Mystery photo of the day.

IN THE COMMENTS: David looks ahead to the next photo in the series.



ADDED: The top picture is November 1951, my parents' failed attempt to make a photograph that could be used in a Christmas card. (I've tweaked the very dark original to make the image reasonably visible.) The second picture is September 1951, at Niagara Falls. For reference: I was born in January 1951. The other child is my older sister.

Mystery photograph of the day.

IN THE COMMENTS: Inga says: "It's a young Meade! No mistaking that face. So he let you post it? Good man Meade, but you look older than 19 here."

"So he let you post it?" refers to the discussion in the comments to this recent post with a picture of me at age 19, which had commenters saying things like "I'd love to see a picture of your ex husband and Meade at that age, that would be fun." I said: "I have a great picture of Meade at that age, but he won't let me put it up. Really cute." Actually the picture above is Meade at about age 23 — what was he up to? — but here is the picture of Meade at age 19:

"Scientists at Harvard have spent the past five years building robot bugs..."

"... that can move with the same dexterity and speed as real-life insects."



This post is for betamax3000, who said, in last night's Koi Café:

I Am Going to Try an Experiment to Determine the Depths of My Althouse Comment Addiction: I Will Not Post a Comment for the Next Twenty-Four Hours. God, Give Me Strength. And -- Please -- No Robot Posts.

And I said:

But I have a Google alert on "robot."

And as long as you're over there rooting around in the Koi Café, I'm seeing Titus's list of what's hot this summer in Ptown, which he says "will arrive in Jesusland, in approximately 9 months," which makes Inga say "I got the no bra and kale thing, woo hoo! I'm ahead of the game!" and Palladian says "Kale? Varvatos? LOL. Poor Titus, about 2 years behind the trends. What a drag it is getting old."

And Meade says "Ha ha. Cool woud be growing ornamental kale in an old pair of Varvatos boots you bought in SOHO a dozen years ago. Hot: Italian wedding soup." I extract the information that it was Varvatos boots that Meade acquired — on the advice of his Cincinnati-based style consultant — to look good enough for me the first time we met, in January 2009, which was 4 years ago.



Now that you've got your shoes on...

Release the robot insects!

Signs that people are tired of thinking about politics.

Here are the "most popular" stories in The Washington Post right now:



#1 is Michelle Obama's ass. #4 is a bird laid an egg. And both of these are stories that I blogged yesterday. The First Lady's ass attracted 197 commenters here on the blog. I blogged the bird story too. In the comments, Inga made fun of the WaPo headline saying that the bird had given birth, and I note this morning that the headline has been rewritten, and now it's producing a chick. But there we were, talking about whether it's silly to say a bird gave birth.

Give birth is an interesting expression, even as applied to mammals. Which is my point: What is interesting this morning? Something tells me it's not politics.

Meanwhile, even politicians seem to know we're tired of dreary politics. Apparently, Republicans want to win us over with "happy talk" — #3 on that list:

At a retreat for Republican leaders last month, former House speaker Newt Gingrich told them to “learn to be a happy party” and a “cheerful” one, and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said they should be a party “that smiles.”...

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor took this don’t­worry-be-happy strategy seriously, and in a heavily promoted “major” speech to the American Enterprise Institute [that]... began with an uplifting anecdote about the Wright brothers and quoted the inspirational words of Emma Lazarus. He spoke from a lectern decorated with a foam board carrying the slogan “Making life work for more people”....

Decorated with a foam board... That's like a bird giving birth. The WaPo is bumping up the rhetoric inanely. Even when mocking the GOP for its strained cheeriness, they're goosing us with inappropriate but exciting words.

And then there's that coin. It's moving closer to reality.  Here I am over here in Reality. And there... somewhere out there.... a coin... it approaches!

Words, words, words... What kind of words do you have an appetite for this morning?