All of which raises the question – your task, burden, privilege, call it what you like – a question which men and women, great and not-so of every color, creed and sexual persuasion have asked since they first had the language to do so, and probably before: Does Anything I Do Matter?

The urge to move is natural and understandable. As will be the case throughout your life, no matter how long or brief, the choice is, in the end, yours. Simply bear in mind that most every choice will have consequences, and in this instance those consequences would likely be quite grave.

Singularity theory is something that I do believe will come to pass, sooner or later, although whether or not in our lifetime I don't know, and I'm not sitting around waiting for my father to be resurrected. Readers probably have the impression from the book that I'm a lot more a of a techno kook than I actually am. It became a convenient fulcrum in the story, sort of a kaleidoscope through which to address religious and spiritual questions.

Jay Wexler is my kind of writer--a weird one, and a wry one, and one who isnt afraid to act silly in a sort of bait-and-switch that, to the readers surprise, moves him as much as it makes him laugh. Like all the best comedians, Wexler is clearly nursing a heart that the world broke a long time ago. Ed Tuttle is a book that cant decide what it wants to be when it grows up, but as with most cases of arrested development, theres something very serious going on behind all the antics. Plus, there are pictures.

Regardless of whether you believe in the Singularity, you will most likely experience the benefits of it. But we don't really know.

Partying means drinking. It also means playing records by Lou Reed and Chicago, which I thought was a city but is also a band it turns out.

I bailed out on social media for a while, and in short order I found I was able to sit down and read a book again. For the first time in a couple years I could read more than three pages without my brain wandering off into the ether. I drew a direct causal line between all this sort of ratta-tat-tat staccato stimulation that we get from the Internet and my growing inability to sit down and read anything that was longer than 500 words. But for me it came back because those synapses were already latent in my brain.