There are two things that should never be brought up on a first date: politics and religion. So writing an essay on religion for a Political Science class is definitely not first-date material. Anyhoo, this essay has two primary goals: discussing what the Constitution establishes about religion in America, and then my views on religion in America, specifically relating to the separation between church and state. It is common belief that the Constitution establishes some "separation of chu...

Fore-Warning: As you read this, keep in mind that this is coming from a former Catholic/Christian who has now turned to Atheism. Over the past 7 months, I've been living with a roommate at the University of Michigan who the school paired me with. And for the most part, we've been great friends the whole time. I've always been supportive of him, giving advice, etc., in fact, I occassionally felt like an older brother to him. From the get-go, he has claimed to be heavily religious, listening ...

Having just received Ninja Gaiden (I'll post an in-depth review in a couple days) yesterday, I was quite ecstatic to be playing it all night (I played the game for about 7 to 8 hours straight, and enjoyed each and every nanosecond of it) on my good 'ol Xbox. I bought my Xbox the month it come out a few years ago, and have gotten quite a lot of play out of it. However, this morning when I booted it up to play some more Ninja Gaiden before heading off to math, I discovered, much to my dismay, ...

Over the last 2 weeks, I've noticed an increasingly noticable lack of sleep in my life. A month ago, I was able to go to bed at midnight and wake up at 7am or 8am (depending what day it is) without a single hitch. Now, I'm lucky if I can get to bed by 4am, and even more lucky if I can get more than 3-4 hours of sleep at night, and then later in the day, I'll probably take a nap for an hour or two. For some reason, I just don't think this is too healthy, but the little green bunnies that follow...

This post was originally going to be about people's roles in today's society, and how I feel that there are two types of friends: those motivated by their own self-interest, and those motivated by the interests of others (obviously the latter make better friends). Half-way through writing it, I realized it was boring, so now I'm just going to discuss my odd method of thinking. Why? Hell if I know. Due to the fact that I'm a major self-professed geek, most of my thinking tends to be very l...

Alright, as usual, I'm a bit late on reviewing the series but, hey, at least it's getting reviewed! So, anyway, I just finished watching the entire first season of Smallville (21 episodes, an hour long each, except for the first, which is 2 hours long... and I watched every one in a single weekend), which details the life of Clark Kent (otherwise known as Superman ) as a teenager trying to come to understand when and how to use his "super powers," while also trying to fit into the "nor...

So, instead of paying attention in my Physics lecture this morning, I got thinking about the size of various things, and how their signifiance varies so. A lot of people in today's society tend to believe that "size does matter," though, for fear of sounding shallow, many of those people would not admit it. However, as you may have guessed by the way this article has been worded thus far, these people would be wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong, and here's some proof to back-up that statement. ...

Alright, so my copy of Call of Duty finally arrived (I had been using a friend's copy and a keygen for the serial, so was unable to play online) last week, and, after a week of play, I think I've given the game a fair amount of gametime in order to review it properly. If you don't want to read my, sometimes needlessly, verbose review, just read this line: Call of Duty, whether it is played single-player or multiplayer, is one of the most amazing games to come along this century . Yes, it's ...

I just finished watching the HBO series Band of Brothers , which is, for the uninitiated, a series of 10 episodes (about one and a half to two hours long each, I believe) about the 506th Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, otherwise known as "Easy Company," during World War II. The series aired on HBO in 2001, but this was the first I've ever seen it; I've heard the name mentioned before, but had no idea what it was about, so I went into the 10-part "movie" without too much knowledge abo...

And, no, for once I'm not talking about the [many] joys of Darvocet or Vicodin but, rather, the game Painkiller . The demo, released earlier last week by Dreamcatcher, is downloadable all over the 'net (I, personally, downloaded it by using one of the torrents over at suprnova.org ). Now, you may be wondering, how did it stack up to the numerous other FPSs on the market right now? Well, to be honest, I think it's going to be one of those games where you either like it, or you hate it. It's f...

At this very moment, thousands upon thousands of players are waging war across hundreds of maps in order to achieve the ultimate goal: a high kill count and a low death count. There are numerous games players can choose from that will allow them to achieve this goal, whether it be through cunning strategy in games like Warcraft 3 , Rise of Nations , or Command and Conquer Generals . Or it could be through a more action-packed game such as Call of Duty , Enemy Territory (which...

MMORPG's have been the "hot thing" for the last few years. With games like Everquest, Asheron's Call, Dark Age of Camelot and the one that started the MMO* craze: Ultima Online. These are the "old" generation of MMORPG's though. The latest crop's "big name" MMORPGs consists of Final Fantasy XI, Star Wars Galaxies and Ragnarok Online (these are the "main three" of the current crop, in my mind). However, in many minds, my own included, these games lack the "huzzah!" necessary to make them actual...

So, yeah, I started playing Call of Duty at about noon yesterday; and go to the point that I stopped playing at the last time I tried to play a few months ago (I didn't get that far, but I lost my save game shortly there-after, and got pissed off). Once I got to the level I quit on the last time I played through, I realized I should really attenda t least ONE of my classes for the day, so I went to Math. Once I got home, I played Call of Duty from about 5pm-midnight. Without stoppin so much as...

Silent Storm is the world's spiritual successor to the Fallout series; I mean, c'mon, let's face facts: Fallout Tactics was a horrible excuse for a sequel. I mean, sure, it had Fallout's trademark combat, but, somehow, it made the combat engine *less* detailed then either Fallout 1 or Fallout 2. Silent Storm, on the other hand, has a combat system with so much depth that it will make your brain explode (it has the Fallout-style AP system too!). The only thing keeping Silent Storm from being ca...

Every now and then, we all get really tired of the standard Windows Classic and, for the XP users, Luna themes that come packed-in with Windows. Sure, you can customize the colors of the classic theme, and choose from three stock Luna colors. And if you work on your computer as much as I do, these themes, while designed to withstand the test of time, get old. They get old really fast. And, chances are, if you find a really nifty wallpaper, one of these four stock themes will completely clash wit...