A couple of weeks ago there was this whole fracas over Net Neutrality: Google reversing its stance and teaming up with Verizon to treat the wireless spectrum differently than the wired infrastructure, and now AT&T suggesting the same thing. It’s a sticky subject that’s attracted even the nutzo Tea Party crowd to the fray. In [...]

After both PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins ran with the above video calling for democracy in Western Civilization to be replaced by a Catholic Monarchy, those of us who favor evidence-based thinking over dogmatic superstition reacted quite vocally (just look at the comments sections on both blogs to get a sense). The reaction was enough [...]

Back in February, I moved from a Verizon FIOS equipped house to one served merely by Cox Communications.  Since Verizon didn’t service the new place, they let me out of the contract I was in (it was a largely unplanned move).  This left me with some hard choices: either suck it up and get Cox, [...]

Some number of years from now, you’ll come to understand why I didn’t get around to writing your birthday letter last year. Suffice it to say that moving was not incredibly conducive to sitting down and composing thoughts. Nevertheless, I am resolving to continue with the birthday letter blog posts, because I hope they will [...]

I work for a government agency, a federal one. In the course of my work, and for admittedly personal reasons, I encounter a great number of different sites via news articles and Google Reader. Like so many others at federal agencies, I am often stopped dead in my tracks as I encounter the dreaded web [...]

Considering that atheists and agnostics comprise a fairly small percentage of the population, it was never inevitable that I would arrive at my current frame of mind. I am firmly agnostic (or, depending on the perspective, weakly atheist), the kind who doesn’t expressly believe in a god, and asserts that though we cannot know for [...]

OK, so your birthday was on April 24. I am still determined to publish this, however. Now you are four. And my, how you’ve progressed. And my, how your circumstances have changed since the last birthday letter. First, let’s look at what’s changed about those circumstances, and then we’ll look at your progression before moving [...]

The time is now. The place is right here. Your playing board is the entire world. You are a player by choice, a puppetmaster by rough consensus. Invent fabulous but plausible fictional news items, or create their supporting artifacts and plant them as a sort of archaeological evidence. Track other players’ contributions and vote for [...]

I’ve been thinking about games lately, so I am taking on the classic Dots and Squares. In doing so, I am not simply proposing a digital translation. Rather, the game needs some tweaking to make the leap to casual social gaming (like on Facebook). This article explores the elements that could make a compelling social [...]

It’s just easier this way, trust me. And really, there are plenty of WordPress themes out there, and with the universe of plugins, I can still make the site do pretty much whatever I want and look however I want. That is all.