After eight years of constantly being startled, our cat Megatron died two days before Christmas. I’ve loved animals all my life and have had dozens of pets over the years, but I spent more time with Megatron than any of them. I worked from home for six of her eight years and she spent anywhere […]
December 16, 2013
In a study sponsored by your parents, scientists have revealed kids today can’t run as fast or as far as their parents. I didn’t need a study to tell me that. My children’s tear-streaked, dust-covered faces way back there in the distance tell all. As far as I understand, this study considers my generation to […]
November 1, 2013
When I was a kid things were tough–so much tougher than the kids today have it. The toughest part for my generation was that it was so hard to find anybody to complain to about how tough things were. The kids today can whine once on Facebook and immediately reach hundreds of people. But when […]
October 11, 2013
My twelve-year-old son Optimist Prime has always prided himself on never following the crowd and never doing something just because the popular kids say it’s cool. It has me kind of worried. The doctors tell us he should have outgrown his idealism by now. His mother and I are having a hard time making him […]
September 30, 2013
They say ‘success breeds envy,’ and I spend a lot of time wondering: If I’m as successful as I think, why aren’t more people envious of me? And when I say ‘why aren’t more people envious of me?’ I could just as easily write, ‘why aren’t any people envious of me?’ And why aren’t more […]
August 22, 2013
When you’re just a kid you look at all the life ahead of you as a series of milestones: I can’t wait to be a teenager. I can’t wait to get my driver’s license. I can’t wait to get a fake driver’s license. I can’t wait to have sex for the first time. I can’t […]
July 25, 2013
They say money can’t buy happiness, but I’m willing to give it a try. And how do scientists even know whether money can buy happiness without conducting empirical research on a subject, possibly someone like myself who volunteers to be given a million dollars a year for the rest of his life? I’d do it. […]
July 19, 2013
A recent study confirmed what our gut was already telling us: Baseball is pretty boring. A Wall Street Journal study estimates the typical 3-hour game contains more than two and a half hours of waiting and only 17 minutes and 58 seconds of actual action. This means 90% of a baseball game is spent standing […]
July 16, 2013
This week, author J.K. Rowling revealed she had written a detective novel, Cuckoo’s Calling, under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. For those of you unfamiliar with J.K. Rowling, some might say she is best known as the author of the book The Casual Vacancy. Although many more might say she’s even better known as the author […]
July 3, 2013
Sometimes being a genius is hard. For example, one of the hardest things about being a genius is getting people to understand that a genius’ time is better spent solving the world’s problems than explaining to the people who administer the genius tests that their evaluation system is too primitive to understand your genius. But […]
June 5, 2013
When I look back on my life, I never really cared about fame or money. All I really wanted was to be loved. Loved by someone with a lot of fame and money. And if I became famous and rich as a result of being loved by that someone, I guess I would accept those […]
January 7, 2014
86