Introduction

Everything in life is shades of gray, nothing is really pure black or pure white. Yet we all like to look at the issues that face us in black-and-white terms, because that is so much easier to understand. Sometimes this helps us focus on the core of the issue at hand. Far more often, though, looking at issues as black or white, good or evil, right or wrong, makes it much harder to come to a real solution.

In these days of increasing polarization, a simplistic look at issues is becoming increasingly unhelpful. So for this website, I am trying to take the opposite approach. On this site, I want to take an issue that we are struggling with, and try to look at it from different sides. I want to explore the different aspects and try to end up with a more complete understanding.

I will be honest: this is a personal website, a way for me to express my ideas. A way, in fact, to help me form my own opinions. Since I’m not really a deep thinker of philosopher, the ideas expressed here will be seriously flawed. Yet I will share them with others, and hopefully get others to think along with me.

Theoretically there are infinitely many shades of gray possible. Geeks know, however, that computers are typically only able to display 256 different shades from pure black (#000000 in computer speak) to pure white (#FFFFFF). These 256 shades the computer can represent are expressed in the top part of this website’s banner, from which it will be clear that these 256 shades are more than the human eye can distinguish. For comparison, the bottom part of the banner shows a mere sixteen shades of gray.

I have plenty more ideas for topics to write about. I’m also open to additional suggestions.