1. a) Sometimes being an economist is terribly annoying. When you are in a meeting and people can’t seem to grasp the idea that any given idea will have costs and benefits, being an economist means being annoyed. I’ve had a few meetings like that in the last week.
b) Fortunately the Nobel committee came along, and in a bit of a surprise, gave the Prize to Sargent and Sims—two economists whose real claim to fame is the advancement of technique. Not the study of the economy itself—neither one is associated with any particular results—both simply worked out new ways to use mathematics in economics. A refreshing Noble.
c) And speaking of the economy, for anyone who cares what I have to say about the current state of things, you can read it here.
2. Clara is turning 12 next week. This is my last teenager-free year for quite some time. Have pity on me.
3. No, really, Clara is a sweet kid. So is Lily. Emma doesn’t live at home any more so I am not sure if I am supposed to include her in my Offspring Reports.
4. As you can tell, I really have no point here. I am trying to avoid paperwork by pretending that writing a blog post is a necessary and productive use of time. I’m not doing a good job of convincing myself of that fact.
5. A book review will help. Bryan Talbot’s Alice in Sunderland was a very curious book. Indeed the longer I read it the curioser it got. I’m not even sure to what category of book it belongs. It’s kind of like a comic book, but not really. It might be graphic novel, but it isn't really a novel. It’s sort of fiction, but mostly non-fiction. There are pictures, lots of Photoshop involved, but also lots of drawings. I can’t even figure out how to convey the sense of what it is. It is one part biography of Lewis Carroll, one part history of the city of Sunderland, one part History of Britain, one part history of the Alice books, one part comic book tale of an artist writing a book, one part travel guide to Sunderland, one part story of a theater, and one part into which we can throw all the other parts that it is isn’t worth spending the time to list in detail. The book roams all over. There are comic books within the comic book. There are self-referential nods in which there is a character who is the author of the book we are reading. It is part dream, but maybe not. There are ghosts of other people who may or may not be real or dreams or, I don’t know. And through it all, I have to say I enjoyed this ridiculously quirky book. I learned a lot about Lewis Carroll, for example—that was interesting. I also learned a lot about Sunderland—which was interesting to read even though it shouldn’t have been interesting since I had never heard of the city before and will probably never hear about again, and so was, in the end, perfectly useless material, but strangely interesting at the time I was learning it. So, if you want to read a very odd book, which I enjoyed but I cannot even begin to figure out why I enjoyed it, then this a good choice. I’ll undoubtedly read it again sometime, and I have no idea why I will read it again, but I am virtually certain that this book will somehow draw me back in. Maybe it’s like Wonderland itself—I just can’t resist heading back into a thoroughly bizarre little world of its own in which all the rules of books are routinely and brazenly violated.
6. Here is the Obvious Music Video.
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