In the past month, three people independently recommended that I read Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. Two bought me the book. The other said, "this book will make you want to tear off all your clothes and go running into the wilderness."

I just finished the book, and I can only nod in agreement. And I bet it has an even more profound effect on non-runners.

We've been back in the U.S. for a week now and are halfway through our Tour de California. Some things we've noticed:

• air conditioning
  
• weird small green money
  
• fat people
  
• sandwiches with more stuff than bread
  
• toilets with lots of water
  
• diversity
  
• SO MUCH DRIVING!!!
  

What kind of important issues will Justice Sotomayor be handling in her first term on the Supreme Court? How about crush fetishes? In United States v. Stevens, the justices will be considering the constitutionality of a statute banning the depiction of animal cruelty, which was apparently intended to crack down on crush fetish porn but whose language is sufficiently broad to prohibit depictions of all kinds of animal cruelty, whether or not high heels are involved. Here's an interesting (if slightly technical) preview.

It's already been a year since this post about Norman Schwarzkopf's "Be Bear Aware" campaign. I'm planning on going back into the mountains, and for the first time I'm going to be camping in grizzly country - the Wind River Range.

Following General Schwarzkopf's advice, I'm trying to be Bear Aware, and for the first time I've bought bear spray. Annoying thing about the bear spray: it has an expiration date of June 2010. That means even if I don't use it I have to buy some more next summer. I was hoping I could keep this canister forever, kind of like a fire extinguisher. What? Those have expiration dates too? Oh man.

Wailin was interviewed about social media on last night's episode of Chicago Tonight, the local news program on Chicago's PBS station. I thought she did a nice job!

The latest issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, featuring my novelette "The Last Resort," is in bookstores now! You can probably find it at any larger Barnes & Noble or Borders. It's a nice way to bookend my time in New York. (I'm leaving tomorrow afternoon for Chicago...)

Three important updates:

• Domna retired


• Malia has joined a traveling math circus


• Here in Harlem they sure do love their Michael Jackson. We heard 5 different cars playing his music just on the walk back from the subway.

One of our local papers has this front page article today: Bigfoot: a search in Utah. The article is a real gem. It tells about a group of bigfoot seekers who are gathering in Utah this weekend to look for the big guy. There are too many wonderful touches to recount here, but my favorite is this: "Reported Bigfoot sightings vary, but according to folks like Curtis, 80 percent happen at night."

Of course, it may say something about the state of the media that this is on the front page. Although the Wall Street Journal usually has a funny story on its front page, this article, from what I can tell, isn't trying to be funny.

Are you looking for a unique and special pack animal? If so, perhaps you should consider raising and training pack goats. This website has all the information you will ever need on the subject, including the pros and cons of removing the goat's horns, how to transport your goat, and first aid for goats. All very interesting stuff. This goes to show people will try to train anything these days.

By the way, I know that I haven't been blogging a lot recently, but I've switched a lot of the action over to Twitter. If you're still interested in what I have to say about things (with the added advantage of it being 140 characters or less), you can find me there.

Now that they've finally paid me, I can officially announce that my latest novelette is being published in this magazine later this year. I'll let you know when it comes out!

Apart from explaining the bribes and backroom deals that helped keep Robert Moses in power in New York for over three decades, The Power Broker has a lot to say about an issue that is currently receiving a lot of attention: the role of newspapers in modern American democracy.

The book does not cast newspapers in a flattering light. By courting publishers and bribing reporters, Moses was able to grossly manipulate media coverage of his construction empire. The Times comes off looking worst of all (the only paper that stood up to Moses at the height of his power was, ironically, the Post.) Eventually the newspapers turned on him and exposed scandals that led to his downfall, but they were literally thirty years late.

The message is this: if newspapers are democracy's only hope, we're in a lot of trouble. Unfortunately, they probably are the best way to keep public officials accountable. Investigative journalism is expensive and difficult, which categorically rules out television news as a replacement. The blogosphere might break a few stories, but I doubt bloggers can match the investigative skills (not to mention journalistic ethics) of veteran reporters. If newspapers survive in more than a few cities, I will be happy. I'll also be hoping that media critics on the internet will be able to call out newspapers when they're not doing their job so that Moses's tactics don't work in the future.

