Today’s story, Realty Bites, should not be confused with the similarly named technology column, Reality Bytes. My progress on the end-0f-quarter long story has stalled a bit, due to minor illnesses and a toddler who hasn’t been going to bed on time.  Hoping to be finished by next Friday! Realty Bites Mark Salas sighed as [...]

Today, we welcome another member to the staff of The Soap Boxers.  The Crunchy Conservative is a longtime personal friend of Editor-in-Chief Kosmo.  She will be writing conservative articles for the Political Observers feature. Hello loyal readers of The Soap Boxers. You may be wondering about my name, The Crunchy Conservative. Let me tell you [...]

Do you own a USB key? Have you ever emailed a file to yourself? Ever deal with the frustration of going to access a file and then realizing it’s on another computer? Those days can now be left behind. I bring to you Dropbox. Dropbox is a tool I have used for quite some time [...]

I have a guest article on Life, Laughs, and Lemmings. Hop over and read the article (about my growth as a fiction writer) and take a look at the rest of Sami’s site while you’re there.

No, this won’t be a story about the hoops that teams from “Non-BCS” conferences must jump through in order to gain entry into the BCS games.  While I dislike this inequity – particularly now that computer analysis allows us much greater insight into strength of schedule than in decades past – but this is an [...]

The Heene Hoax On Thursday, much of the country was transfixed on a weather balloon floating across the Colorado sky.  A six year old boy had apparently climbed into a box that was attached to the balloon and untethered the balloon, allowing it to float at heights of up to 7000 feet.  Authorities were alerted, [...]

The final chapter was finally written in my saga with HSBC. On Friday night, I made  a quick trip to get some over-the-counter medications at the drug store and some groceries at the grocery store.  My HSBC card was declined at both places.  (Why did I try at the second place after it was declined [...]

The day had finally arrived for Andrew McCormick.  Hours earlier, the sponsor of baseball’s All-Star game had officially announced what had been long rumored – they would be giving away free tickets, accommodations, and travel for ten lucky winners. Andrew sent off an email that would reach millions of people across the country. Dear Kosmopolitan [...]

In the United States, there are many endangered and threatened animals which the public knows much about. The Gray Wolf, Grizzly Bear, Black Footed Ferret, and so forth. All of these animals fall into the “charismatic megafauna” title: big, furry animals that look good on a postcard. Unfortunately, there are constant battles being fought for [...]

We are happy to announce the debut of a new feature, The Political Observers. Writers from each side of the political spectrum will share their views in the column, which will appear on Thursdays. Zarberg kicks it off today. Health care seems to be the dominant story on the news these days, and for very [...]