Thanks to Jason for pointing out that Bobby Fischer, the Chess Master, is now dead.

I feel the same way about Bobby Fischer as I do about Charles Manson. These are two people whose views of the world are sickeningly twisted to the point that the only conclusion I can make is that mental illness is involved in both cases.

Bobby lived his whole life for only two purposes, to play a game, and to be the poster child for antisemitism. His flagrant disregard for laws and authority caused him to blame the U.S. Government or the Jews for everything that ever happened to him. Even in death he laid blame at the feet of the Japanese and Icelandic governments. If you ask me, Fischer was a media whore and he probably just broke the law everywhere he went in order to stay in the limelight.
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I just wanted to take a moment to tell everyone Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! I know that not everyone is a Christian, so forgive me for not doing the cliche thing and listing out every possible greeting for the various holiday seasons.

What I would be really, really interested in though - is finding out what the coolest gifts everyone received for the holiday season! So, either drop a comment below and share your bounty, or ping me with a trackback from your own blog post about whatever cool new toy you got!

And once again, Happy Holidays!

The other day I sat down to watch The Princess Bride for about the 10,000th time. Man that is a great movie! Anyway, when I was watching the part where Vizzini, the Sicilian, was answering the question as to how smart he is, he said:

“Let me put it this way. Have you ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates? Morons.”

So, I decided to mosey on over to the Interwebs and find a list of people with the highest IQ ever measured, and lo and behold I couldn’t find one! So for the sake of future searchers, I compiled the following information. Enjoy.
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Today’s post is unfortunately a sad one. We lost a very close family member this weekend to a long battle with a number of ailments including Cancer. It was one of those situations where our loved one was taken decades before her time, but at least it was not something that just occurred suddenly.

It’s been a very sad weekend, but at the same time one that reminds me how precious life is. I also came to the personal realization that grief is for the living, not the dead. We have to continue on through this world forever missing a part of ourselves that can never be refilled.

This weekend also reminded me of a commitment I made some time ago to help Stanford University’s Folding@Home project which researches fundamental causes of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes. Cancer and Parkinson’s have both impacted my family and I believe that with enough emphasis we can cure these crippling diseases.

And you can help Stanford’s research by simply running a tiny piece of software on your computer that only uses the spare cycles when you don’t need them.
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You know, I don’t think I could be any more disappointed in Google than I am today.

And that is a shame because I’m normally a big fan. I mean, just look… I’ve got an entire category dedicated to Google Tools with 50 posts in it! But the problem is, today Google decided to penalize a whole boatload of sites for some reason or another, and in the process they dropped OMB from a PR7 to PR5. And just in the last few weeks it had already moved from a PR8 to PR7.

I just don’t understand this at all. I know Matt Cutts, and have spoken with him and we’ve e-mailed one another several times on the topic of Google PageRank, and even I just have no idea why in the hell this happened.
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We often hear about how the US is such a consumption oriented country. We’ve got the fattest people, we pollute the most, we’re spoiled… yeah, yeah, whatever.

But here is an interesting way to look at the economic impact the US plays on the global economy. You see, comparing the Gross Domestic Product of another nation, say… Canada, to the US is just silly. In fact, the entire output of Canada is roughly equal to just the state of Texas.
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Ok, I know this post sounds sensational, but its not. It’s literal.

I bought a case of LaCroix flavored sparkling water either at Costco or Kroger, I can’t remember which. All it is, is lightly flavored sparkling water and I thought perhaps it might be a more healthy alternative to all of the Coke I drink.

Well, I was wrong. You see, it’s only an “alternative” if you can actually drink it. But I thought this stuff was disgusting! Instead of just throwing it out, I thought I’d give it to my dogs as a treat. But even that didn’t work! One of my dogs drank a little of it, then stopped. The other one took one little taste and then refused to drink another drop!

I’m not kidding, I can’t even get my dog to drink it! And here is the photographic proof. (Click on the photo to see her actually running away from it!)
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Just a strange little thing I had to share.

Last night I distinctly remember dreaming about bed bugs. But not in bed. I was working on my computer in my office and all of a sudden I started finding the damn little insects on my keyboard… my monitor… and I don’t know where else. I remember being really annoyed and having a can of pest spray.

Well, that’s about it. But I guess I must have taken the research on that Bed Bugs article a little too far, and now I can’t get them out of my head!

Lately I’ve been getting increasingly more angry whenever I visit either Costco or Sams Club. I buy a LOT of crap at these places and I’ve got the top membership levels, so why is it that they always want to see my receipt before I leave the damn building?

I mean, let’s face it. I just waited in some horrendous line, they don’t even bag your stuff up for you, and then 50 feet from the checkout they want me to stand in another line and then reproduce my receipt to allow some lackey to glance at it, glance at my cart and draw a line on it with a marker? What the hell is up with that!?!
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Well, a little over a week ago I received my own personal invitation from Hugh Hefner to join the exclusive society of the Playboy Passport club. Ok, it was a form letter, and Hef probably hasn’t even heard my name yet. But the invite does have his signature on it.

What is Passport you may ask? Well, according to Playboy:

Playboy Passport is the elite members-only concierge service dedicated to providing its members exclusive access to the best in dining, nightlife, travel, and special events.

It’s also limited to 1,000 people worldwide. Forever.
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Sorry I’ve been pretty vacant for the last few days, but on Monday evening I got a call that my brother and his fiance were in a terrible car wreck down in Houston. My wife packed my stuff in about 20 minutes while I prepared and then headed out for the 4 hour drive.

It turns out that a woman ran a red light and plowed into the side of my brother’s Toyota 4Runner as he was crossing the intersection. She hit his SUV on the side in the rear, causing the vehicle to spin and then roll multiple times. The police officer later informed us that she admitted she was talking on her cell phone and not paying attention.
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I’ve been giving a great deal of thought to a fairly recent philosophical issue that the Blogosphere has yet to adequately address. Namely, what is the root purpose of allowing author links from commenters - especially given the rising tide of Comment Spam?

In this post I will attempt to enumerate the reasons, causality and consequences to justify the argument that the Blogging community needs to unite under a common philosophy regarding the use of links and author names in comments. I will also suggest an introductory framework to deal with the issue, most notably the institution of Terms of Use for all Blogs.

I believe it is important to focus on this problem quickly since the unethical, and possibly illegal, acts of sites like BuyBlogComments.com loom on the horizon.
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