If a picture is worth a thousand words, then here are about ten thousands words' worth of photos for you. A few months ago, I bought a small camera that I try to take everywhere I go. The plan was to make myself look more careful at the world around…
Today we biked over to see the 2½ hour long gay pride parade. "You're here, you're queer, we're used to it." About 40,000 other people came to see the parade along the edge of my neighborhood today. You can see the crowds looking down Grand Boulevard. Many people were festively…
I’m learning a lot about honeypot ants. They are incredible little creatures. Also known as repletes or storage ants, certain members of these ant colonies serve as living storage jars for the nectar gathered by the other workers. Their abdomens extend many times bigger than the ant originally was, such…
I'm currently reading a new book by Susan Linn, The Case for Make-Believe: Saving Play in a Commercialized World (2008). The main point of the book is that modern parents tend to over-schedule their children and otherwise deprive them of time for creative play. For instance, many parents are letting…
Hardly a day goes by when you don't hear yet another Republican claiming that the "surge" is working in Iraq. And see here and here. If the surge is really working, let's see daily videotape showing Western reporters strolling freely through Baghdad's neighborhoods, outside of the Green Zone, chatting with…