Who Am I?

My name is Craig Steiner and I live in a suburb of Denver, Colorado. | Liberals: Please click here.

Personal

Though I lived in California, Hawaii, and Washington as a child, I consider myself to be a "semi-native" of Colorado since this is where I grew up in my teen years, got my degree at the University of Colorado at Denver, and it's the only place I've lived in the U.S. as an adult.

In 1996 I quit my job and moved to Mexico because I had met someone that I was very interested in, and I felt that only by living in the same city was there any hope for a relationship. I found a job at a Mexican company doing software development, earning Mexican wages. Several years later I married the woman for whom I had moved to Mexico. We lived there for six more years before moving back to Colorado. Due to my ten years in Mexico and the fact that my wife is Mexican, I am fluent in Spanish.

Professional

I've been doing software development since 1980 and professionally since 1990. After starting my career as a full-time employee, I opted to go out on my own and became a self-employed consultant in 1999. I've been doing that ever since.

Although I originally did software development in DOS and then Visual Basic and C++, I started focusing on 8051-based embedded development while in Mexico and that, combined with website development, has been my focus ever since. In 1997 I developed the 8052.com website which hosts a significant amount of information for the 8051 microcontroller and provides a community for thousands of other developers around the world working with the same technology. I then proceeded to develop a Windows-based assembler for the 8051 called Pinnacle which I released as shareware. I subsequently wrote and published a technical book about the 8051 microcontroller, "The 8051/8052 Microcontroller: Architecture, Assembly Language, and Hardware Interfacing".

I also was the principal developer of PrismEmail, a spam-filtering service which allows users to filter unwanted spam without having to install anything on their computer.

Politics

I'm a registered Republican. I grew up sympathizing with Republican ideals because they just made sense to me. Somewhere in the late 90's I became rather apathetic and non-political; in fact, moving to Mexico allowed me to detach myself from the frustration I was feeling with American politics.

When I started writing political commentary back in 2006, I did so by essentially taking a step back from my political beliefs and writing from as much of a non-biased position as I could. By doing so I hoped to discover--if only for myself--political and economic truths based not on partisanship but rather on logic and facts. However, I found that even when letting go of my preconceptions and analyzing issues as logically and rationally as I could, I ended up back where I started: My analysis confirmed the merits of conservative ideology.

Even so, I'm constantly trying to challenge my beliefs. I seldom read conservative books because they don't challenge me. Rather, the books I read are usually liberal since they question my beliefs and cause me to reconsider and revalidate my positions. I feel that that serves a useful purpose either way: Either they will convince me I'm wrong and I can modify my positions, or I will have even stronger confidence in the validity of the positions I hold. Admittedly I have yet to find a compelling argument for liberalism.

Why Do I Write Articles Here?

I find that the process of investigating a topic for an article allows me to better understand the issue and helps me question my own position. I try to apply the same logic and critical analysis I use in software development and electrical engineering in analyzing political and economic decisions. While there are some issues that are simply a matter of subjective opinion, I strongly feel that other issues are simply a matter of right and wrong, or what works and what doesn't work. I try to apply logic to find those answers.

By actually writing the articles (rather than just researching the topic) I find that I can better organize my thoughts on the topic in a more logical and coherent manner. Sometimes by writing an article I find myself asking even more related questions which leads me to investigate those issues as well. The result, I find, is a process in which I logically analyze each issue and arrive at a hopefully-logical conclusion. I feel that the entire process helps me better inform myself on the issues and also helps me be more conscious of the arguments of those that have different viewpoints.

As for why I actually publish my articles to this website, why not? I'm generally not motivated to do something that doesn't produce some kind of result. I suppose I could just write the articles and store them in a personal library. However, many of my articles end up requiring substantial research and it is my hope that by sharing them with the public I may be able to help others that may be researching the same topic. Additionally, by publishing my articles I open them to being challenged and critiqued by others... which is a good thing.

How The Website Is Organized: Articles and Observations

This website is organized into basically two sections: Articles and observations.

You may consider the observations section to be more or less a common blog. It will contain entries and quick commentary I submit given my first impressions of something I see in the news, thoughts I have, etc. Generally they won't be very in-depth or fully researched, they'll just be commentary on things of interest in politics and the economy. They may be on topics of the day that may or may not have any relevance a few months or years from now. Here you may find my random comments, criticisms, and praise of politicians. You might see a few new observations every day.

The articles section, however, represents much more researched and substantiated analysis. Most of the articles I write are heavily researched and will contain numerous embedded links to support my observations and conclusions. Articles will usually be on much more general topics--often issues of ideology--that probably will have significance not just in the current news cycle, but long into the future. For example, some criticism about a politician's idea to raise taxes would probably be in the other "observation" section while an in-depth analysis of the effects of raising taxes would probably be an article. Since articles require much more research it will be uncommon to see a new article more frequently than every week or two.

Why Should You Trust Me?

I encourage you not to trust me. The vast majority of my articles are heavily documented with embedded links and references. Check my links. Check my references. That's what they're there for. If you find an error, let me know so I can correct it.

Thanks for Reading!

I consider the fact that you've taken the time to read or link to my articles to be the highest compliment. I'm humbled to see my site linked to from so many discussion forums and websites. THANK YOU!

Contact Me

I invite your feedback and comments at any time. I do read all feedback and if your feedback invites or merits a response, you will usually receive one within a day. I really enjoy hearing from my readers. You may contact me by clicking on the contact link.