Trip to Arizona

Our little family took our first vacation together in Arizona -- Phoenix, Sedona/Red Rock country, and the Grand Canyon. We also combined it with a visit to Jeanne's cousin Angie, who lives in Phoenix.

Phoenix, Red Rock country, and Grand Canyon

50 book challenge

Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five.

Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles.

Having just returned from a quick business trip to San Francisco (my first time in the city), parents, here's my advice: do not let your children visit this place (or California, more generally) before they are, oh, twenty-one or so. Otherwise you will ruin them on the possibility of living anywhere else. Lucky me!

Pittsburgh cyclists.

Maybe some day I can be a part of this. 

Rowing.

For traffic geeks only.

German traffic simulator. Schnell! Schnell!

Do the test.

An ad produced by London Transport. I'm not sure how much the answer to these problems is simply "concentrate more."

How to hack a traffic jam.

Hint: plan ahead.

50 book challenge

The Rebel Angels, Robertson Davies. First book in his Cornish trilogy.

 

The Undercover Economist, Tim Harford. A readable recapitulation of the main principles/arguments for free markets.  Actually probably the most useful tidbit was a quote from old French dude who said something to the effect of, "The well-run profitable business aims to prevent customers who can pay more from paying less." There is a neat exposition of how this principle lives out in, say, price differences at Starbucks - e.g., why is it so much more expensive, relative to the cost (in materials and time), to get a little something (whipped cream, or what have you) added to your drink. This is all part of the firm's attempt to separate out the people who don't care about paying more from those who do. This is especially salient in the instances where a company like IBM designs and builds a printer, then intentionally cripples it with a chip to sell that version at a cheaper price. Maybe a little obvious, but he explained it well.  

Garfield without Garfield.

How do you make Garfield, the mind-numbingly bad comic strip, actually funny? Take out Garfield. Here is what's left.

50 book challenge?

The Going to Bed Book, Snuggle Puppy, Pajama Time: the N.Y. Times gets a glimpse inside the Sandra Boynton empire. I love how Phyllis Korkki, the reporter, thinks of "a five-bedroom home, built in 1728, sit[ting] on 100 acres of rolling northwestern Connecticut countryside" as merely "comfortable, not lavish." This seems like defining lavish downward - no palm-frond-waving servants? How restrained!