But Who's Your Daddy?

Everyone Out.

Git aht.

Walking Pittsburgh.

Top speed: 43 m.p.h.

The Pittsburgh Illegal Soapbox Society. You may see them around town, early one Sunday morning. (Found via Disgruntled Off Road Cyclists.)

For love of a choo-choo.

The boys and the subway.

What I've been reading.

Richard Ford, Independence Day. An ordinary few days before the Fourth, in 1988 (though the novel was published in 1996), of a man named Frank Bascombe - former sportswriter, now a real estate agent in Haddam, New Jersey, divorced from his wife Ann who lives in Connecticut, remarried, with their two children. Frank wants to spend a couple of days of quality time with his troubled son. Ford is incredibly observant, and every page is filled with detail - again, quotidian, I guess, but endlessly fascinating. One of best novels I've read in the last few years. Recommended for fans of Frog and Toad.

Benjy Entertains Anne.

Our Two Babies

What I've been reading

Bryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter. Provocative. Really the meat of the argument is in chapter 5 and can be expressed with a simple demand-supply graph - as the private cost of irrational behavior goes to zero (because one vote won't make a difference, this freeing one to vote on emotional reasons), the quantity consumed will increase accordingly. Uh, okay! Could be true. Some of this book had the feeling of a notes-dump for padding, or completeness, or something.

Robertson Davies, What's Bred in the Bone. Third book of the Cornish trilogy. The board members of the Francis Cornish foundation put on an ETA Hoffman opera while Simon Harcourt solves the riddle of Cornish's painting.

Yasmina Reza, Dawn, Dusk, or Night. Author of Art and other plays joins Nicolas Sarcozy during his campaign for the French presidency in 2007. An unconsummated romance.

What I've been reading.

Discover Your Inner Economist, Tyler Cowen. The blog is better.

No one belongs here more than you, stories by Miranda July. Not my cup of tea. Precious, twee, affected, yes, etc. But there's redemption! The book's web site is neat and only takes, like, three minutes. Article here.

The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz. By turns maddening and gripping, this book left me pretty conflicted most of the way through. The second half was better than the first, and the end was the best part. In fact, I suggest the following reading plan: read the first chapter on Oscar, then skip to the chapter on Oscar's mother, Beli, then read the chapter on Beli's parents, then read the end. And you're done! I feel like my background in role-playing games, fantasy, science fiction, and comic books gave me an advantage in grokking most of the allusions in this book. I will dispense explanations of terms like "10d4" and "Darkseid" for a nickel.