How was it that I’ve been on the internet all these years now, and never really noticed Neatorama until today? Where else can you learn vital information like, “How much heavier is your e-book reader after downloading a book?”

Using Einstein’s E=mc² formula, which states that energy and mass are directly related, Prof Kubiatowicz calculated that filling a 4GB Kindle to its storage limit would increase its weight by a billionth of a billionth of a gram, or 0.000000000000000001g.

That’s the basis for my new fitness regimen, right there.

This is supposed to be a beautiful weekend, so I guess I’d better make the most of it. Got some yard work I need to do, and I’m pretty sure there are fewer nice weekends left in 2011 that I care to contemplate. Ideally I should stay in bed again, to kill off this chest thing, but autumn dallies for no man.

Have a good one!

Tony’s son asked him if he or his brothers had ever “cheated death” without any embarrassment at the possibility that few people used that phrase. Tony reflects on this and the time he has seen death denied its claims.

It reminds me a time recently when I walked around the neighborhood with my daughters, pulling one or two in a wagon and following the others on their bicycles. One of the bikes had poor brakes, so I worried a little about the hills, but not enough. Even now if I dwell on it, I can work up my fear and self-condemnation, thinking of my daughter speeding down a hill, right in front of a truck, and crashing into the grass beyond. How could I be so naive and nonchalant? She couldn’t slow down on that hill, and if she’d crossed the street a second later, she would have hit the truck. That’s one of many ways I could convince myself that I’m a totally fool.

But the Lord has had mercy on me.

Here’s a personal letter from Richard Helms, who later become director of the CIA, to his three-year-old son, written on Hitler’s stationary.