In have a theory about time, which may explain why it seems to pass ever more quickly as I age. The theory? On my fifth birthday I’d been alive for 261 weeks; fifty years later 2870 weeks had passed. Simply, as a percentage of my life which has passed, some 50 years ago a week was a big deal, and now I suspect my calculator will require scientific notation to express a week as a percentage of my life. Bottom line? It’s harder and harder to lift my backside out of a chair, and the weeks are flying by!!!

Joe Pinsker wrote The Psychology behind Costco’s Free Samples for The Atlantic on October 1. Truthfully, don’t you sometimes drop by the place just to see what morsels are being offered? I do, and I rarely leave without spending at least $50-75. (I know, I know, that’s chicken feed compared to you, and you, and you, one of whom is a relative!) P.S. I do the same at certain grocery stores, samples don’t count when it comes to counting calories, and I’d be much better off in every way if Congress banned samples!

Here’s a great piece by John Swansburg, The Self-Made Man, written for Slate and posted on September 29. If there’s one thing that drives me nutso, totally, it’s the guy—and it’s usually a man—who was born on third and counts that as a triple on his stats sheet. Mr. Swansburg explains how that myth affects our dialogue about what matters in America.

I ran across The Greatest Paper Map of the United States You’ll Ever See, written by Seth Stevenson for Slate way back in early January, 2012, because things get reposted on the Internet. I want this map! (In grade school I wanted to learn about geography, and it wasn’t in the curriculum. I can still recall taking a map of the United States, pinning it to poster board, and using a straight pin to create borders which, with markers, became coastlines, state, and international border.)

Baseball is almost at its end for 2014, but it’s also the time when people are most attentive. Here from Randy Leonard for The Atlantic on October 1 is Baseball’s Long and Complicated Relationship with the Bunt.

For food, Alex Witchel spent some time with Garry Marshall, and wrote about it for the New York Times on September 25 in A Family Feeling, Wherever He Digs In. If you click on no other link in 2014, past, present, or future, don’t skip this one!