• ITEM: What does one trillion dollars look like?
• ITEM: I cannot visit New York right now, but reading a first-hand account of a subway adventure helps dull that pain. (Once again, yay for blogs.)
• ITEM: Obama’s gift to Prime Minister Brown ruined by DVD region encoding.
• ITEM: “Brain decline” begins at age 27, sez a University of Virginia study.
• ITEM: Ray Ratto reminds us the present owner of the Oakland Athletics is a scoundrel.
• ITEM: If you are a “content person” or a “Web 2.0 person” you have already read it; now everybody who loves newspapers needs to read it, too: Clay Shirky’s “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable”
• ITEM: The wise man was wise indeed: Frankincense relieves anxiety and depression.
• ITEM: Children with older fathers have lower IQs (and some health risks too). (And then again, IQ tests are shite.)

A typed note that Wallace left in his papers laid out the novel’s idea: “Bliss — a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious — lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.”