One small step

For July 20, Google has added Moon images to its aerial mapping feature. Click here to see the sites of the Apollo landings. (And be sure to click the zoom-in tool several times.)

It takes a village

I believe that every child should have an adult other than their parents to whom they can turn for counsel and example. Kids all need multiple models; it's the only way they can know that a variety of people and behavior and character traits can all still be good. And at times, when they're old enough, they even need someone from whom they can ask advice who won't "turn them in"—somebody they can talk to about issues little or big that they can't discuss with their parents, or even just someone to get a different perspective from. (Yes, obviously, this adult should be someone the parents know and trust.) Such conversation doesn't have to be on subjects as life-changing as alcohol or religion; even the daily roller coaster of emotion or the ethics of childhood friendships can be topics that are too loaded for kids to raise with their parents.

Ask yourself:

• Who will your kids be able to talk to in these ways? Are you surrounding your children with the kinds of adults you would trust to talk to them in private? If your child, through no fault of your own, cannot talk to you about something as simple as their anger over not getting a TV in their room or something as serious as whether to have sex, whom will they seek out?
• And are you this person in some child's life—a big brother or big sister, an uncle or auntie, even when you're not related? Are you making yourself appropriately available, open, and honest with other people's kids?

If liberals ran the country

Here's what it would look like.

Three Dot Lounge

Some miscellaneous short items I never got around to posting in June...

• Bush, Big Business, and the theocrats do science.
• This may be the best web page ever: what the Bible says about the poor.
• Ah, yes: not enough soldiers? Let's keep the ones who are out of shape or undisciplined, but by all means don't recruit any fit, healthy gays.
• Things you know to be true, but aren't: Americans are lawsuit-happy. Thanks to Lying Media Bastards, we discover that tort filings are falling (and falling fast in high-population areas: down 45 percent over 10 years in California), plaintiffs lose three-fourths of the time, and the supposed "costs" of lawsuits to our economy are mostly insurance-industry fiction.

Star Wars we saw

Cathy and I finally saw Episode III today. I enjoyed it very much, and there wasn't nearly as much stilted dialogue as I expected. But I have to say, after five previous movies, this is the one where I finally lost patience with Yoda's syntax. Damn it, when 875 years old you are, speak English normally you will!