the tindog coffeehouse

My kids love games. One of their favorites is something they simply refer to as the “circle game.”

The circle game is a large, round tin box filled with marbles, chess and checkers pieces, pick-up sticks, dice, and Parcheesi pieces, with boards for each game printed on the inside and outside of the box. I know the girls got it as a gift at some point, but for the life of me, I can’t remember from whom.

Whenever we sit down to play, I usually suggest Chinese checkers, or if it’s just the two of us, regular checkers. But almost always, the “game” ends up being some convoluted make-it-up-as-they-go-along product of the girls’ imaginations. Roll a die and pick up that number of marbles. Once you have so many marbles, you get a green pick-up stick. If you get a yellow pick-up stick, you have to put it back and get a red checker instead. Put all the marbles in one pile and all the checkers in another pile, then dump everything back in the can and stir it up with your stick. (OK, so now we’re making soup?)

I used to groan at the random nonsense of it all, but then I realized that I wasn’t teaching them as much as they were teaching me.

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Well, it looks like the global squirrel revolution may have hit a snag, albeit only a temporary one. It seems the different factions of the Squirrel Liberation Front are turning on each other in the UK, with the more aggressive black “super squirrels” overtaking their grey counterparts (who themselves are in the process of decimating the reds).

The testosterone-fuelled black squirrels are faster, fitter, fiercely territorial and more aggressive, beating greys to food and mates.

It is a subgroup of the same species of squirrel as greys but in some areas has already become the dominant variety. …

Dr Thomas said the first black squirrel was sighted on the outskirts of Letchworth, Hertfordshire in 1912. The latest estimates show there could be as many as 25,000 black squirrels in the East of England.

This is the biggest change in squirrel demographics since the last indigenous red squirrels almost disappeared 50 years ago as a result of the population explosion of the bigger and more aggressive greys.

With the friendlier varieties quickly becoming obsolete, it’s only a matter of time before the angry nut-hoarding rodents turn their attention back on us. Yes, we should be afraid. Very afraid.

Previously:
Squirrel Uprising 2: The Revenge

After less than 3 days on the job, President Obama has effectively surrendered in the War on Terror.

With the stroke of his pen, he effectively declared an end to the “war on terror,” as President George W. Bush had defined it, signaling to the world that the reach of the U.S. government in battling its enemies will not be limitless. …

Key components of the secret structure developed under Bush are being swept away: The military’s Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, facility, where the rights of habeas corpus and due process had been denied detainees, will close, and the CIA is now prohibited from maintaining its own overseas prisons. And in a broad swipe at the Bush administration’s lawyers, Obama nullified every legal order and opinion on interrogations issued by any lawyer in the executive branch after Sept. 11, 2001.

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February 12, 2009, marks Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday. How fitting, then, that the Texas Board of Education is currently meeting to decide how the subject of evolution should be taught in Texas public schools.

Up for consideration is whether to remove the requirement of presenting both strengths and weaknesses of evolution in science curricula, and whatever standards the Board agrees upon will be in effect for the next 10 years.

Supporters of evolution, of course, argue that the current requirements open the door to teaching Creationism and amount to “bad science,” while proponents of the requirements say that removing them is tantamount to censorship.

I say, if evolution is, in fact, completely true, then what’s the harm in debating its strengths and weaknesses? The point of school is to educate our children, and a big component of education is teaching critical thinking skills, teaching kids how to research, debate, formulate an argument and then communicate that position. To me, allowing for debate about the topic of evolution in school is a perfect opportunity to teach these skills.

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It’s a given that when you buy a version of Microsoft Windows, you don’t just get a bare-bones operating system; you get other stuff with it. Is it an app? Is it a feature? Is it an annoying service I can’t seem to get rid of? Yes, yes, and yes.

Last week I ran through a few quick initial impressions I had of Windows 7 Beta 1. This week I’m going to look at a few of the other “enhancements” that come with it.

• Internet Explorer 8 – I won’t say much about it here, mostly because it’s been reviewed pretty extensively elsewhere (see here and here for starters). But the reality is, even with the latest version, IE is a dinosaur. It’s fine for most casual home users, but most techy Windows users have already moved on to Firefox, Chrome, or Opera. It does have a couple of new and notable features, however. InPrivate Browsing (aka “porn mode”) allows for anonymous web surfing. (A similar feature already exists in Chrome and will be included in Firefox 3.1). IE8 also includes a feature called Web Slices, which allows you to subscribe to portions of a web page. (Why anyone would actually use that, I don’t know.)

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William McGurn writes in the Wall Street Journal that George W. Bush’s greatest failure was his victory in Iraq:

Mr. Bush’s disfavor in Washington owes more to his greatest success. Simply put, there are those who will never forgive Mr. Bush for not losing a war they had all declared unwinnable.

In other words, many people expected Iraq to be a complete and total failure, yet President Bush stubbornly proved them wrong, much to their dismay.

The article goes on to explain how this expectation of defeat is clearly rooted in “Vietnam thinking,” which begs the question: When everything is said and done, how will history ultimately judge the Iraq War?

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