Asking someone is the primary method everyone employs. Just monitor yourself, or check out a little history. The reason this method is so commonly employed is because it is the best, and often the only method available.

You can't find an historian who doesn't look first to what's written about a given event. You couldn't function in your day-to-day life without this method, unless you're some sort of independent hermit.

Further discussion shouldn't be needed, but anyone who wants me to waste further time explaining the obvious should post in the appropriate thread.

Dark Matter + Dark Energy = Dark Truth

"We find that such evidence demonstrates that the ID argument is dependent upon setting a scientifically unreasonable burden of proof for the theory of evolution." - Judge Jones Kitzmiller case
http://www.talkreason.org/articles/Falsify.cfm

"To Compel A Man To Furnish Funds For The Propagation Of Ideas He Disbelieves And Abhors Is Sinful And Tyrannical." - Thomas Jefferson

"And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath?" - Thomas Jefferson