I want one of these for my porch:

The guy who carves these, Ray Villafane, is amazing. Check out his site for more pumpkins and a tutorial might even make you think (for five seconds) that you, too, can carve pumkins this cool.

Filed under: Anything But Politics, Cool Beans | No Comments »

The Boston Globe has some absolutely breathtaking images of what Douglas Adams liked to call our “small, unregarded, yellow sun.” Very, very cool.

Filed under: Cool Beans, Fun with Science | 3 Comments »

There’s a lot of hand-wringing global warming hysteria in this 60 Minutes piece, but the concept of a Doomsday Vault in the Arctic housing seeds from all the world’s crops, in the even of some major vegetation-destroying catastrophe is a really interesting one (you have to sit through a commercial before the video starts):

Filed under: Cool Beans, Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

Magneto, always one of the more interesting Marvel villains, was able to levitate through forces of pure magnetism. Unlike some supers who could simply fly, with no explanation as to how, Magneto was (sort of) backed by a scientific explanation.
Today, I discovered an article from last summer about scientists achieving a Casimir Effect in the [...]

Filed under: Cool Beans, Geek Stuff | 1 Comment »

I am a huge fan of Ricky Gervais’s original BBC version of The Office. A buddy of mine discovered it about 6 years ago, and when he came to visit, we watched the entire first season in one sitting.
Perhaps this is why I absolutely, positively, CAN NOT STAND the American version. I want it to [...]

Filed under: Brave New World, Cool Beans, Funny, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Filed under: Cool Beans | 2 Comments »

The Pew Research Center has an online quiz to test your News IQ on current events and public figures. It’s only a 12 question quiz, so mistakes are costly.
I got two wrong (I’m a bit surprised on one of them) and wound up with a score of 83%. I’m well above the average nationally, demographically, [...]

Filed under: Cool Beans, World News | 7 Comments »

Reuters reports that Chuck Norris has visited Iraq several times, much to the delight of U.S. Troops. As they say, the quickest way to a man’s heart is with Chuck Norris’ fist.

Filed under: Cool Beans, Funny | No Comments »

Just wanted to put up a quick post to announce something I’m rather pleased with - I’ve been invited to undertake the role of blogger/columnist/plucky comic relief for the website formerly known as Crisis Magazine, A,K.A., Inside Catholic.
It’s a great opportunity, and I’m happy to have it.

Filed under: A Writer's Life For Me, Cool Beans, Fame/I'm Gonna Live Forever | 5 Comments »

This morning I read a story about the USS New York, a new amphibious assault ship that was built using approximately 24 tons of reclaimed steel from the fallen World Trade Center.

There’s no way to put into words how sweet the poetic justice of this is. Better than any monument, memorial, or tribute, we just built the aftermath of [...]

Filed under: Cool Beans, Oh YEAH | 1 Comment »