Ryan and Debi & Toren

Category: other

  • National Youth Leadership Forum-Engineering & Rice Elite Tech Camp

    National Youth Leadership Forum-Engineering & Rice Elite Tech Camp

    I posted previously about National Youth Leadership Forum (NYLF) and its extremely expensive summer camps. In that post, I detailed what the camps included and that, from my perspective as a college professor, the camps did not seem worth the money involved. Of course, I cannot call these camps “scams” because you are getting something…

  • PVC paintball gun holder

    PVC paintball gun holder

    I play paintball frequently enough that I finally broke down and made myself a paintball gun holder. Is it a requirement for paintball? Of course not! Is it a convenient place to put your gun between games while you fill the hopper and work on it? Yes! I initially tried a different design but didn’t…

  • Richard Bartlett’s claimed COVID-19 cure – A Skeptical Response

    A family member sent me this video interviewing Richard Bartlett, MD, a family practice doctor in Odessa, TX. In the video, Dr. Bartlett claims to have found the cure for COVID-19 – an inhaled steroid, Budesonide. Here is my response to my family member: TL:DR version: This guy’s claims are not credible and his proposed…

  • A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant

    On December 17th, Debi and I (along with two friends) went to the American Stage Theatre Company’s presentation of A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant. As someone who studies religion for his job, is fascinated by religion, and lives near Clearwater, FL, one of the centers of Scientology, I had high hopes.  Those hopes…

  • What is the rhinoceros from the movie “Ice Age”?

    While visiting with my friend Mark and his wife and kids in Arizona, one of his kids, Noah, was asking me various questions about animals. One of the questions he asked was whether or not I could show him a picture of the rhinoceros from the Ice Age movie. He was talking about this rhinoceros:…

  • sad, sad, sad

    What has the world come to? I saw this story in the local paper today and it made me want to cry and kill the perpetrators at the same time. Basically a guy who is a bit slow but who is an avid walker in his neighborhood was jumped by a couple of young thugs…

  • vegetarianism and the environment?

    Here’s an interesting news item I rediscovered in the NYtimes today: raising animals for meat releases more CO2 into the atmosphere than does the entire travel industry combined. This is based on research conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. I’m sure some of my regular readers will take issue with…