Daily Bafflements

• A study has found that it’s a bad idea to plan and shop for travel during business hours, because you’ll end up paying more for it. This seems particularly cruel, since that’s precisely the time when people most want to escape.

• Some people think that President Obama’s appearance on the Zach Galifianakis bit “Between Two Ferns” was hilarious; some people thought it was a bust. But we can probably all agree that Dinesh D’Souza’s parody version was embarrassingly bad.

• Here’s an oldy but a creepy-goody from the Harvard Crimson about the school’s rare book collection: “Without extensive genetic testing, Harvard librarians still do not have the ‘foggiest notion’ of how many volumes wrapped in human hide exist throughout the system.” But they know for sure that there are at least three.

• On this day in 1884, the first long-distance phone call was made. And coincidentally, on this day a year from now, we’ll all be gelatinous blobs, communicating solely through our virtual reality goggles.