I started this page before I began my blog. Some of these are good essays, but any future essays will appear on the blog, not here.

Collections:

Jeff's Lunchbreak (my blog)
The blog is where I post all new writings. They range from well thought out and researched essays, to reactions to current events, to accounts of personal experiences, to just general ranting.

My Soapbox
Essays which are more opinionated than the ones on this page, and which tend to cover more controversial topics.

Religious Essays
A collection of religiously themed essays that describe my position.

Factoids Debunked & Verified
An examination of lists of factoids, debunking most, & veryfing a few.


Essays:

Autogyros
This is a paper I wrote for one of my classes. It explains how autogyros work, gives a brief history of the machine, attempts to explain why they were not as successful as other aircraft, and describes where autogyros stand today.

Confidence in Historical Knowledge
An explanation of why we can be sure about things that happened long ago.

National Security vs. Personal Freedom
This is an essay I wrote concerning the balance between personal freedom and public safety. Its focus is mainly on aviation.

Musings on the Structure of the Universe
This is some thought I gave a while ago to the actual make-up of the universe. At the time, I thought that it might have been true, but now I'm almost positive that it is not true. Even so, it makes for interesting reading.

Musings on Existence
This is a little bit of thought on existence and our place in the universe. It's more abstract than "Musings on the Structure of the Universe", and also more interesting in my opinion.

Musings on the Soul
This is a short e-mail correspondence between a few of my friends and me discussing the existence of the soul. My one friend actually studied philosophy, so at least his arguments are valid. All in all, I think this is very interesting reading.

How to Interpret the Bible
Here is an essay of my own investigation into what is the correct interpretation of the Bible - inerrant, literal, figurative, allegorical, or none of the above. I wrote it because of the increase in religious fundamentalism in this country, and the related evolution vs. creationism debate.

Musings on Being Famous
This is a short essay I wrote about why I've given up on becoming famous. The main theme is that no matter how famous one becomes, they're still just a "flash in the pan" in the grand scheme of things. They probably won't be remembered 1000 years from now, and even if they are, the memory will be little more than a name and some vague idea of what they did to become famous.

Why I Don't Like the Metric System
Or more properly- why I don't think it's inherently better than the standard system. This is really only a slightly organized rant about why I don't think the U.S. should be obligated to switch to the metric system, but probably will in the end.

My Thoughts
This page started as a collection of random thoughts I came up with when I had nothing better to do. However, I only wrote to it one day, so it's basically a page explaining my opinions on web page design.