I got into a long debate a couple of nights ago with a self-identified Catholic pro-lifer, Suzanne Fortin (@Roseblue), who has an answer for every question as to why same-sex marriage shouldn't be allowed. None of them rely precisely on legal precedent; rather, they seem to stem from a specific set of historical values, a reading of what "natural" means, and an insistence on a property that only a pair of men and women can share.

I spent hours engaged with this woman partly because I wanted to know exactly what people who maintain this line of reasoning are really espousing. Here's what I came away with.

She was game, almost so much that I thought she might be a troll, making up stuff to confuse those of us who support the notion of government not intruding on personal decisions about who we love and how our children are raised

By now, the truth is known. I'm a two-time wonder, not a potential Ken Jennings. Playing Jeopardy was a hoot. I came away with (in four months' time, when they cut the checks) over $30,000, subject to taxes. The money is all allotted already to household and family things, including a trip to Hawaii in the summer.But it was a memorable and once-in-a-lifetime chance to put my knowledge (and reflexes) to the test!

I'll be on "Jeopardy!" tonight! The episode was taped in August. I can't tell you how I did on this or any potential future episode. You'll have to watch and see. Check your local listings...

Don't read if you haven't seen the Doctor Who episode, Angels Take Manhattan, and plan to.[blank] [blank] [spoilers!] Rory Williams is the boy who died…and died…and died again! It's almost a "you killed Kenny" running joke in the show. So much so that the Silence makes a joke about it in The Wedding of River Song. I've tried to count his deaths in the "real" world and in imagined or faked alternatives, some of which were later collapsed.

• Mrs Poggit kills him in Amy's Choice (dream)
• The Doctor blows up the T.A.R.D.I.S. in Amy's Choice (dream)
• Shot by Restac, a Silurian in Cold Blood (real)
• Erased from universe in Cold Blood (more of an extension of being shot and killed)
• "Shot" by Canton in Day of the Moon (fake)
• Drowned and revived in The Curse of the Black Spot (real)
• Found as

As I've tweeted about, I followed the lead of my friend Lex Friedman and bought a TreadDesk treadmill a few weeks ago. I've walked about 40 miles on it in the month since I set it up, and am generally satisfied with how it works and the notion of writing or researching and walking at the same time. (I'm writing this while treading!) It takes getting used to, and I haven't figure out the perfect mix of standing, sitting, and walking, but I definitely feel weird now just sitting down. Most days, I mostly stand, and walk from 1 to 4 hours. Four miles seems to be about the maximum.

Somewhere in my tweeting, a marketing person from MBT (Masai Barefoot Technology) got in touch and offered me a pair of shoes to try in exchange for writing about it if I felt it was a good fit. There were

I previously tried to explain how I thought The Big Year went from a slapstick goofy film through, what must have been some reshoots and editing, into a sort of buddy movie. Since then, I saw the hit Bridesmaids, which features many actresses I loved before seeing the film or love having seen it.

It's a bromance movie for women about pals who suffer through mutual indignities and travails on the path to better friendship and enlightenment. I guess. I liked it. Melissa McCarthy is the absolute standout. Sometimes ridiculous, but quite remarkable. My theory on this film's mix of genuine dialog among friends, gross-out scenes, farce, and romance is that competing teams of writers produced scenes nearly independently of one another, and then the director stitched them together into a chronologically plausible narrative.

On its face, you have a vulnerable woman, Annie (Kristen Wiig), whose boyfriend left her and

I come not to bury Flash, but to praise it. And then bury it.

The news that broke last about Adobe killing the mobile version of Flash for smartphones and tablets filled me with excessive schadenfreude. Adobe has beaten the drum for years that Flash was an intertwined part of the Web, and to experience the full Internet, you needed devices that would run it. I didn't entirely agree, but I saw Adobe's point.

Most Flash I interact with using a desktop browser is advertising (so I use a selective Flash blocker in my browser) or video playback. Flash is also used for interactive items, like embedded document viewing, information graphics that either run automatically or allow you to change parameters, or games. I rarely use any of those, but I understand they're in wide use. The only time I felt deprived of Flash when using an iOS device was

Lynn and I saw The Big Year a couple of weeks ago, and I liked the film's heart quite a bit, even though it had a number of stupid moments, and the dialog could be atrocious. It was somehow satisfying, even though it didn't entirely hold together. Having the shape of a year for the film's structure gave it at least a sense of consistency.

The movie, in brief, focuses on three birders who compete (for no money, mind you) to catalog the most bird sightings (by eye or call) in a single year. One is the previous title holder; the other two are making their first attempts. Improbably, the gross outline of the story is true, based on Mark Obmascik's book of the same name, even down to the professions of the three birders and where they travel.

What I found odd about the movie was that it was

I'm four weeks into a six-week beginning meditation class taught by an experienced local hand, Rodney Smith, under the auspices of the Seattle Insight Meditation Society. He's a white guy who spent several years decades ago in Burma and Thailand as a monk. He worked for a long stretch in hospice care. He's an intriguing fellow, especially in that he openly says he never planned to teach, but his teachers insisted that it was part of the tradition in which he was practicing. He lays no claim to be a guru, and has only some big questions, no big answers.

I like the class quite a bit. He talks about dharma in a non-religious context, and largely helps us explore the notion of why we cannot be present and how to overcome that through meditation and thoughtful self-awareness. There's definitely a bit of psychoanalysis thrown in there, but given that

Last night, I'm sure I went to bed too late. I'd meditated earlier, as part of the discipline for the six-week course I'm taking, but in this second week of nightly meditation, I find I'm also engaged in micro-sleep. Working on overcoming that. But the micro-sleep surely kept me awake longer.

Around midnight, Lynn and I turned out the lights to go to sleep.I thought I was asleep fairly fast—within a few minutes. Lynn was asleep immediately. It is a marvelous trait, and one that runs in her father's side of the family, and intolerable to those of us who sometimes toss and turn.

As I was dousing the fires of consciousness, I was startled awake by a sound. I couldn't immediately place it, as I thought it had happened outside. But I heard no further noise, and decided it must have been Lynn shuffling in her sleep

Lynn and I were married "around Labor Day weekend" according to both our memories. Each year, we more or less fail to remember that it was Sept. 1, which should be easy enough, no? This year was no exception.

We were visiting my dad in Port Townsend, and had stopped at the grocery store to pick up some food for dinner. My dad and I went in while Lynn entertained the boys in the car. We mooched around the store, finding things that would work for the kids and us, and at one point passed a refrigerated wine case. Lynn had asked me to pick up some beer or wine, and I looked through the case, until my eye settled on a bottle of Argyle Brut, an Oregon winery's terrific sparkling wine. We'd sent a 1996 bottle to Lynn's brother and his wife on the news that they were engaged.