"Clark Rockefeller"

Whatever his actual name is, his story has fascinated me in a way celebrity-crime stories like this usually don't. Two things I wanted to note:

• This Dahlia Lithwick piece on father's rights. Money quote:

  Despite the fact that divorce is rarely triggered by violence or abuse, the incentives to allege that a man is abusive and out of control are undeniable. They tap into age-old stereotypes about men and ensure that Mom becomes the primary custodian. Even without abuse allegations, simple rules of physics (one child cannot be split into two and two cannot be split into four) make it likely that many good fathers will be downgraded from full-time dads to alternating-weekend-carpool dads. They will be asked to pay at least one-third of their salaries in child support for that privilege. Simple rules of modern life make it likely that an ex-wife will someday decide that a job or new husband demands a move to a faraway state. At which point the alternating-weekend-carpool dad is again demoted—to a Thanksgivings-if-you're-lucky dad.

  The rest of the piece discusses how although this may be incredibly unjust, Rockefeller really shouldn't be the poster boy Fathers looking for reform want to cite.
  
• The Boston Globe sent a reporter to Germany to talk to his brother. Really? Out of all the things the Globe could send a reporter to Germany for, they choose this? They couldn't have called the guy? Or found a Germany-based freelancer to do it? Or called up the Papa Times and asked them to send their Berlin reporter? It just seems like a poor allocation of resources. Oh yeah, they also had five reporters working the story from Boston.