How the Death Star Works...

The Galactic Empire tells all in a HowStuffWorks Exclusive!!!

But Timothy McSweeney is still skeptical about the trash compactor.

Possible News on Star Trek 11

This just in from SciFi.com...



JUN. 25, 2007 | News | SCI FI Weekly

Trek Script Done, Shoots In Fall



Roberto Orci, who with writing partner Alex Kurtzman is scripting the new Star Trek movie, told SCI FI Wire that they have finished the script are in preproduction on the movie, which will go into production in November under director J.J. Abrams. "We're still casting," Orci said while promoting his next film, Michael Bay's Transformers. "We're in preproduction, actually, this month."



While revealing little about the 11th Trek film's top-secret plot, Orci offered a few tidbits. "Kirk is in the movie," he said. "Some kind of Kirk. ... We literally haven't cast them yet. It's actually one of the challenges, and so we're hoping to have something by Comic-Con [in San Diego in July], but we'll see."



Orci added that producers are wrestling with whom to cast. "That's one of the debates, you know?" he said. "Like, how much does a familiar face hurt or not?" As for rumors that Matt Damon is in line for Kirk or Adrien Brody for Spock, Orci would only smile. "I've read all those rumors, too."



Is the Trek movie being eyed as the kickoff of a possible TV series? "I'm sure CBS is thinking about that," he said. "That's not [something] we're thinking about. We're just thinking about the movie. Certainly, I don't know how they could not think about that." —Patrick Lee, News Editor

Cows with Guns

I seem to remember that the Clouds first informed me of this silly little song years and years ago... Very funny...

My wife told me to do this

You scored as General Grievous. General Grievous 72% Yoda 67% Mace Windu 64% Anakin Skywalker 61% Clone Trooper 58% Darth Vader 53% Obi Wan Kenobi 53% C-3PO 44% Chewbacca 39% Padme Amidala 39% R2-D2 28% Emperor Palpatine 25% Which Revenge of the Sith Character are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Books I read in 2006

Here is a list of the bulk of the books I have read in the year 2006. It doesn't even come close to keeping track of the technical journal articles I have read, the economics material I read daily, and 500+ pages of stuff I read for Mises University 2006.

Ayn Rand - Anthem
Dan Brown - The Da Vinci Code
Hank Haanegraf - The Last Disciple
John J. Pilch - Choosing a Bible Translation
Malcolm Gladwell - Blink
Michael Hedges and John Stropes - Rhythm, Sonority, and Silence
Rob Bell - Velvet Elvis
Robert Heinlein - Methuselah's Children
Thomas Friedman - The World is Flat
Sun Tzu - The Art of War
Various Authors - Farscape Forever
Various Authors - Finding Serenity (on the television show Firefly)
Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader
Paul R. Scheele - Natural Brilliance
Paul R. Scheele - The Photoreading Whole Mind System
Stephen Hawking - A Brief History of Time
Murray Rothbard - For a New Liberty
Murray Rothbard - What Has the Government Done to our Money?
Gene Callahan - Economics for Real People
Thomas DiLorenzo - Lincoln Unmasked
Thomas Woods - The Politically Incorrect Guide to the History of America
Thomas Woods - The Church and the Market
Lawrence Vance - Christianity and War
T.S. Eliot - Poems
Robert Heinlein - Methuselah's Children

What are some of the cool books you read this year?

Word of the Year

Merriam-Webster Online's Words of the Year 2006



Once again, Stephen Colbert makes history by making up a word and then having it win the 2006 Word of the Year award. What the?

1. truthiness (noun)

1 : "truth that comes from the gut, not books" (Stephen Colbert, Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report," October 2005)


2 :
"the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true,
rather than concepts or facts known to be true" (American Dialect
Society, January 2006)

It's been a LONG time...

Hello there, my precious few loyal readers. I apologize for being so absent as of late. I have been so extremely busy writing papers about war, planning experiments in the lab, studying nanotechnology, practicing New Testament Greek, and researching economic history that I just haven't had the time to write blog posts. I know, I can't believe it either, NO TIME FOR BLOGGING!

So here's some recent news:

My best friend's wife had their first child! He is healthy and apparently confused, just like his daddy.

My brother and I were just eliminated from the Fantasy Football playoffs in the first round due to a series of unfortunate events.

I finally made my first good polymer films last week. It was the wafers, @#$^*!

I wrote a paper called Against War and the State. Apparently, it has made the rounds without my knowing and is receiving both vitriolic denouncement and critical acclaim. I can't wait till I revise it for official publication.

We went to St. Louis for Thanksgiving. It was awesome!

We have one week of classes left. I'm done in exactly 9 days. I can't wait to focus in on lab work! We've been getting good results this last week...

I am currently writing an concluding an extremely random blog post. See you later!

Nerd, geek, or dork?

You are a "Pure Nerd"

82 % Nerd, 47% Geek, 8% Dork

For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.

A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.

A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.

You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd.

The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the "dork." No-longer. Being smart isn't as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful.

Congratulations!

Thanks Again! -- THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 99% on nerdiness You scored higher than 99% on geekosity You scored higher than 99% on dork points

Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test written by donathos on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

NERO

NERO: The Neuro-Evolving Robotic Operatives Game

I saw this random thing on Digg for a game about training robots to battle against other trained robots online. I checked out the site and found that it is a student project run at UT-Austin in our computer science department as an experiment in artificial intelligence. I am definitely checking this out!

What if I were a Web 2.0 Company?

This is what my logo would look like...




Make your own Web 2.0 logo at the parody site, http://msig.info/web2.php.

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