Congratulations to Vladimir Kramnik who today won the World Chess Championship, becoming the first unified world chess champion since 1993 when Kasparov left FIDE. Kramnik’s next opponent will be Deep Fritz 10, a German chess program, in a “Man versus Machine” match beginning November 25th. Good luck, Mr. Kramnik!

The last of the United States Navy’s F-14 Tomcats will be officially retired from active service today in a fitting ceremony at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Their flight service ended yesterday at about 3:30pm local time when the last F-14 landed at Oceana.
The Navy’s F-14 Tomcats have been replaced […]

Nobody’s asked me yet, but here’s my definition of a planet:
A spherical body orbiting a body of stellar or greater mass, with sufficient mass to prevent any stable, coplanar, non-resonant orbit with a period between 2/3 and 3/2 of its own period.
Point by point:

A spherical body - eliminates black holes, stellar rings and the like.
orbiting […]

A friend and I talked today about the sheer number of alternative realities represented on the Web, and he commented that Freedom of Speech might have been taken too far. He was joking, but I took the opportunity to vehemently disagree.
I believe that it is CRITICAL to the continued advancement of human […]

British thespian Paul Bettany plays Silas, an “albino monk assassin,” in the new film The da Vinci Code.
Am I the only one who reads the phrase “albino monk assassin” and wonders whether it’s an albino monk who kills people, or a person who kills albino monks? If it’s the latter, he’s gotta be the […]

I finally upgraded my ancient and somewhat flaky CTX monitor. Its replacement is an Acer AL1916, 19″ LCD, which was a steal for $189 — $157 after tax and rebate. (If you haven’t been to slickdeals.net, go now.)
A friend at work just bought an EVGA nVidia 6200 VGA+DVI video card to run two […]

Proof that country music fans have class
The following quote appeared in a story released yesterday by the New York Times and the Associated Press. It refers to the Uptown Wal-Mart in New Orleans, opened a year ago and recently demolished by post-Katrina looting.
“They took everything — all the electronics, the food, the bikes,” said […]

Our prayers and support are with those who are struggling to survive, recover and rebuild in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. God bless.

Congratulations to NASA and the crew of the Space Shuttle Discovery on this morning’s successful launch of the first manned U.S. space mission since the loss of Columbia. Godspeed, guys.

Today the news media are filled with stories that the supposed mastermind of the 7/7 London bombings has been captured in Egypt. This is really great news, and I congratulate those responsible for his apprehension.
What I haven’t seen, however, is that the suspect, Egyptian biochemist Magdy Mahmoud Mostapha al-Nashar (formerly of the University of […]

Please pray for our brothers in arms in the United Kingdom, where the War on Terror has opened another front.

Born in Meridian, Mississippi on July 1st, 1927, Bryant Winfield Culberson Dunn served with the U.S. Navy in the Pacific Theater during World War II, then returned to graduate from the University of Mississippi with a B.B.A. in 1950, and from the University of Tennessee Medical Units in Memphis with a D.D.S. in 1955.
Dunn started […]

Father’s day means quite a lot to me these days. My son Jackson has made the last two extremely special, allowing me to finally see the day from the perspective of the honoree. But the last three have also been special for another reason.
I nearly lost my Dad in January 2003 to a […]

Yale Professor David Gelernter has written another wonderful commentary that everyone should read and every parent should put into practice.

I don’t know what could be more ironic than PETA employees getting arrested for animal cruelty. Perhaps this sad story will force more people to see the hypocrisy of this terrorist-supporting, anti-human organization. Visit petakillsanimals.com (or hundreds of other sites) for more information.
Question: Since PETA asserts that the lives of animals and […]

Debra Burlingame is the sister of Captain Charles F. “Chic” Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77 which was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon on September 11. She now serves on the Board of Directors of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation.
Until I read Ms. Burlingame’s startling editorial, I was […]

Ken Tipton is a C-list actor who now claims that he was harrassed by Christians back in the 80’s for carrying The Last Temptation of Christ in his video store. Now he’s made a movie called Heart of the Beholder, supposedly based on his story, that casts a boycott of his stores as a […]

We’ve waited for weeks. We didn’t know what day it would arrive, but we knew it was coming. And now, the thing we never thought would happen has happened. Blue Bell Ice Cream is available in Middle Tennessee! The pride of Brenham, Texas is now being shipped from a brand-new $1.5 […]

A good friend told me yesterday that his wife was interested in a new “anti-aging” pill called Protandim. Turns out Protandim was featured prominently on the ABC News show Primetime Live on Thursday night, and of course I’d missed it. He asked if I knew anything about it and I confessed […]

Sounds like a fake Saturday Night Live commercial, doesn’t it? But no, it’s Rock Swings, the latest project from legendary singer and songwriter Paul Anka. I got an advance listen this morning (my company encompasses the Verve label) and it’s absolutely amazing. You have to hear Paul Anka perform these songs to […]