I've been doing this for four years: Whenever I eat by myself and start to dig in, my train of thought stops and I focus obsessively on a few narrow scenarios.

These are the scenarios:

• How Obama (before it was John Kerry) is going to win.
  
• How to strategically bomb Canada. (The visual is satisfying, and for some reason the target HAS to be Canada)
  
• What if we had a magic box that could copy exactly the contents of another box? How would we distribute the technology? What would be the consequences? i.e. ending world hunger? Would someone cook an original hamburger and everybody would just copy a million of those? Would that make it easier to propagate disease? etc.
  
• What if I had a device that allowed me to swap the contents of any world coordinates with the contents another? Who would I kill? How would I kill? (i.e. replace a section of Bin Laden's heart with a pocket of air.) How would I distribute the technology? Would I trust it with the United States? Or would I just destroy the technology?
  
• What if everybody had the ability to see what's happening at any world coordinates? Would people sell "dark rooms"? What would the social consequences be? Who would be watching me?