All work and no play makes daddy a bad blogger

With the full press at work to get the Super Big Project out the door, I don't expect to be taking much time for posting this week.

While I'm off summoning the web demons to do my bidding, I'll mention that our son, who knows his letters but cannot yet read, has already come to the conclusion that the Internet is where you go to investigate information. He's always coming up to me and asking if I can help him find things on the Internet. Pictures and information of animals are always high on the list.

The lesson is clear for librarians and publishers alike. If kids who don't even read already know that the web is where you look for information, it's not just the matter of convenience that has caused the search engines, wikipedia, etc. to dominate own the mindshare. At that point, the Internet is information, a deeply-embedded part of culture.

This weekend, our new research interest was bats. We visited my parents 19th-century farmhouse this weekend. Bats live there. Lots of them. I grew up with bats around me, so apparently I was taking them for granted. Every night at dusk, bats came swarming out of the eaves. And as a teenager, I guided tours in a local cavern, where early morning tours usually meant a few bats would fly into you as you. Sure, I knew about echo-location and some other basic facts. I had no idea, though that bats are so cool. Don't believe me? Seriously.