DisaPPOINted! I’m not one to throttle you with condemnation or pontificate from my personal soapbox, but a couple of weeks ago I threw down a gauntlet. Perhaps when you reach nearly 6,000 followers (and really, truly, thank you, everyone) you begin to harbor delusions of grandeur. Perhaps you begin to believe that people will follow…
I, like all bloggers, absolutely adore getting comments on posts. Positive, negative, challenging, pugnacious – they’re all good (although of course one prefers the adulatory to the disparaging, as is only natural). Just last night I received a comment on my post about Earth Hour, and as I got ready to respond I realized that…
Take a gene from a mouse that’s responsible for creating the eye of that mouse, introduce it into a fruit fly larva, and it will still create an eye. A fruit fly eye. Despite the fact that you have two creatures that haven’t shared a common ancestor for, at best estimates, 500 million years, you…
Earth Hour kicks off in New Zealand in 18 days, 18 hours, and 16 minutes, at least as I write this sentence. Never heard of it? Then you probably live in the United States. Earth Hour, according to Wikipedia, is “a worldwide grass-roots movement for the planet organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Earth…
I’ve broken a promise, and for that I’m sorry. You see, almost a year ago I made a pledge. Earth Hour was approaching, and I made what is called an “I Will if You Will” video and challenge, promising to never, ever in my life order bottled water in a restaurant if 50 people would…
I give you the humble cherimoya. I’d seen them before occasionally, but until we moved to Spain I’d never tried one. It’s a fruit, you know, about the size of a large orange, green-skinned but a creamy, custardy-white on the inside – the other common name is ‘custard apple.’ The taste is somewhere between a…
A couple of weeks ago I witnessed an episode of child abuse. Now you may disagree and yes, the term I’m using is inflammatory. What I saw comes under no government’s statutes of mistreatment and may, in fact, be seen as reasonable and rational child protection by some. Let me explain. We were wandering around…
One of the pitfalls of extensive travel is developing a higher ‘wow’ threshold, of, like an adrenaline junkie seeking ever-increasing danger in order to get the pituitary glands pumping endorphins, needing more spectacular scenery or more exotic architecture to impress you. The first time you fly over the Alps you’re glued to the window –…
Yesterday was a bit showery (we had outrageous thunderstorms in the evening), so G and I mostly just played it cool at home. During a break in the rain we went down to the garden to get out of the house, and had a marvelous time looking for critters and finding out what was in…
Normally I don’t publish material from other sources, but when this Facebook friend’s post popped up confirming many of the things that I’ve felt intuitively (but, sadly, without solid science to back me up), I felt like I needed to share it. It comes originally from a page called Spirit Science and Metaphysics, which, admittedly,…
Field Notes From Fatherhood 