I think that I may have mined the best stuff out of my favorite genre. Looking through Amazons best of the year for sci fi and the various best of the decade lists that I found on the internet, I see a common theme of having either read them already, or that they seem of a vaguely similar bent. Its almost as if there is a choose your own ( Read more... )

Having finished a book about the biology of life at extreme temperatures, one Chuck Norris organism really stands out, the tardigrade, or water bear.  Incidentally, it is also the happiest looking microscopic critter I have ever seen... most likely because it is Invincible.
To an organism that can survive the vacuum of space, everything must seem so ( Read more... )

So, Ellen has wanted for a while to make a gift for her parents, which would be a personalized wooden pub sign (sort of like this) that they could hang over their house bar, something like... 10 by 10, or 8 by 10 sized.  Does anyone know someone who would be able to do that sort of thing?

Or, how you should modernize your business rather than complain about kids today.
So, the Varsity, the last of the Franklin Street movie theaters is shutting down its doors, which leaves me with mixed feelings.  Its sort of sad, since I remember when I was at UNC, there were 3 movie theaters on Franklin.  I remember watching American Pie for the ( Read more... )

So, I decided to see how Penn and Teller's Bullshit was, as it seemed from its description like Mythbusters for actual myths, like UFOs and Chiropractic medicine. And it succeeds pretty well, it being pretty easy to go up to UFO people and ask them to tell their stories and realize that they all have their own story, which seems suspiciously like ( Read more... )

It was time for a bit of a rerun of our greatest hits, with Ellen and I taking another summer beach trip back to Wrightsville beach. There's a nice Hampton's inn a short drive from there, which was fairly cheap, and yet had very comfortable beds, though I think I was much more impressed with it before I'd stayed in some fancier places in Europe, ( Read more... )

Would anyone be interested in seeing Drag Me to Hell this weekend?

Seems like the second half of our year of dating has just flown by. I suppose once you get past the initial worrying about whether she likes you or not, and the worrying about finding the best thing possible to do for your date, you lose out on the Stress Time Dilation. So we decided to celebrate by going out to Yadkin Valley, which has a whole ( Read more... )

Having watched a fair amount of anime over the years, I've noticed just how emo the Japanese get over their cherry trees, and I've always been curious as to what the big deal was.  So two weeks ago Ellen and I took the cheap route, and went up to DC for the Cherry Blossom festival, which is schedueled for the peak weekend, and generally turns DC ( Read more... )

If you could go back in time and stop something from happening outside the basic bad things like Hitler or Stalin, what would it be?
I'd cast my trip against the inventor of the AK.  Sure something like it may have been invented, but it may not have been invented by a country willing to sell it to everyone and their little kid.