The Big Profile

By Dave Itzkoff

“This is your nemesis calling,” Will Arnett tells me in his distinctive, grovelly, mock-sinister voice after spending the morning filming his hit NBC sitcom, “Up All Night” (and brushing up on his hockey skills for a future episode). But a funny thing happened to the “Arrested Development” alum en route to becoming Hollywood’s go-to guy for arch comedy roles: Arnett became a father twice, at least. By day, he and his TV wife, Christina Applegate, raise a newborn daughter; by night, he and his real-life wife, Amy Poehler, raise two boys: Archie, 3, and Abel, 1. “I’m pretty childlike,” Arnett explains from his Los Angeles home. “I live a fairly goofy existence. My job requires I mess around a lot and make light of every situation. It turns out, that’s how kids live.” Oh, baby — or should we say, Oh, babies?

The Money Column

By Jacob Goldstein

Tim Enthoven

Like San Francisco and other European countries, Switzerland has been tightening its animal-welfare laws, and because guinea pigs are prone to loneliness, it’s now illegal to own just one. This leaves you in a tight spot if you own two guinea pigs and one dies. You could buy a new one, but then, when the next guinea pig died? You might get stuck buying guinea pigs for the rest of your life. Fortunately, a market-driven solution has emerged. Priska Küng of Hadlikon, a town just outside of Zurich, now rents guinea pigs — a castrated male goes for about $30 — for as long as you need them.

Washington Monuments

By Matt Bai

The thing that always got me about Muammar el-Qaddafi: all those years in power and why only a colonel? Wasn’t it a little awkward ordering all those generals around? (He acceded only to an honorary promotion from his underlings.) I suppose this was Qaddafi’s way of demonstrating his populist impulse. Or maybe when he looked in the mirror, Colonel Qaddafi just didn’t see general material. Who among us can’t sympathize with that.

What We Think

By Tom Vanderbilt

In a recent article in Landscape and Urban Planning, researchers found that placing an aquarium in the window of an Austrian furnishings store enticed more people to stop and look. They surmised it was part “biophilia” — humans are drawn to nature — and the fact that other people were looking. A researcher at Case Western also found that cramped aquariums can make fish more aggressive. Someone should get these folks together.