Walking Men Worldwide. Fun! (h/t Kottke, and he’s right about Warsaw.)

Who do you love? I’ll tell you who I love: an sf geek who uses Dune to explain economics. Quote: “But the premise of the novel is that there’s this planet, Arrakis, which is the sole source of something called spice, which is essential to the galactic economy. And so everything relies upon it. And so basically Arrakis is the Strait of Hormuz with giant sandworms.” (Paul Krugman)

Interesting conversation. Sounds like an interesting book, too.

One in seven. Think about that for a minute. (Fix the News)

I do the NYT Spelling Bee every morning. One of the best things about it is the community you find when you click on Community and then the comments graphic. It’s a whole thing, with people commenting from all over the world. It’s led by Steve from New York, a guy who evidently never sleeps. I wake up to the Bee and he’s there before me every morning with two sets of clues to all the words, hard and easy. There’s someone from Buryatia and someone else from Chennai who list clues by the first three letters, and another from Colorado who lists clues with the first two letters and the last with asterisks in between. But the clues aren’t all and not even the most important thing. People write poems to the Bee and about the Bee and to that day’s Bee. People thank the community for getting them through personal trauma and others yell at Sam for disallowing perfectly legitimate words like “milt.” (I mean really.) I’m with Tim from Salem, though, who wrote “I’m having so much trouble finding words of more than four letters, that I’m muttering yet more four letter words.” Comrade!

Quote for the day

“Where do you think big words come from?”
“People with big brains?” –Akeelah and the Bee

Outro…

Chatter Lagniappe Sunday annie lowery dune Paul Krugman solar-powered schools Spelling Bee Walking Men Worldwide