I’ve figured out how to con my local public radio station out of an extra year of the free New Yorker subscription I got as a gift for becoming a member.

How, you ask? Very simple. They send me a new magazine every week this year. I only have time to read them once in a while and on vacations (when I try to catch up). Meanwhile, the pile of unread magazines continues to grow on my bedside table. The equation looks something like this:

x = 1/2y

Where x is the rate at which I read New Yorkers and y is the rate at which they arrive in my mail box.

So you see, NPR thought they were giving me a year’s worth of reading pleasure, but they were actually giving me 2 years of enjoyment. Mwa-ha-ha-ha.