The Bobcat Bite is a couple of miles from where I grew up, and I just learned it was named best burger in the US by Bon Appetit magazine. (Apparently this happened a couple of years ago, but I'm slow to learn these things because I don't watch the Food Network.) Anyhow, this is a cute little documentary about why their burgers taste better than everywhere else.

In The Power Broker, Robert Caro describes the rise of "Impy," the New York City Council President who became mayor in 1950 when William O'Dwyer resigned to become Ambassador to Mexico:

The nomination of this totally unknown minor Tammany ward heeler to the city's second-highest elective office, the position of succession to the mayoralty, had "staggered . . . even the most imaginative among political reporters." And so had the explanation of how he had obtained the nomination. At a last-minute reshuffling of the 1945 Democratic ticket, the leaders finally agreed on Lazarus Joseph for Comptroller, and then realized that since O'Dwyer was Irish and from Brooklyn, while Joseph was Jewish and from the Bronx, the slate could have ethnic and geographic balance only if its third member was an Italian from Manhattan -- and were unable to think of a single Manhattan Italian official they could trust. After hours of impasse, one leader reasoned that since legal secretaryships to State Supreme Court justices carried a respectable salary for which little or no work was required, they would have been given only to the "safest" of Democratic workers. Pulling out a little "Green Book," the official directory of city employees, he turned to the list of legal secretaries, ran his finger down it looking for a name that even the dumbest voter would be able to tell was Italian -- and came to Vincent R. Impellitteri. . . .

. . .this explanation seemed almost unbelievable -- until one met Impellitteri.

I'm not sure whether to feel insulted or excited about my future job prospects.

Sources tell me the Guardian fell for yesterday's Moscow Times story about Russian PM Dimitri Medvedev's limousine for the G 20 conference, coined (among other things) "the hippopotamus." Apparently the vehicle has more armor, more weapons, and more rear window curtains than President Obama's limousine, and contains a desk with six telephones and a shower. The vehicle is capable of withstanding a small nuclear attack "if the wind if blowing in the right direction."

What I learned this April Fool's Day: fake plastic insects do not need to look perfectly realistic in order to scare people. They just have to be unexpected.

In an effort to assist readers in filling out their NCAA tournament brackets, I've looked at results from past years (from the beginning of the 64-team era) to determine if there are any upset tendencies they can use to their advantage. There's nothing really earth-shaking, but here are my takeaways:

1) 1 seeds do far, far better than 2 seeds. Picking all 1 seeds for the final four is almost never a bad strategy.

2) 10-12 seeds win their first round matchups roughly a third of the time; interestingly, they also do well in second round matchups, and 10s and 11s do well in the sweet sixteen. 10 seeds are more likely to reach the elite eight than everyone except seeds 1-4 and 6. They have never made the final four, however.

3) The 8-9 game is a tossup in the first round, but that doesn't mean those seeds are interchangeable. In the second round 8 seeds beat 1 seeds 20% of the time, but 9 seeds almost never do.

4) 5 seeds almost never reach the elite eight.

5) Once in the elite eight, 1-5 seeds perform similarly.

6) Seeds 1-3 have won all but three of the championships.

The Ivy League is one of the only Division 1 conferences with basketball games on Friday night. That means Ivy League basketball draws an inordinate amount of attention from professional sports gamblers looking to place bets on Friday nights. This is a tawdry scandal/grade B movie waiting to happen!

Why did no one ever tell me Manny's middle name is Aristides??

An fun part of living in Salt Lake is the opportunity to watch sporting events and root loudly for the visiting team. I live within an hour of two of UNM's archrivals, BYU and Utah, and when UNM came to play both teams, I went to each of the games. It requires some thick skin, but it's not physically dangerous unless you're a jerk or you try to do it in Oakland.

There's definitely an art to rooting for the visitors. You cannot out-cheer thousands of enemies, so you have to use the weapons of asymmetric warfare to maximize your effectiveness. The first key is sitting close enough to the court so that someone can actually hear you. The second key is to cheer when the crowd falls silent. The third key is to yell coherent phrases, rather than just make noise. Words are easier to pick up on than a clap. Usually what happens is the people next to you get annoyed and start cheering louder. Then they start cheering at you specifically, sort of as a taunt. At this point you cannot avert your eyes from the court and look at the taunters, as this will trigger a taunting match, and you cannot win a taunting match on enemy territory.

Alas, my cheering was not effective enough, as New Mexico lost both games up here. Maybe if I learn how to whistle loudly. . .