The Little Brown Reader

Welcome to the Little Brown Reader

Hello, and welcome to "The Little Brown Reader". This is not the English book that's used in high school and college. I was trying to think of a clever name for this new weblog, and that's the best I've come up with so far. Feel free to suggest something equally or more clever, if you have any ideas.

I read a lot of stuff on the Internet. I'm a voracious learner and I'm very politically active, and when you put that together with 7 years of being on the Internet, the result is: I read a lot of stuff on the Internet.

A lot of people probably see many of the same articles and web pages as I do, while for some people almost everything they see here will be new to them. Facing the same dilemma that led me to start E-Actions for Freedom, I decide to create this blog as a rolling online reading list, in case people find the items I read useful. This also helps give people who follow my presidential campaign an idea of what's going through my head, at least some of the time.

I won't be able to take the time to comment much on each item, so I've put together a rating system that will hopefully provide some small insight on what I think about the things I read.

The rating system, which is likely to evolve over time, goes like this:

10 is the highest rating. Ratings will be highly subjective, and rashly decided.

Read It Rating: (scale: 1-10) Measure of how firmly I suggest reading it. May not reflect how glad you will be that you read it.

Left-Right Rating: (scale: 1-10R, 1-10L, 0=neutral) Measure of how much the item leans to the left ("liberal") or the right ("conservative") on the Nolan Chart. Most mainstream news articles will be rated "0" (neutral) by default.

Freedom Rating: (scale: -10 to 10) Fairly arbitrary measure of how pro- or anti-freedom the item is, whether in content or intent.

Learning Percentage: (scale 0-100%) Measure of how much of the item was new information or learning material for me. Your mileage may vary.

And lastly, a copyright note and disclaimer:

All material posted here that is not written by me is the copyrighted material of someone else, and all rights are reserved to them as per the copyright laws. Anything of that nature that's posted here is done so for non-profit informational purposes, and it will do its best to be in compliance with the fair use doctrine. Sometimes when the item comes to me by e-mail, I'll just paste the whole thing in here. I will try to make clear the distinction between my own content and that of others.

I don't necessarily agree with, believe, ascribe to, support, or understand any given item that's posted here, and it's very important not to put too much weight on the ratings I give each entry. They will mostly be done at a moment's thought, after just having finished the item, and in a context of whatever dozen other things I'm doing or reading around that time. Just remember: highly subjective, rashly decided.

Happy reading! If you've got a fixin' for a lot of new info in your inbox, sign up for e-mail updates, over on the left there.

Be well, Be free,

Lance Brown