Projo Subterranean Homepage News

Morning glories -- pink buds open blue.

There's a psychedelic bug on my sunflower. Below, just the bug.

(What is it?) My colleague Paula Constantine, the garden editor, found a photo of it in a fat bug book that called it a sharphooter leaf hopper. Further research reveals it's a red-banded leafhopper. U. of Vermont Extension describes it as, "A colorful magenta and blue-green LH common on many garden flowers. Injury seldom serious." I'm glad I let it live.

I especially like the image stabilization for shaky hands with this little camera. It's a Panasonic Lumix. My old Nikon Coolpix 950 was great when I remembered all the right settings -- hard to do if I didn't use it often -- but too many great moments were blurry or badly exposed. This Lumix seems to correct for me.

Seen around the Web:

Arab Majority May Not Stay Forever Silent by Youssef Ibrahim in the New York Sun:

Yes, world, there is a silent Arab majority that believes that seventh-century Islam is not fit for 21st-century challenges. That women do not have to look like walking black tents. That men do not have to wear beards and robes, act like lunatics, and run around blowing themselves up in order to enjoy 72 virgins in paradise. And that secular laws, not Islamic Shariah, should rule our day-to-day lives.

And yes, we, the silent Arab majority, do not believe that writers, secular or otherwise, should be killed or banned for expressing their views. Or that the rest of our creative elite - from moviemakers to playwrights, actors, painters, sculptors, and fashion models - should be vetted by Neanderthal Muslim imams who have never read a book in their dim, miserable lives.

Nor do we believe that little men with head wraps and disheveled beards can run amok in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Iraq making decisions on our behalf, dragging us to war whenever they please, confiscating our rights to be adults, and flogging us for not praying five times a day or even for not believing in God.

More important, we are not silent any longer.

Rarely have I seen such an uprising, indeed an intifada, against those little turbaned, bearded men across the Muslim landscape as the one that took place last week. The leader of Hezbollah, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, received a resounding "no" to pulling 350 million Arabs into a war with Israel on his clerical coattails.

The collective "nyet" was spoken by presidents, emirs, and kings at the highest level of government in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, Morocco, and at the Arab League's meeting of 22 foreign ministers in Cairo on Saturday. But it was even louder from pundits and ordinary people....

This is USAToday's tagline for the author: "Youssef Ibrahim, a former Middle East correspondent for The New York Times and energy editor for The Wall Street Journal, is a freelance writer and political-risk consultant based in the United Arab Emirates and New York."
Listening to... Issa Bagayogo, from Mali. Check out Numu here, from the Tassoumakan CD.

Kindred spirit Shelley Powers -- who used to blog as Burningbird till she dropped out to write a tech book and do a contract job -- is back at Just Shelley. In St. Louis it's more than hot, fierce thunderstorms took out power for many. Before she ran for her life from vicious winds, Shelley laid out a brave new Business Model.

Jeopardy! questions, archived. Stage your own reruns.

Map of myths and fairies: Looks like a game, begs for a story.

Why it's a bad idea to send Microsoft Word documents

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