My New Treadmill Desk

A couple of years ago, I sent one of our Gelf writers to check in on a new fitness "trend" I had heard about: walking while working. Dr. James Levine, a researcher at the Mayo Clinic, had found that thin people generally expend more energy in the trivial everyday things than fat people (think fidgeting and wandering). He came up with a way to harness and apply that finding by creating the world's first treadmill desk, which was, basically, a slab of wood balanced over the arms of a slow-moving treadmill. By walking incredibly slowly while going about their jobs (around .7 mph), folks could expend up to 800 extra calories per day and thus theoretically lose up to a pound a week.

Since Sarah Arnquist's Gelf article came out (accompanied by Eric Lister's awesome drawing above), the practice hasn't changed much. There are a few more practitioners out there, but it's mainly confined to people who work from home or have lots of leeway at their jobs. Like the Segway, its silly appearance seems to have stifled its appeal.

But I work from home, and can try out silly-looking things whenever I damn well please. So behold (below) my first treadmill desk. I've used it for three whole days now, so I'm in no real position to describe its health benefits. But it was easy and cheap to build--I basically used this tutorial--and I can pretty much do everything work-wise that I was doing before. (Like write silly blog posts when should be editing.)

The Spider Solitaire Rabbit Hole

If you, like me, spend a far too significant part of your day moving around cards on your PC instead of working, you probably aren't too surprised when Slate's Josh Levin points out that the most popular computer game in the world is spider solitaire (a feat he compares to "living in a universe in which Pong were the most-popular title for PlayStation 3"). After a particularly well-played round, you may have even looked up spider solitaire records online (and found that you were wanting).

But I just experienced one of the weirder happenstances in my career as a minor-league procrastinator. Halfway through a recent game, the universe turned inwards in such a way that life as I knew came screeching to a halt. Check out the this screenshot, and let me know if you have any tips on how to proceed.

Why Do Sports Writers Hate Sports Bloggers?

My most recent interview in Gelf is with Michael Tunison, who was recently fired from his gig at the Washington Post for blogging for Kissing Suzy Kolber in his off time. Certainly KSK is silly and un-PC and raunchy, but no one would mistake Tunison the sports blogger for Tunison the WaPo writer, so the rush at the paper to get rid of him once he outed himself on KSK seems odd at best.



Then, though, I watched the famed sports writer Buzz Bissinger go apeshit on Deadspin's Will Leitch on Bob Costas Now, and I started to realize the actual hatred that many sportswriters seem to have for sports bloggers. Perhaps Bissinger explains it best here:

"Perhaps that's why I'm so heated and so angry. Because this guy, like it or not, is the future. I'm not the future."