy my particular way of assembling words. I have neither the time nor the obligation to check every fact or chase down links within links. This means that Simple Tricks and Nonsense is best described as an opinion column — it’s what I think, nothing more, nothing less. I’m not trying to excuse my failure to determine the true facts in the pirate story; I am telling you that you shouldn’t necesarily expect the facts to be correct in everything I write here. I try to get it right, but sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I just skim-read the articles I link to, and I miss vital details. And sometimes I just plain screw up. It happens.
If you catch me on something, feel free to let me know I’m incorrect. But be polite about it. And keep in mind what it is I’m doing here.
