Category: Blog

Gmail really does rock that much. And here are just a few reasons why…

Please, please…if you’re still using Internet Explorer 6, STOP! Why? Microsoft wants you to. IE6 has many issues with security and display. Comedy Central wants you to. Once you upgrade to FireFox (Windows or Mac), or IE7 (Windows), you’ll get faster download times, smoother animations and better looking pages. All of the new browsers have […]

When I see the moon in the daytime, I can’t help but think of it as a strangely round mountain range waaaay off in the distance. Did you know that the moon is getting farther away from the Earth as time goes on? Right now it’s the size of a dime held at arm’s length, […]

A quick rundown of the surprising similarities between atheists and Christians.

What the hell are the odds of this? I was checking some really old messages that were sent to my Stewart/Colbert profile, and there was one from December 18, 2007. Today is February 7, 2008. I’ve been watching episodes of South Park that I set into motion about an hour ago. These are completely unrelated […]

…George Bush will no longer be president. Just thought you might like to know.

by Tony Long of Wired 1996: Carl Sagan dies. Calling Carl Sagan a scientist is a little like calling the Beatles a rock band. Sagan was certainly a scientist (an astronomer, biologist and astrophysicist, to be precise). But he was also science’s most visible public advocate, a secular humanist, a fervent believer in extraterrestrial life, […]

Why You Can’t Get Your Hands on a Wii Annotated I have owned a Nintendo since 1985, and I’ve never owned an Xbox, a Sega, a PlayStation, or anything since my Atari when I was (literally) too young to walk. So, Nintendo’s success here is kind of a great thing for me to watch. The […]

Dave Chappelle’s show was absolutely brilliant for the first couple seasons because he got to be open about humor with complete disregard for race. It allowed for some truly historic moments that I know they will talk about in documentaries and history books decades from now. For example, there is this skit about Clayton Bigsby. […]

We buried our cat, Sasha, today. She was about five years old, independent as can be, and only had one kitten (Spot, who lives with Erin and me). I’ll spare everyone the details, but she did not die of natural causes. The point I really want to make is that Erin was remarkably helpful. She […]

I grew up watching television, just like everyone else. I’ve always thought of each channel in terms of its own personality or spirit, so to speak. When a station that was once young and vibrant gets strung out on pop rock candy, for example, I see it has an entity that has lost its way, […]

I bought a slightly used 2000 Honda Civic in October of 2002, and at the time it only had 32,000 miles on it. I was increasingly aware of the coming gas crunch, so I wanted to make sure I had a vehicle that wouldn’t kill me at the gas pump. And since I’ve always wanted […]

My cousin, Steve Metze, asked me how one could make money selling virtual things. Well, the entire Second Life economy is a lot like the US economy, only it’s based on the Linden (L$), which is their version of the dollar. Now, if it was just play money I wouldn’t be excited about it in […]

I recently got in a discussion about Second Life (a virtual world in which you can live, work, and play) because I just got into it a couple weeks ago. For the longest time I — a born and bred video game enthusiast — completely ignored it because the concept just didn’t seem that interesting […]

I used to have one of the Bluetooth earpieces, but that was when they first came out. I’ve never been that comfortable with it, and that was long before everyone was wearing one. I got one as a gift, and honestly, I only wore it around that person so they knew I appreciated it. In […]

Do you realize that we are mostly empty space? And when I say “mostly” I mean, almost entirely. Not just 75% or 90% or even 99%…we’re something like 99.99999999999999999% completely empty space! Want to see what I mean? I created a graphic that represents an electron as one pixel, which means that the proton graphic […]

I grew up in a town of about 12,000. Everyone I knew had the same area code and the same prefix to their phone number. For anyone calling from, say, Kansas, my home phone number was (806) 894-4879. For anyone calling from my hometown, all I had to tell them was 4879. Well, I have […]

This is a suite of four songs that I mixed together after I realized that they are parts of a larger body of work that Dream Theater is actively working on. Each song is from a different album and will likely be performed as a single piece of music once they have put it all […]

Here’s a decent example of a Moluccan cockatoo speaking. https://youtu.be/clKLct2FSjM

I tried to get Rosie to say something, but she was just confused by the black thing I was holding in my hand. https://youtu.be/6k3sUvfHGCQ

I received an email the other day from a family member that told a parable disguised as a political joke. It takes on a distinctly biased approach and misrepresents the other side completely. Annoyed and frustrated, I did the only thing I really could: I parodied it. “Why Janice IS a Republican” Janice was about […]

Most hackers don’t waste their time defacing random web sites that they have no real issue with. Wannabe hackers sit around in their shitty little apartments and use real hacker’s programs to do stupid things like deface a web site. The thing is, these pathetic morons don’t realize that what they’re doing is pointless. This […]

This is a classic comedy bit with a modern twist.

