Sunshine

Benefits of walking on sunshine:

• Knowledge that you love me.
• Anticipation of your arrival.
• Pleasure at visiting mailbox expecting letters.
• It feels good.

Drawbacks of walking on sunshine:

• Lacerations and occasionally bleeding from walking barefoot to establish necessary skin to sunshine contact.
• First-degree burns from contact with asphalt, desert sand, etc.
• Callouses.
• Eclipses.

Air

Benefits of walking on air:

• Sweet, sweet ecstasy.
• Feeling exotic.
• Visiting utopia.
• Ability to go higher, deeper, and harder, sometimes all at once.

Drawbacks of walking on air:

• Crying angels flood earth with their tears.
• Incur wrath of heaven.
• Requires jetpack.

The Moon

Benefits of walking on the moon:

• Taking giant steps.
• Apparent immortality at the price of eternal peregrination.
• Living with you.
• Soundless footfalls.

Drawbacks of walking on the moon:

• Concerns about breaking legs.
• Oxygen deprivation.
• Low pressure causes blood to boil.
• High potential of asphyxiation in crater full of moon dust.

I was working on a short article about the history of unit blocks, a mainstay of preschool, and wrote the following, which I then discarded as too off topic:

But it was too delicious to not post.

How geeky am I? Lynn and I went to see Silver Linings Playbook last weekend. I'd heard it was good, quirky, and raw at times. The first 15 minutes I was concerned that I might hate it. But then it all snapped together when Jennifer Lawrence appears. She and Bradley Cooper have great chemistry, and the film is full of both tropes (meet cute-ish, etc.) and anti-tropes (some very raw and honest moments in which truth is being spoken).

But the thing I found most amusing is that as the movie progressed, I was more and more confident that it was shot in 2008 and left in the can. The iPod generations shown and a house-wide iPod drop-in system that Cooper's friend installs. Lawrence's white MacBook and iPod speaker dock of that era. Nobody has an iPhone (which would have been mostly outside the socioeconomic and technical interests of the

At this moment, I am the reigning Jeopardy! champion! That may change, but I can't tell you if and when. For now, I am the champeeeennnn! And I get two extra days since it's the weekend.I wrote about my studying prep for The Economist, the overall contestant experience at BoingBoing, and recorded a podcast with The Incomparable about being on the show. Watch Monday! See what happens.

What is your mother's maiden name? Ekborg-Millfloss.What is the name of your first pet? James Tiberius Bunny. What was the name of the first street on which you lived? Baltic Avenue. What is your favorite movie? In-flight safety demonstration video on Virgin America. Which Stooge do you most closely resemble? Dead Shemp. How many fingers am I holding up? 1. Are you flipping me off? You see a tortoise lying on its back. What do you do? Make soup. What's a sin, Alex? What you're doing to Ludwig B! How many roads must a man walk down? 42. How many lights do you see? THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS. What is the average airspeed of a swallow? African or European? When did you stop beating your wife? N/A What is mind? {cuts off student's finger} What is your mother's maiden name? My mother? Let me tell you about my

A friend and I stopped at a Pinkberry for frozen yogurt while I was in D.C. The notion there is that you pretend you're eating something healthy (yogurt) and then put a million toppings on to make it horrifying. (Fresh fruit is also an option.)

I looked at the few basic options, and as a fan of salted caramel ice cream, figured I'd just get a plain salted caramel.

Me: "I'll have a salted caramel."

Person behind counter: "Do you want salt on that?"

"No. Wait. I want the salted caramel."

"Right. Do you want salt on that?"

"It doesn't come with salt?"

"No."

"But it's called salted caramel. Why doesn't it have salt on it?"

"Some of our customers don't like salt."

"But it's called…ok. Yes, I'd like salt please."

She picks up a strange plunger instrument and depresses it several times on top of the froz-gurt.

I posted on Twitter the 2nd of 3 steps in cooking an artichoke from a little sticker in a container of artichokes I had purchased from Trader Joe's as a little joke, because of an obvious error. My friends on Twitter identified another, and I found two more.

Can you find them all? . . . . .

• A knife is shown, not scissors. (A knife is the right tool; it's far easier to use and much safer.)
• Artichokes are flower buds, and the "leaves" surrounding them are properly called bracts (but definitely not petals, which are part of blooming flowers).
• The knife, as shown, could easily cut fingers underneath. (Okay, that's borderline. But it's not the right way to hold that flower bud safely.)
• The "petals" do not have one collective "tip": it should be "tips of petals [bracts]."

Who knew so much could go so wrong so briefly?

Adapted from a short non-fiction book.

Scene: Richard Stallman, dressed in corduroys, a long-sleeved shirt, and a hat, reclines on a lounge on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean.

Waiter: Sir, may I get you a drink?
Stallman: Many people assume that because I am traveling, I am having a vacation.
Waiter: Sir, this is a resort. You are on vacation.
Stallman: The fact is, I have no vacations.
Waiter: As you wish. Sir, would you like—
Stallman: It is very important for me to be able to transfer email between my laptop and the net, so I can do my ordinary work.
Waiter: There is complimentary high-speed Wi-Fi service that is included in the cost of your stay.
Stallman: If the network requires a proxy for SSH, I probably can't use it at all.
Waiter: Sir, I am not a technical expert, but I could get the front desk—

A work in progress.I am regularly asked to speak at events as far away as Hong Kong and Spokane. Because I live on only the money given to me by strangers in subways, I ask that you read the following before arranging for me to give a talk.

• My ideas are highly unpopular. So unpopular that I am asked to speak thousands of times a year. A security force of no fewer than ten (10) off-duty police or paramilitary officers is required at all times from when I arrive until you kick me out of your home.
• Hotels sometimes have many floors. This is contrary to the egalitarianism and flatness I have built my life around. I would like to stay in someone's home, preferably on the lower portion of a bunk bed. I sleep from midnight to noon and may not be interrupted in my sleep.
• On rising,