Right, this whole medal-auctioning thing was sold to the public a couple weeks back as "Poor old Watson is broke because he's been a racist ass." But on $375K of retirement income, he can't be all that broke, even given New York housing prices.

That's right, there are after all only 10 kinds of people in this world (those who know binary and those who don't).

That really is out of line. For a month and situation such as you describe, it's hard to imagine it being much more than 500 kWh. It might be worth the $25 to get a Kill A Watt device (or similar) and test out your major appliances for a few days. Your fridge might have a bad motor or an out-of-control ice maker. Your A/C (or heat) might be set to something crazy when you're off at work. Sound systems, gaming systems, and cell signal repeaters can all suck up amazing amounts of power if left on 24/7. If you live anywhere semi-urban, it's worth checking outside to make sure you don't have a neighbor helping themselves. And then of course, like you said, check the closets for pot farms!

Yeah, I had to read the last sentence three times because I thought it said, "...even more impressive octopus-like farts."

Right. I suggest presenting at a conference, something peripherally related to the Ph.D. Or, if they won't let you present, just sign up for it, attend under your own name "Joe Blow Consulting". Print up business cards with your contact info and spend every break talking to new people and handing out cards. For $1500 or so and a couple of days of time, you'll find out who's hiring for what. If the field is small enough, you might even know them already, no matter how esoteric!

No kidding. He might not have been the Michael Jordan of baseball, but even the worst AA players are far better than 99% of all players out there at any level. Statistical odds are, if you grew up in the USA, the all-time best player from your high school team was not even good enough to play single-A ball. Making AAA or the Majors requires that same level of skill and dedication, plus near-superhuman genetic blessings allowing you to avoid major injuries and recover from minor ones before you get cut. Jordan got closer than most of us can dream about.

So they say! Although it is unclear why Geddy, Alex and Neil would be weighing in on this issue in the first place.

I read somewhere (um, citation needed) that yes, the CIA sometimes keeps clocks in a location visible from solitary confinement cells. And then, as one of the many ways of breaking people down and messing with their minds, they deliberately slow or speed the clocks for hours at a time. When the fluorescent lights are on 24/7, hard to judge whether the clock is wrong or if you're just losing your sanity. Sounds pretty effective to me.

Well, "you just looking at me" can't be selectively edited to remove appropriate context and uploaded to YouTube before I even get home that night, to live on forever searchable under my real name, should you decide to post that too.

Say I speak up with a well-reasoned opinion about Arizona's recently tanked gay discrimination bill (or "religious liberty" bill if you are on the other side of the fence, not that I'm drawing a moral equivalent). You remove all the well-reasoned beginning and end parts and only post the middle part where at some point I'm characterizing the crazies by saying "gays will give regular people filthy gay cooties by sitting at the same lunch counters". You get this onto Upworthy with headline "[My Location] [My Job Description] [My Name] Has Unbelievably Ignorant Opinions on Gays". There go my employment prospects in San Francisco, er I mean, [My Location].

If it's in your memory, you can quote me out of context while talking to others, at worst. I might even be able to defend myself. If you edit and post to YouTube, no such remedy.

Plus, where would you put the chess board?

No, it's an anarcho-syndicalist commune. They take it in turns to act as a sort of executive lead-bird of the flight.

+1 for introducing the term "co-irkers" to my permanent working vocabulary! :-)

Shit. I always mess up some mundane detail!

> Farmers understand you can't harvest a fish the same day you plant it.

Yep, you gotta be patient. I planted forty acres of fish years ago, and so far... bupkis!

This exactly, 100%. The youngsters don't believe me when I tell them about that revelatory experience of using Google for the first time and getting WAY more relevant results than all those clunky late-90s search engines. The only reason the complete switchover to Google didn't happen faster is we just couldn't believe at first how good it was by comparison.

And you know what? It's still really good. Not perfect, they'll probably get their lunch eaten by some clever startup one of these days. But right now still years ahead of anything else, including most sites' own search bars for their own content.