I'm from the South, and people in the South (and elsewhere in America's heartland) really love their pickup trucks. I get it, they are big, powerful, utilitarian, and, in a word: manly. But I've just never felt the desire to own a truck. Truth be told, I've never even driven one. I drove mostly SUVs…
Editor's note: this is the second installment in a series on Game Theory. If you are unfamiliar with The Prisoner's Dilemma, it is recommended that you read the intro to the series before diving into this post. From an economic standpoint, militaries are a huge waste of money. Countries around the world spend significant portions…
If you haven't seen A Beautiful Mind, then you may think the term "Game Theory" sounds like some geeky over-interpretation of video game strategies, but it is in fact a complex mathematical discipline that has a wide-ranging array of real-life applications. While many adults might not think a "game" is a very serious term, in the…
One could argue it's everyone's goal in life to develop a set of skills or characteristics that you can take pride in, but these same positive traits can also be a weight on your shoulders. I recently watched an episode of Joe Rogan's podcast with a comedian named Owen Benjamin, and it is definitely worth…
On a recent trip to Banff National Park in Canada, my friends and I took a voyage to Moraine Lake, and this is what we found: Now, that's a pretty good view. It was arguably a better view than Lake Louise, which we saw shortly before: Lake Louise is the bigger and more famous lake…
As many people may know, I'm something of a tennis fan, and follow professional tennis fairly closely. Since I've been following pro tennis for the past decade or so, I've developed a decent repertoire of tennis trivia, which has been useful only for impressing my friend while we were watching the U.S. Open, and talking…
In case you are unfamiliar, the hot new trend amongst forward-thinking millennials is the notion of the "sharing economy", which is a loose term for a sort of Utopian society in which people do not own property, but instead basically "rent" everything. The concept of not owning property will probably seem absurd to older generations,…
It's a topic that has been played with by science fiction authors for quite some time now, and ever since the advent of artificial intelligence that came along with the first computers, the possibility that humans could one day be replaced by metal and silicon counterparts is becoming increasingly real. Now, could humans ever be…
I'm back! It's been awhile since a Deep Thoughts episode, but I made a push to get this posted just in time for America's birthday. I have some strong feelings regarding hot dogs and what condiments you can put on them. Also, Chicago is an overrated city that's too cold for humans.
If you dabble in photography, have you ever thought any of these things to yourself: "My aperture is wide open, but I still can't get an artsy blurry background, what gives?" "I'm shooting a landscape in low light and don't want to bump up my ISO, how much can I widen my aperture but still…