Hippie chimps or little killing machines?

Behold the misunderstood bonobo.
On a Saturday evening a few months ago, a fund-raiser was held in a downtown Manhattan yoga studio to benefit the bonobo, a species of African ape that is very similar to—but, some say, far nicer than—the chimpanzee. A flyer for the event depicted a bonobo sitting in the crook of a [...]

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Austen, we have a problem.

Only one guy managed to spot the joke, apparently.
Her work has endured for two centuries, sold in its millions and inspired countless film and television adaptations. But would Jane Austen be able to find a publisher and an agent today? A cheeky experiment by an Austen enthusiast suggests not.
David Lassman, the director of the Jane [...]

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Bluegrass, quiet evenings out, and the shiny reflective spider-eyes of doom.

I’d intended to take Friday off in preparation for my folks arriving, but ended up at the office all day putting out fires. We spent most of Saturday at the local bluegrass/traditional arts/pioneer-day festival. It was, in short, a blast. Hotter than can be, but that’s what ice cream, lemonade and creek-wading are for. Our [...]

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Censorship devours its own children

LRB | Chaohua Wang : Diary (via aldaily.com)
Eighteen years is not a short time; it’s long enough for a baby to become an adult. On 4 June this year, a strange incident occurred. In Chengdu, the capital of the province of Sichuan, a city with a population of 11 million, the small-ads pages of [...]

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Forth on the Fifth

Yesterday was about as good as it gets. Thus:
The kids spent most of the day in the inflatable pool and, mirabile dictu, managed to avoid putting any more holes in it. I knocked the lawn out first thing in the morning and we spent the rest of the afternoon lazing around the house and preparing [...]

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And then there were eight. Grain mills. Will Ferrell.

Everyone returned home safe and sound. There was pizza, the unpacking of bags, and the collapsing of exhausted little bodies throughout the house. Bluebell came back from ATL with a half-dozen Nancy Drew books and a sudoku addiction. Everyone else wandered off to resume the serious work of reading and playing. In short, a return [...]

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The Dangerous Book for Boys

The author writes on the how and why of this marvelous book. We bought a copy for our son. He’s still a bit on the small side for some of the projects, but won’t be for much longer.
In Praise of Skinned Knees and Grubby Faces
I expected a backlash. If you put the word “boys” on [...]

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Welcome!

Well.
The last of boxes are nearly unpacked and we seem to have found places for most everything except for all of the now-empty boxes and mounds of packing paper which fill the garage. You know those lists that come out every so often - the ones that detail out all of the most-stressful-events that can [...]

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