Right now, from my Brooklyn terrace.

"We have viewed $1,000 an hour as a possible vomit point for clients."

Seriously, how much can a lawyer charge an hour?

Here are the guys -- they're all guys -- who aren't cowering in the 900s anymore. They've cast off that fear of the fourth digit and demanded what they know they deserve.

IN THE COMMENTS: Ruth Anne writes:

Big deal. You charge $1000/hour for eating egg salad sandwiches.

$200 for 1 sandwich which took approximately 12 minutes = $1000 for a whole hour of egg salad sandwich eating.

That was funny... until I read the words "a whole hour of egg salad sandwich eating." Then, it was terrifying.

70 percent of viewers give up if they click on web video and a commercial starts.

According to research done by YouTube. Somebody tell CNN. YouTube has developed an alternative: "semitransparent 'overlay' ads at the bottom of selected video clips" (which either disappear after 10 seconds or launch if you click on them).

Things that seem profound and symbolic but actually aren't.

On Montague Street, a nun asked how to get to the Garden of Eden.

Outage.

Blogger had a little outage this morning. But it didn't last long and it'd been a long time since we'd had any problems, so don't try to pry me away from my beloved Blogger.

E-Harmony claims to produce 90 45 marriages a day.

So how good are your chances? Consider that it has 17 million users. About 0.2% a year. But some of those people aren't really trying, and most of them are not as easy to get along with as you.

CORRECTED: I read it as 90 marriages a day, but it says 90 members. Really, the success rate is pathetic!

Who's reading books?

We're told one in four adults didn't read a single book last year as if this is a shockingly low number, but I'm impressed that three in four did read a book. And why fuss over books? A lot of the books read are trash. (The linked article says the top picks were religion and and popular fiction.) And plenty of serious reading doesn't come in book form. Let's take a look at some of these "avid" -- that's always the word, "avid," unless it's "voracious" -- book readers:

"I go into another world when I read," said Charlotte Fuller, 64, a retired nurse from Seminole, Fla., who said she read 70 books in the last year. "I read so many sometimes I get the stories mixed up."...

Pollyann Baird, 84, a retired school librarian in Loveland, Colo., says J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter fantasy series is her favorite. But she has forced herself to not read the latest and final installment, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," because she has yet to file her income taxes this year due to an illness and worries that once she started the book, "I know I'd have to finish it."

Excuse me if I'm not impressed by the superiority of these avid book reader characters.

More women than men read every major category of books except for history and biography. Industry experts said that confirms their observation that men tend to prefer nonfiction.

Let me guess: Philosophy isn't a "major category." Nor is science. Or technology.

"Fiction just doesn't interest me," said Bob Ryan, 41, who works for a construction company in Guntersville, Ala. "If I'm going to get a story, I'll get a movie."

Going to the movies tends to be a social activity, and most movies are fiction. The notion that everyone ought to read novels is quite ridiculous. All these stories. You might get them mixed up.

Those likeliest to read religious books included older and married women, lower earners, minorities, lesser educated people, Southerners, rural residents, Republicans and conservatives.

A scurrilous group!

ADDED: Norm riffs:

[S]nce the 'typical person', according to the report, claims to have read four books, it would be interesting to know which books they didn't read.

Tracey Q. Pettigrew of Plains, Georgia, did not read The Magus by John Fowles

As I say, what is one to do? I do what I can, is all. And what I can do here is offer advice to the guy who says, 'I just get sleepy when I read.' This is my advice. First, don't read in bed before going to sleep if that is what happens to you; go to bed an hour earlier, wake up an hour earlier, and read for an hour before getting up. Second, if you sit down to read during the day, and feel sleepy, take a swift nap - 15 to 20 minutes - and read when you wake up. And third, don't bother with ... The Magus. Tracey is right.