Chris Anderson has an excellent post on spare cycles and how they are the fuel of Web 2.0. Albert Einstein used his spare cycles as a patent inspector to come up with his theory of relativity. The least favorite spare cycles activity I’ve observed among coworkers is day trading. It doesn’t seem as popular now as it was eight or so years ago. I can remember certain coworkers being glued to Yahoo Finance and eTrade all day, trying to wring out a few bucks trading stocks.