Coral reef photo safari at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium

I’m in Chicago with my nine-year old daughter and Shedd Aquarium was an important destination for us.  We spent much of our Aquarium time at the Wild Reef exhibit. 

The coral reefs of the world support about a quarter of our sea life, so they are immensely important, yet humans are destroying them in a wide variety of ways. 

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As important as the reefs are to world ecology, reef life is also stunningly beautiful.  You can see these communities up close at Shedd.  The irony is hard to ignore whenever you can view warm water life in Chicago while it’s bitterly cold outside. 

Shedd Aquarium does a wonderful job displaying its marine life.  It’s difficult to stop taking photos, if you have a digital camera. I took more than 100 photos, then deleted many of them, leaving about a dozen photos I liked.  The challenge is not finding beautiful scenes to photograph.  The Aquarium is full of such opportunities.  The challenges are the low light conditions (no flash photography allowed, for the protection of the animals), combined with the quick movements of some of the creatures.  Note:  I took all of these photos with a Canon A700, a modest consumer-grade digital camera that is about 2-years old.  Also, these photos are only minimally retouched.  Comparable scenes await anyone interested in traveling to Chicago to visit Shedd Aquarium.

Many of the organisms living at a reef look like underwater plants, but they are actually animals.  Those animals include the corals themselves…

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A brave yet curmudgeonly man visits The American Girl Store.

 My daughter has a doll called Kaya.  I really don’t mind this doll at all, although many dolls aggravate me.  Most dolls are unabashedly materialist.  Kaya genuinely seemed to be an earnest survivor–a native American just trying to get by.  American Girl did a great job with Kaya. She is hardworking (according to the books that describe her tales) as well as gorgeous.  My oldest daughter (aged 9) admires Kaya for the right reasons.  Meet Kaya.

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Well . . . my daughter and I traveled to Chicago to have a special father-daughter vacation.  My daughter asked to visit the Chicago American Girl Store.  I quickly agreed.  It was her vacation too, and I like to believe that I am an armchair anthropologist.  Therefore, I’m always at work. 

If you have trouble finding the store in Chicago, ask anyone walking down the Magnificent Mile and they’ll tell you.  The American Girl store is a major Chicago institution.

I just assumed that I knew what kind of merchandise was in the store, but I was wrong.  There is a lot more to American Girl than brave little Kaya.  There are all kinds of dolls, including trendy, preppy, smug, materialist little dolls.  And how dare I call what they sell “merchandise”!

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Here’s a slogan prominently displayed throughout the store: Those dolls are “just like you.”  Just like me?   Oh, I suppose they weren’t really talking to me.   But those dolls are supposedly just like all those little girl customers.   You’ll recognize those …

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Under the guise of “freedom of religion,” Romney takes a cheap swipe at non-believers

Mitt Romney doesn't want to be discriminated against on the basis of his personal beliefs. He wants it so bad that he decided to badmouth all people who don't give homage to invisible supernatural sentient beings: As expected, [Romney's] speech itself was a delicate tightrope walk. He evoked the patriotism of…

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What do the families of the world eat?

Many of them eat much the same food as you, but there are many differences too. This is a wonderful photo-essay published by Time.  The Photographs, by Peter Menzel, are from the book Hungry Planet. The unvarnished facts speak loudly while you click through the series of photos. I found that viewing these…

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