So I’m playing a quick game of virtual tennis tonight on Wii Sports. I’ve worked my way up to pro over the past few weeks, so the opponents that the computer creates for me are by now very skilled.

The eighth and final list.

The seventh list.

The sixth list.

The fifth list.

Here’s a great link to go with my review of Stumbling on Happiness, by Wired contributor Lore Sjöberg.

The fourth list.

The third list.

The second list.

The first list.

In 1988, a little more than halfway through college, I was obliged to take a course called “Signals and Systems”, alias ECE 340. The ECE stands for Electrical and Computer Engineering and is pronounced “Eeseeyee”. This was an unhappy time for me. It was responsible for one of my two D grades in college and the only reason I didn’t drop it was because I couldn’t; it was a requirement. About halfway through the course something in me snapped, and I began to anonymously write and post snarky top ten lists about the class. This was before the World Wide Web, before the term “blog” was even coined, so by “posting” I mean printing the list out and physically taping it to the classroom door before everyone else arrived.

A funny strip from the webcomic “Overcompensating”, where the God of the Internet shows up. I think he’s got her just about right.

A few years ago I read about this study where researchers figured out how much a rhesus monkey would “pay” to look at various members of their group, where “payment” was accomplished by allowing them to forgo a sip of juice in exchange for the look. Not too surprisingly, the male monkeys paid to see the backsides of female monkeys, explaining most of the content of the Internet. A little more surprisingly, they also paid to see the high-ranking members of their group (and in contrast, had to be paid to look at the low-ranking ones). This phenomenon explains the entire business model of People, Us, the E! channel, and so on.

I finally have a new word to help explain the emotional impact of what happens when my various cybernetic prostheses stop working: an e-stroke. Say it with me.

OK, class, here’s your homework. You need to read Inside the Monkeysphere by David Wong, so I can discuss it in some future blog posts. (Warning to my gentler readers: Salty language within.)