1701 Wire 2017 ® - why we are here, about us

The 1701 Manifesto

It has nothing to do with Star Trek or the Enterprise.

Unless its a cynical Dr. McCoy, commenting on whatever the headlines are saying.

There are enough "news" sites to choke a hippo. There are enough opinion websites to stop an asteroid crashing into earth. And there are a small number of youtube, blogs, twitter, tumbler and instagram thingies sufficient to strangle the very pipes of the interwebz.

True. so what?

We seem increasingly focusing on a few bits of news, a few URL's, a few feeds, a few names, a few voices; that please us. Mostly FaceBook it seems. I know. I have done it myself. It's ok. It can be fixed, we can recover.

You see a lot of news and a lot of news websites are attempting to feed us a story line. A story line that will make you and me happy with what we read, shape out minds and ignore that we don't really want to see. It really kind of hit me this year as the election primaries started hitting. I saw some things, could find other things. People I knew didn't know things I had read and vice versa.

Then there were the Polls. Trying to tell me what I thought. To be clear, I kinda hate polls. It has to do with my Dad. He was a man of science. A modern man. A man of few words. He often said stuff like; "There are three types of lies -- lies, damn lies, and statistics".  This was at dinner I remind you. So with peas, you got wisdom sometimes. Not that I wanted it at 7 or at 16. The point was, you can prove anything with stats. And he did. Even more with polls. Stats, polls, etc are not facts. They are constructs taken from numbers. So polls and studies always make me wonder what people are hiding. How they posed the questions.

After I started running around the web everyday to get my news from new sources. I decided to share it at by creating a news aggregation site. Which meant I had to make one. Which as it turns out required work. Which is why you might have stumbled here instead of Huffpo or Drudge. And I do hope you come back. 

I needed some rules about the news and information I would include.. And without wasting words, without further ado. 

These will be my rules:

  1. No polls, no articles on polls.
  2. Try to allow as many ideas as possible to flourish
  3. Opinion articles distinct from news
  4. Do not ignore Arts and Literature or Ideas
  5. Don't link to propaganda if you know its propaganda.
    1. There are news sites owned by the certain governments. I try to tell you about them.
  6. Make headlines match the article
    1. Try not to lie
    2. Try to make you read the whole story
    3. Rewrite the headline if I need to
  7. Be clear when "I" speak
    1. I write the headlines when they don't match the websites.
    2. The subheads are for a) to explain details; b) comment on the story. In both cases, I wrote it.
    3. Or, it's under Opinions.
  8. Be honest when I am for something
    1. A 5 star rating system
  9. Be honest about what I am. Read this whole article.
  10. Be careful about what I decide not to link
    1. This is harder than you think.
  11. Listen to you. Tell me when you think I am wrong.(ananomouse@1701wire.com)
  12. If you don't like it....don't read it.

Here's the thing. I want you to come here every day for the latest news like I used to use a few other sites. Leave the damn page open and refresh it. The refresh JS is coming. Promise. The bad download of Acrobat, won't come. The 200 auto video ads won't either. Some inline ads will(I need too eat and pay the rent). I can't promise you will always like what you find here. I can say it will be my honest attempt at delivering the real news to you.

A little about me. Basically, I am a libertarian with conservative tendencies, I live rather like a punk hippy who thinks Hunter S. Thompson rocked, William F. Buckly was pretty smart and Robert Heinlein had more than a few things right. I know its kind of in this age., but...we could also talk about Calvin Coolidge or Burrough's or Winston S. Churchill.

We can discuss the 1701 thing another time. Trek Fan. original of course.

Write me at ananomouse@1701wire.com anytime you feel I have crossed a limit or just want to talk. I am here, I am real, I am a free man and intend to stay that way.

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