Ownership
I am the sole owner of this blog. Given that, since we are doing this in order to be able to get our views out, everything you see here is retained as our intellectual (such as it is) property and we retain all rights / copyrights to all that material. We do not own any advertisements that we may / may or not have on the site, nor any other material that we may use from time to time (AFTER we get permission to use such).
The only exception is material that we have used in with respect to “fair use” in order to comment on or to make a point. If such material is your’s and you don’t want us to use it, send us an email asking us to remove it (and we will once we can verify that you are the legitimate owner of such material). Commenters retain rights to their comments, but by posting such, we get to use it freely as we see fit on the site.
We want you to have fun here, so Fair Use (Title 17, Section 107) is in play. If you use our material, please link back to us. If you want to use our material other then for your personal use, either email us to request such. Failing that you have no rights to use, reproduce, transmit, license, sell or otherwise some other purpose use content herein without the prior written consent of me.
Free Speech
I am the benevolent tyrant of GraniteGrok. Since I own it and pay the bills, I get to make all the rules (yup, he who has the gold makes the rules). I can say whatever we want and anytime we want – you do not. It is our right and your privilege to post here. The First Amendment does not apply to us, only to government (….shall not abridge….).
We like what LaShawn Barber says “On this blog, your speech is a privilege. On your blog, your speech is a right. Learn the distinction.”
Comments
We want and desire your comments! Basically, keeping them clean, literate, and logical is what we are looking for and will certainly allow. AND, you don’t have to agree with us at all (although we will try to convert you!). Staying on topic will help too.
Comments will be moderated so we can stay ahead of spamming, unkind / illiterate / idiotic commenters, and trolls. Comments will be posted them as we (or by our minions) can get to them (and if we feel like staying out on Lake Winneapsaukee or over at Gunstock Ski area, that can take a bit). Any comment that finally makes it through does not necessarily reflect our views – you can disagree with us at any time. However, obscene, abusive, silly, off-topic or annoying remarks will be deleted (well, we may allow silly comments, but be warned – you may be made sport of!) but the fact that particular comments remains on the site in no way means that we agree / endorse them. We are not responsible for their content.
Forget about us editing your comments – what you write is yours and we are too busy to fix anything. Please know, however, that we retain the right to use it anyway we want, or simply delete it. Starting a flaming war will get you banned, ditto for foul language, foul intentions, issue slurs, libel anyone, or threatening to cause physical harm to anyone or their families. Calling us names we don’t like? – deleted! Attacking people – banned. Go for the throat of the argument, not the person. And if you are going after the argument, be prepared to back it up – just throwing out assertion after assertion will end up with us throwing you out.
Basically, be a jerk somewhere else – not here.
We may try to warn you that you are heading over the cliff with your content, or not (consider us as beneficial despots). If we determine we don’t want your insulting ways, we will ban you. However, If you think you should be able to comment but can’t, email us and we will struggle to try to fix what we don’t know is wrong (mistakes! Sure thing we do them – sometimes over and over just for the heck of it!).
Registration – we may be doing it in the future depending on spam level. Also, we will ask you to affirm that you are 18 or older – this site is not for children (either age wise or knowledge-wise).
This is our house, not yours. Be nice and you get to stay for a while. Being not nice will result in you finding the cyber portal to our cyber home real quick.
Look in the Contact Us to email us. Anything you send is fair game for us and we may use it on the site. Exceptions to this policy is only if you ask us not to. However, if we judge the email to be nasty, we still may post it and skewer it and its (lack of) critical thinking. Since we have lives outside of the blogosphere and are married to other people and not this blog, emails may go unanswered. This will be especially true if we become roaring successes and get millions of hits a day (uh-huh, right!). Otherwise, we will make a good faith effort to respond to some / many / most emails.
Other
Please Remember!
We try to get our information correct, but sometimes, we don’t. So don’t think we are the be-all or end-all source of complete information! We ASK you to double check what we say with other blogs – it keeps us honest, you get better informed, and the world will be a happier place for all (right…..)
DO YOUR HOMEWORK!
Content
We consider this a site not for children. Not that it contains p*_o*_r *_n material or ideas, we expect and are looking for grown up debates. Generally, our content will be child friendly but might be above their heads (or adult liberals that think like kids too).
