I mentioned that parasite biology was one of my interests. It didn’t used to be.
When the children were smaller, we had bedtime rituals. The two oldest shared a room, so they would both get something at bedtime. Perhaps it would be a chapter from a book (Charlotte’s Web was a big hit, as was From The Mixed-Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler). Or it might be a story. Stories could be about anything, but history and science were particularly popular.
So one night, they asked for a science story. About… bugs! *Creepy* bugs. Yeah!
Well. After a moment’s thought, I decided to tell them a little bit about wasps. I paused a moment, because wasps can get quite creepy… quite creepy indeed. But okay, they did ask, and I could avoid the most disturbing bits. [click to continue…]
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Doug Muir
Or, as the kids say these days, get gud noob.
Douglas Muir here, aka Doug M. Long time commenter, now given the keys. Native New Yorker, trained as a lawyer, work in development — USAID, UNDP, yadda yadda. Married to a German, so living in rural northern Bavaria. Four kids aged high school / uni, and a dog. The work has taken us to live in a bunch of different places, from Kosovo to Tajikistan, and has taken me short-term to a bunch more, from Rwanda to the Solomon Islands.
Interests include history, development, energy, space, astronomy, demographics, the political economy of development, parasite biology, EU expansion, and American football. _Alien_ is a perfect movie, magpies are elegant and admirable, the Johnny Cash cover of “Hurt” is the greatest piece of popular music the century has yet produced, nuclear power would be just fine if it wasn’t so damn expensive, Vermont is overrated, fight me.
The dog is a black Lab.
More in a bit.