Month: February 2007

They say that many technologies owe their existence to sex. Porn drove the cost of VCRs down, for example. And porn was the early fuel for the growth of the Internet. I see one more area where this phenomenon is likely to repeat: robots. Have you heard about the company…

I opened my web browser today and noticed a story about a man in Oregon who was snorkeling in a river and got shot in the head because some other guy thought he was a rodent. There is nothing funny about being shot in the head. Unless you were snorkeling…

According to the experts, there are many forms of intelligence. Standard IQ tests only capture a few types. But you can also have musical intelligence, social intelligence, kinesthetic intelligence, and so on. One type of intelligence that I never hear discussed – and might be the most important one –…

Have you ever wondered why great musicians can’t keep cranking out hits every year? Consider Neal Diamond, for example. He wrote and recorded some of the greatest songs ever. But then the hits stopped coming, despite the fact that his talent probably improved with experience. He’s not alone. That’s the…

The other day I wrote a post about the definition of intelligence and whether it could apply to the universe. I confess that I was too subtle with my point that the definition of intelligence is subjective. An angry critic hallucinated that my post argued “only intelligence could create intelligence.”…

Did you see the Superbowl XLI halftime show? Prince played his special guitar behind a huge flowing sheet so that only his shadow could be seen. Some viewers said that the shadow from his guitar looked like a gigantic penis. Prince hasn’t commented. Was the penis shadow puppet show intentional?…

Sometimes I feel as if I have thousands of bosses. Because any time I screw up, that’s how many people gleefully let me know about it. I assume it is fun to criticize me because you know I’ll read the criticisms, and you know there won’t be any repercussions to…

Did you see the story about the chimp in a Louisiana sanctuary that got pregnant even though all the male chimps have had vasectomies? http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/01/17/pregnant.chimp.ap/index.html [no longer available] My first thought was that the groundskeeper has been tapping the chimps. But I have been told on good authority that humans…

I can’t decide what to think about the illegal immigration problem in the U.S. I suppose I could spend an afternoon using Google to find the arguments on all sides. But I feel it would be like searching for diamonds in my cat’s ass: I believe, without evidence, that all…

In German, there’s a word for the good feeling you get when other people suffer misfortune. It’s called shodenfrood, or maybe sheudanfroud, or something like that. Don’t pretend you care how it’s spelled, because if you don’t already know the word, you already forgot what it means. I only mention…

Here’s a question that I like to ask: What is more important to the function of a car – having an engine or having wheels? After I ask the question, I close my eyes and cross my fingers and hope I don’t hear an answer that is either “the engine”…

My philosophical noodlings on this blog, and in a few of my books, has produced wonderfully entertaining angry reactions from people who – and this is just a guess – are self-important, humorless, autofellating, ass hats. Some people are quite certain that I am misusing my minor celebrity status to…