The Question and Answer Board

[NorthWesterner]

Mary, it's not that your posts are more colorful than others.

It's that they're basically dishonest.

Stating things as though they were facts when they are in fact opinions or conjecture isn't a matter of being colorful. It's a matter of lying. (Using my mother's definition, which I grew up with, that a lie is a deliberate deception.)

You have strongly objected to people who state, as though it were a fact, what is really their opinion, that bashers are being paid to bash stocks. And you're right. They shouldn't state that as fact just because they believe it, or are convinced it's true. They should only state it as a fact if they can prove it.

You rightly object to that.

But then you turn around and to the exact same thing yourself.

And, frankly, you're beginning to turn me, and I suspect others, away with your holier-than-thou, I'm-the-white-knight-out-to-save-the-world attitude.

Maybe my experience is a bit different from others. I was involved in a little computer start up. For a long time we were a development company. We struggled mightily the first years. We went months without full salaries, sometimes without any salaries. We could easily have gone under. And I realize that you probably would have been bashing us right and left if you had known about us then. But we survived, and eventually prospered. But if you had been around, throwing out unsubstantiated and inaccurate postings as though they were fact, calling us crooks and worse, we might not have.

Sure, there are some dishonest people out there. But every company that is out there was once a start-up. Everything you own, all the clothes you wear, all the vehicles you drive, the house you live in and everything in it, are there because some person or persons had a vision, took a risk, started a company. And almost every one of those went through stages where, if somebody like you had wanted to, they could have trashed the company, found or imagined all sorts of things wrong, called the founders crooks, and on and on.

I have plenty of respect for facts. I have respect for posts supported by facts. I've brought up plenty of questions about companies I think about investing in. (Just look at my work on Fonar on SI a few years back if you doubt my ability to find the negatives in a stock. But everything I posted there was supported by documentation. As everywhere else.)

No, Mary, its not being colorful that makes you different.

It's being dishonest.

It's just too bad that your blinders are so tightly glued to your head that you're unable to see that.