The biggest problem with working at a treadmill desk: the compulsion to announce constantly that you are working at a treadmill desk.

You have to simply love writing, and you have to remind yourself often that you love it.

I think of myself as something of a connoisseur of procrastination, creative and dogged in my approach to not getting things done.

To my great surprise, Twitter is not housed in a silver pod that orbits Earth at supersonic speeds, vacuuming up and then dispersing digital bits of worldwide chitchat; it's in a big, bland office building in downtown San Francisco, near a bowling alley and an Old Navy.

I'm much more willing to buy a novel electronically by someone I don't know. Because if halfway through I think, I don't really like this, I can just stop. I can't throw books out, even if I think they're crummy. I feel like I've got to give it to the library. I've got to loan it to somebody, or I keep it on my shelf. It's like a plant.

When I heard about the Microsoft Kinect, though, I felt an urgency rising in me. A game you played without touching any machinery? A chance to wave your hands around, Minority-Report style, and move things around on a screen? This sounded like almost too much fun, with gadget-y pizzazz that sounded astonishing.

We're fascinated by animals because it's almost like having Martians living among us. We can see some familiarity in them, but they're entirely different creatures.