What is a “fringe” topic?

I’ve noticed that some people have referred to some of the topics
in the forum as being “fringe” topics.

Why?

What makes the paranormal, conspiracy theories, or alternate
spiritual and religious beliefs and ideas “fringe” topics?
Because they don’t follow the “established” ideas? Or maybe
because they make you have to pull your head out of the sand
and consider the possibility that what you were taught as a
child might not be all there is?

It has been my observation that many people falsely assume that
expressing an interest in such things means you must be, by
default, some wacko that wears a tin foil hat and believes that
“they” are watching your every move.

No.

Many people that are interested in “fringe” topics are actually
quite normal. Some would even say bloody boring in their day to
day lives. The part of it that amuses me is that as soon as
some people find out you are interested in such things they
think they need to distance themselves from you or shun you for
fear that they will be seen as “tainted” in the eyes of others.
Or worse, they treat like you are some sub-human creature that
somehow managed to escape a lunatic asylum and need to be treated
like you were somehow ill.

Then there are the ones that use the term “lunatic fringe”. What
makes one person a lunatic and another one normal? Politically
speaking, many consider me to be a lunatic because I think our
current government(s) don’t have our best interests in heart. Nor
do I believe this is how the original founders of the various
governments intended for things to be for posterity.

Looking at my traffic reports has shown me something interesting
about this site, the so called “fringe” topics are of greater
interest than the supposed “normal” topics. And believe me, there
are more “normal” topics here than there are “fringe” topics.

One prime example is the topic Pagnor posted about Odinism,
Asatru, and Heathen. I see many visitors looking at that one so
it makes me have to ask the question, If there are that many
people regularly looking for such topics online, how can they be
considered “fringe”? In fact I just looked, that one topic has
had 484 views since he posted it in January.

Link to Pagnor’s thread

So the next time you see something referred to as a “fringe”
topic, ask yourself, What makes this a “fringe” topic? Because
Katie Couric isn’t blathering about bigfoot on the evening news?
Or they aren’t offering you tips on the Today Show on best way to
set up a cleansing ritual for your house before your new baby is
born? Oh wait, they do that if it is Feng Shui.

Good liberals and good conservatives

In modern (US) politics there are three primary groups, Liberals,

Conservatives, and Pretenders. I’m not going to go into the various
political parties as there are many even though the media acts as
though there are only two, Democrats and Republicans.

Many people automatically associate liberal politics with the
Democrats and conservative politics with Republicans. In my
experience that isn’t entirely accurate. I’ve seen plenty of self
proclaimed Democrats that were and are very conservative in their
views and almost as many Republicans that were surprisingly liberal
in their outlook. Then there are the pretenders. They claim one
name or the other yet their actions tell the tale all too well about
where their loyalties lie. Their loyalties usually lie with themselves or
some special interest group who’s interests are usually at odds with
everyone else’s best interests.

As a general rule I detest politics and politicians. It always seems to
be the same song and dance year after year and election after election.
One candidate points an accusing finger at their opponent and the
other counter attacks by digging up more dirt on the other. This
cycle continues until we go to the polls and cast our votes. After the
election is won or lost we get a little peace and quiet for a while
before they start it over again.

I have been told be people on both sides that I am crazy because
my views don’t conform to either set of ideas. Maybe I am crazy for
seeing both sides as being in error in their thinking. However, I see
that there are good liberals and good conservatives and then there
are just idiots that wear the name without knowing what it means.

A review of Google’s Chrome beta browser

I downloaded Chrome beta after having read a bit about it on Digg.
The general consensus on Digg is that it sucks. So far I have to agree
with them for the most part. It has a few annoying problems and what
I have to call design flaws. These may only be typical beta problems
but they still might discourage a user from dropping IE or Firefox in
favor of Chrome.

Installing it went fairly quick and smoothly except for a hiccup that required
me to shut down Firefox so it could import my settings, bookmarks, and other
information from it. It did offer the option to not import any or all of my
information from Firefox but I wanted to see if it would do it and get
everything right, so far so good on that point.

Several people have commented on Chrome’s UI (User Interface) as being
very clean. It is clean, a little too clean if you are used to having all the
options and normal buttons and tabs readily available. The site tabs are at the
very top but it has only back, forward, and reload buttons next to the
search/address/bookmarks bar. You do have the option of adding the home
button from the options menu under the wrench icon. It allows you to
set a home page or you can just use the default new tab page.

The bookmarks can be a pain in the butt to get to where they are located
if you are used to being able to quickly navigate around your favorite sites. You
do have the option of adding a bookmarks tab to the browser but it is located
to the right side and that is not where most people look for their bookmarks
as far as I know. It will also allow you to drag and drop your most used bookmarks
to the left side but it still leaves a lot of room for confusion until you get used
to the lay out.

It also lacks a constant status bar. This is replaced with a fading tab that
shows you where links lead and if a page is still loading. While this may not
be a problem a lot of the time it is still a minor distraction if you are used
to glancing down and seeing the status bar. Their pop up blocker notification
bar will also display here when a pop up is blocked.

As far as I have been able to determine, the beta version does not support
RSS or ATOM feeds and I have seen no buttons for any kind of feeds. I am
hoping this will be corrected in the final version.

I also noticed that some sites that use a lot of widgets that are dependent
on Flash and Quicktime seem to hang up or drag when trying to scroll. This may
only be a problem with the beta but it does tend to make me want to go right
back to Firefox. On most sites the scrolling is very quick and smooth though.
One other problem I noticed was that if you have only one tab opened and
accidentally close it the entire browser will close.

And finally I will address the incognito window they have come up with
for more private surfing. Personally, I can’t see any real need of it since
you can just as easily clear your browsing data from the controls under the
wrench icon.

In closing, I know there are a lot of things I haven’t addressed but these
are the things that drew my attention. It may be a good general purpose
browser after it’s final version is released but I think Google still has a lot of
work ahead of them if they plan to give Internet Explorer any serious competition.

If you would like to try the beta of Chrome visit:
Google Chrome Beta download