Facebook does not quite suck yet, but it gets close sometimes. For awhile, it did suck. Then they finally let me block applications, so the suck lessened. The integration with things like Twitter is nice, but the clutter has skyrocketed. To make things easier on myself I went through and trimmed out "friends" that I have not talked to since I ( Read more... )

While laid up from the remnants of some sort of flu/cold/nasty-icky-thing-that-makes-you-throw-up I decided to catch up on some reading from my Tome of Arthur C. Clarke.1 It has every of his published short stories in chronological order. One amusing thing I noticed was that during World War II, his stories were excessively dark and often ( Read more... )

There is an inherent issue with arguing for the existence of God. Other than the monumental task of defining God in terms that make sense within the framework of Logic, the basic problem is that someone will eventually come along with a counter-argument. Assuming the counter-argument is valid, it will draw attention to weaknesses in the argument ( Read more... )

What happens with friends? I have had a long and consistent history of falling out of friendships slowly and with no other cause than lack of communication. The annoying part is that there is no moment of turning around and realizing that I have not spoken to someone in years; I know it is happening the entire time. But I give the time it takes ( Read more... )

Artificial Intelligence has been a long-term interest of mine. I love all things AI, from Deep Blue to Red Queen to swarming programs to robots that balance themselves. But AI has a PR problem.

Topics in AI can be split into two categories: fiction and non-fiction. Fiction includes Sonny, HAL 9000, and Brent Spiner in face paint. Non-fiction ( Read more... )

I wrote this tonight, amongst a burgeoning story I have decided to write without trying to plot it out beforehand. I thought it was interesting enough to post here.Instead, she asked me about the field. I was still there almost every night. The field looked sad more than it used to and was hardly ever happy. It seemed glum or distracted. The only ( Read more... )

The most basic of hostage situations can easily be described as such:

Alfred takes Bob hostage and will kill them unless Carl gives him money.

I have always found these sorts of situations utterly inane. Generally speaking, there are a few ways to respond to the situation:

1. Comply with Alfred
2. Ignore the situation
3. Retaliate against Alfred

The short ( Read more... )

Ages ago I received a guitar for my birthday. The goal was to take class guitar or lessons from Bethel the following semester, but all of my Computer Science classes overlapped with whatever was offered and I was too lazy to get private lessons. As such, the guitar sat mostly unused until recently ( Read more... )

As much as I tell myself and others that I will finally get around to writing again I still have not. Ironically, I keep reading things and thinking that I could do better. But I don't ( Read more... )

I have finally decided to get started on filling out the content for a series of stories I have been thinking about for years. The tools I have decided to use are my trusty keyboard and the software that runs Wikipedia. It turns out that it works really well for keeping track of characters, plotlines, and anything else I want ( Read more... )