Like the STARLOG of old, SpacePatrol.US has an editorial section. Kerry O'Quinn called his "From the Bridge". Well, Space Patrol does not have the giant starships that would merit that title. We fly our ships in a cockpit. So, our Editorial section is the Cockpit. LIke KOQ, I am not shy. You will see that I have no really strong feelings about anything: Right? Yeah! Sure Dude. Like gash me with a Ginsu.

Strictly speaking, this section should not exist and, like RANDISM, I isolate it from the main site. However, Rolling Stone, supposedly a music publication is @$$ deep in left-wing lunacy and Dr. Dean Edell's medical advice show lists about 50 degrees to port so don't gimme no lip! Besides that, I dish it out to the Right almost as much and I don't spare the sargasm, either. I am against all falsehoods no matter who deals them out and I am no repector of person at the expense of truth, either. If you're in the game as a pro, I presume you are competent and brought your A game because I'm bringing mine; smashmouth O and tight D! Beyond that RANDISM does have a place here. If the world embodied in and by Space Patrol is the desired endstate, Randism is the means to that end. FROM THE COCKPIT is the journal both of that trip and my personal voyage along the way. They make explicit how I function as a mentality. One illuminates the principles by which I operate and the other illustrates how I "tick" and use them. Add SPACE-O-JUKE and POWER KRUCHIES and you've got me down cold.

If you look over at the left, you will see a sidebar with graphic links. The first one is our anti-urban legend page. "From the Cockpit" is the "monthly" column that focuses on current issues and such things as I put in here, Columns will be archived like the entries in the Space Patrol BBS so that when you click on the link you will be taken to the contents page. IN FOCUS looks at more generalized issues that have longer term consequences.

I want you to be skeptical. By that I mean don'b beilieve everything you hear. But there is another part of that. Having a way to figure otu what is true and what is false: Getting at the "how come", "why" or "what makes it true". The operative phrase here is "factual premises and valid reasoning yield true conclusions". Otherwise, you have to choose between being a gullible fool believine whatever is said or becoming part of the conspiracy crowd that is so far fed back into it's stuff that it becomes isolated and it can't imagine it being false or anything the cult leader says (usually Coast to Coast, Info Wars/Prison Planet, psychics, astrologers, or some other lunatic) being false. Another example are the folks who talk about "victory in Iraq" while either having forgotten by self-induced brain fart (what I called in '03 "drinking the Kool-Aid") or deliberately ignoring the plain fact that the only legitimate cause to go to war, a clear and present danger, never existed or was lied about. No factual premise, no true conclusion, false prognosis, In this case the defeat has already happned at the strategic level; no score because there was no basket, net, home plate or goal line. Why I'm so aced off about that is the fact that this piece of liberalthink was and still is practiced by my Rightist compatriots and even caused the venerable Robert "Novakio" Novak to out a CIA agent still under secracy: Phillp Agee and Aldrich Ames could not have done more harm and someon actually had the self-absorbed nerve to tell me that the laws forbidding such are "...only for liberals" (I'm not making that up: honest). I am a freethinker and I encourage free thought with the emphasis on thinking and thought. Rand described her system as "...a philosophy for living on earth, with happiness as Man's goal and Reason as his only guide". Now that's for me!

I wish to set up a letter column page where I answer questions and take comments. Now, let me tell you something Rush Limibaugh said, "If your opponent in a debate is making a fool of himself. don't stop him: Let him go on". You can use the address listed in the CONTACT PAGE to send them

You will get what you give. Acquaint yourself with the rules of logic. If you embarrass yourself, I am just going to pile on. That is, an ad hominem attack will be met with a nasty but funny response for all to see.. On the other hand, cogent comments get cogent responses. Honest but ignorant things (and there is no shame in that; there's a difference between ignorance, evil, stupidity and mental incompetence: The cure for ignorance is exposure) will tend to be treated more gently but not coddled. In my first fencing duel, the instructor matched me wit someone who had been at it a few months (we were both Tolkien fans and got on good) and I got clobbered: I won the second a week later.