When good faeries go bad...

There are some pretty shots, too, but I like this one the best.

Aftrer the Laser

After the laser shot Ethan's chin, this is what he looked like.

ESD Beat Down

And here's my boy after he fought the playground and lost.

the great pop-sci book project

Jennifer Ouellette has proposed a project by which all her readership list the top 100 science books of all time and she will compile a moderated list. I offer my list, and I note that she included science fiction in her list, so I will do so as well.

1. The Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin
2. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, Richard Feynman
3. Phantoms in the Brain, V. S. Ramachandran
4. The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks
5. A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
6. *Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter
7. The Physics of Star Trek, Lawrence Krauss
8. The First Three Minutes, Steven Weinberg
9. Neuromancer, William Gibson
10. The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan
11. *The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins
12. Wonderful Life, Stephen J. Gould
13. The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins
14. The Astonishing Hypothesis, Francis Crick
15. The Physics of the Buffyverse, Jennifer Oeullette

New Flower

From the front bushes of a house I will paint on September 5th. I missed the bumble bees, but the flowers stayed nice and still.

Baby Bunnies

What you're looking at is the top-most baby bunny from the nest of baby bunnies we discovered this evening in the kids' sandbox.

They are cute on a scale nearly unimaginable.

The Homestead

My parents-in-law's house, a beauty out in the woods of Northern Illinois.

Go cats!

Forgive the cell-phone shot.

This picture is the top-seeded NU Wildcats women celebrating their 12th goal against 8th seeded Princeton in their quarterfinal game. I got to see the first half, which included several goals by the 'cats including an over-the-shoulder shot near the end of the half.

Into the Woods

Run Away!

My children tear off into the woods, as fun a time as we've had for months.

Lamium?Vinca

I think this is lamium.Turns out it's Vinca It's a pretty little ground-cover flower that my father-in-law is partial to.

Snowy Fields

In the forest preserve near the house. The tracks are all animal tracks.

A Harsh Mistress

Great eclipse experience tonight. The best and most complete eclipse of my life.

This is hand-held with my zoom.

Beautiful Girl

Sometimes Margot takes a picture that takes my breath away.

Back Court Madness

I've been away for far too long, my apologies.

My daughter is in basketball this winter -- the first game was a lot of fun. She's one of the guards this year.

These are her shoes.

Are you ready for some?

The boy began soccer a few weeks ago. He had his first game. Here he is breaking away from the pack. Looks like fun.

Full size here.

Ethan's gallery, which includes this and some other new soccer pictures is here.

Look into my eye

I have been wondering why I can't ever get a really sharp photo of dragon flies' eyes. This extreme closeup (200%) shows why -- they aren't faceted, they are pebbled!

If you don't stop...

... you'll break your neck. I have no idea how Grey Pelicans don't break their necks every time they dive. I'll put up some more later, but this sequence shows a Grey Pelican going in for a kill. It is impressive to watch them skim inches above the water only to rise up and plunge into the water for a catch.

They were pretty far off from the beach, so these aren't as impressively up close as I would have liked.

As always, full size here.

Bodie Island Lighthouse

It's pronounced "Body", which leads to all sorts of cool speculation about the origin. We stayed a few minutes from this lighthouse, which is my favorite of the Carolina lighthouses. I took it from the porch of the lighthouse keeper's cottage.

Full size here.

A Day at the Beach

... or an evening, really. Courtesy of my parents-in-law, we spent the week in a rented house on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It was an absolutely great vacation.

The two small black spots in the sky on the right and left are not specks on the lens, they are both dragonflies, which filled the skies in the evenings. A look at the full-size of the picture will show that they are indeed insects.

Ready, set, bake!

Fun for a Sunday. This is a white hearth loaf that took me (with the rising cycles) all of Sunday. It starts with a sponge which is always fun because the risen size is always dramatic. The kids enjoyed looking at it, but weren't as blown away by the rising as I expected.

The full gallery, including a few pictures showing the various stages is here.