If you're looking for a harrowing real-life scare this Halloween, look no further than the moving experience of four firefighters who narrowly escaped death in the SoCal inferno.

The most original way I've ever encountered to talk about education.

Why do I crave chocolate? It's the bacteria living in my stomach. I have to feed them what they want. Seriously. Although I wonder why they get hungrier when I'm stressed.

After reading this NYT article on a visit to Darjeeling, I really want to go on a tea vacation. Like wine tasting but in the Indian mountains with prayer flags flying and more modest accommodations.

A horrible tunnel fire occurred in LA. One of my biggest road nightmares since watching What Dreams May Come.

Alix Bryan has completed her journey around the US in the shape of a peace sign, after riding 11,000 miles (almost the distance from the North to the South pole) on a little scooter. Read about her message at her blog.

Anyone think of asking Twombly whether the lipstick on his painting in France is an improvement or really worth a 2 million euro lawsuit?

It seems that I have found in the Paris bureau of the New York Times a fellow religious tourist. Just watch the stunning photo montage accompanying her article "Worshiping Paris". Her article reveals another connection between myself and Paris: Keith Haring's foundation gave copies of a triptych he created after being diagnosed with AIDS to the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York, Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, and the city of Paris, which placed its triptych in St.-Eustache.

Perhaps next time she'll also discuss the draw of the organs and bells in a bit more detail. It's interesting that despite their overall absence from her article, their sounds are one of the most noticeable and memorable aspects of the video.

I guess the problem of "big babies" is widespread...

In other news, biofuel from cows. My favorite line is "To date no viable method has been devised to capture this gas as it erupts from either end of the cow."

It may not be so bad to be packaged up by Garfield and exiled to Abu Dhabi any more. With Louvre and Guggenheim posts going up and a CSU-educated computer-savvy princess managing the economy, the place is shaping up.

Distributed human computing is digitizing documents and manuscripts as fast as the Internet Archive can supply them. Thanks, Cornell!