Looooong before the words “Christmas,” “Hannukah,” “Kwanzaa,” and “Festivus” ever entered humanity’s vocabulary, we have been celebrating the winter solstice. And why not? Without modern technology and capitalism making us fat, warm, greedy, and complacent, we’d be hunkered down in our holes, caves, and huts trying to make it through the brutal winters. As many […]

It’s time to change the sheets! Let the campaign for a new America begin! It’s not official yet, but that doesn’t mean we can’t start the groundswell of support. Sure, it’s a bit cynical of us to want a couple of television stars to run the nation, but if an actor can get elected as […]

Have you noticed that our military is getting a lot of training invading strangers in a “suburban” setting? How hard would it be for the president to convince 150,000+ soldiers to invade, say, Los Angeles? The Grand Army of the Republicans could do a lot of damage, and people would still have their “Support Our […]

Why is it a logic leap to say that existence implies a creator, but statistical inevitability is not? During a discussion I was having with one of my very good friends, a question came up that I had to stop and think about. It’s a delicate matter, with an important subtlety that has to be […]

“I Know, I Know” by Eric P. Metze

My cousin, Steve Metze, is currently serving in Iraq for the Texas National Guard. He has an interesting story, really. He’s a graduate of West Point, teaches Television and Film at the University of Texas, and is second or third in command of the Texas National Guard. In May of 2004 he got married, and […]

Why are people so shitty to each other? Furthermore, when someone is being shitty to someone, why does everyone allow it to happen? Last night I was enjoying a night out with my friends at a bar when I noticed a loud noise coming from the men’s restroom. I immediately knew something wasn’t right and […]

I keep saying it, but no one believes me. I swear the Bush administration has 1984 on their required reading lists, at least for those with real influence. Bush’s speeches, his thoughts, his motivations…they’re right out of the Big Brother world. Anyone know of any other (perhaps better) examples of these? This was just what […]

A family member recently sent out a family email and it got our discussion juices flowing again. My problem with the email was that it portrayed liberally-minded people as foolish and weak. If you really believe that, then this email is definitely for you. Someone said that (most, if not all) liberals ACTUALLY believe that […]

I had a couple family members make (what I believe) are huge mistakes by assuming that without religion one cannot have law. They acted like the only place people learn rules is from religious entities. I wonder if they realized that most of the rules they’re talking about were taught to them by society, and […]

Saying that you can’t prove or disprove the existence of God has been the cop-out for the God debate for as long as I’ve been aware of it. Atheists, Christians, and primarily agnostics use this idea when it all comes down to agreeing to disagree. For the longest time, I was accepting of the idea […]

A good friend and I were discussing Thanksgiving and I started to think about how it must look to other countries for us to have a holiday where we stuff ourselves full of food and roll around on the couch watching football. You know, I can’t believe Americans even publicize Thanksgiving. It should be like […]

During all of these religious and political discussions, I keep hearing from people who try to tell me to lay off because it seems like I’m trying to talk someone into something. I keep hearing people say, “You’re never going to convince them.” I wish people would stop telling me that for one simple reason: […]

I have been raised to believe in God, and I have always felt a presence, though my definition of the source of that feeling has changed over time. But, throughout that time, I truly believed in a higher power of some kind, continually watching over me. I simply couldn’t think of the world without a […]

Today I was thinking about how drugs affect the mind, and I stumbled upon an analogy. What do drugs do? In other words, how do they work on us? Well, they are simply chemicals that get in our bodies and our brains that disrupt or otherwise alter the usual flow of neural activity. We like […]

When the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a farm in Pennsylvania were attacked, most Americans saw it as an attack on America itself. Sure, it all happened on American soil and killed many Americans, but the truth is that it wasn’t a direct attack on America alone. People tend to forget that the buildings […]

One of the things that bother me about some people is their refusal to look at things in the long-term, or the Grand Scheme of Things. I’ve observed that many conservatives fall into this category, and I believe this is due to a predilection to maintain tradition. This can be a good thing, but it […]