Ants in My Pants
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Der Ameisenlöwe
In English, that's The Antlion. I chose German in honor of my friend Simone who was with me during an experimental time of my life. Experimenting with antlions, that is, not with Simone.
See, for years, I always wondered about those little pits of sand under lots of bungalows on the beach. I had a few different theories: rain water dripping through cracks, chickens pecking, some other bird. And then, finally, one day this March, it dawned on me: antlions! I remembered reading about them as a kid (I think in the Charlie Brown's Book of Questions and Answers) but I don't think I'd ever seen one before in real life. So I decided to do an experiment. I found a little termite, on a termite trail, picked it up, and dropped it in one of these pits beneath my hut. Lo! and behold, it was instantaneously snatched up (well, down) and devoured. Cool! When I told my friend Simone, she knew exactly what I was talking about, her grandmother had taught her about them. Simone and I did a few tests with them: digging them up, seeing how big an ant they could get (they could sometimes get a big red tree ant, but these ones were able to escape the pits most easily so we had to help the antlions), how often they could feed (didn't really wait around long enough to find out that answer). And I've been meaning to write about them for 4 months now, kept on forgetting to. If you google antlion, there's a lot of websites about them. In this one, you can even buy pet antlions!
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
An email forwarded to me, that I found rather amusing:
"Last month, a survey was conducted by the U.N. Worldwide.
The only question asked was:
"Would you please give your honest opinion about solutions
to the food shortage in the rest of the world?"
The survey was a HUGE failure.
In Africa they didn't know what "food" meant.
In Eastern Europe they didn't know what "honest" meant.
In Western Europe they didn't know what "shortage" meant.
In China they didn't know what "opinion" meant.
In the Middle East they didn't know what "solution" meant.
In South America they didn't know what "please" meant.
And in the USA they didn't know what "the rest of the world" meant."
Lest anyone forget Karl Rove
The story isn't making as big of a splash as it should, but it sounds like Karl Rove was involved in the whole leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity. Here's a link to the story, note especially how the White House is keeping quiet about it, after they've previously said that whoever was involved would be fired. It's pretty disgusting...as my brother points out, squirming around the definition of "is" when delving into Clinton's sex life is MUCH less important than Rove squirming around the difference of saying someone's name vs. identifying her. See also these articles. I like this line, (my italics added) "In early October 2003, NEWSWEEK reported that immediately after Novak's column appeared in July, Rove called MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews and told him that Wilson's wife was "fair game." But White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters at the time that any suggestion that Rove had played a role in outing Plame was "totally ridiculous." On Oct. 10, McClellan was asked directly if Rove and two other White House aides had ever discussed Valerie Plame with any reporters. McClellan said he had spoken with all three, and "those individuals assured me they were not involved in this."
Thursday, July 07, 2005
Bombing in London
Ugh, I hate days like today. At least 40 dead, bombings in the London mass transit system. So worried about all my friends.
And still, can't help feeling that the War in Iraq has detracted on the real war against terrorism. Too many resources tied up in a country that had little to do with our terror concerns, until Bush turned it into one.
