"Individually, each wasp flew from the bottom of the T to the fork, where they could view an image on either side before picking one to touch. One of the two images delivered a mild and unpleasant shock. For each pair of images, wasps had 40 chances to learn which was a safer bet. When wasps were shown two distinct wasp faces, it only took about 10 trials before they learned to consistently choose the right one, the researchers report today in the journal Science. For the next 30 trials, they picked right about 75 to 80 percent of the time. The insects were eventually able to perform as well when shown two different black shapes on a white background, but it took them a lot longer. It wasn’t until close to the end of 40 trials that they were scoring right with the same success rate. When asked to distinguish between caterpillars, the wasps were hopeless." READ MORE

"Alabama’s reputation has also taken a huge hit just when it is trying to lure international businesses. No matter how officials may try to tempt foreign automakers, say, with low taxes and wages, the state is already infamous as a regional capital of xenophobia." READ MORE

"I love Joplin! I love Joplin." So began President Obama in his Sunday address to the town of Joplin, Missouri, smudged from the face of the earth by a tornado a week before. READ MORE

France, the tourism capital of the world, is actually a xenophobic hellhole of white supremacists carrying baguettes. It is run by a tiny monster in platform shoes, and while France barely cracks the top 100 of most densely populated countries (ranking near Portugal and Albania), it leads the world in nationalist panic and manifestations of emotional scarcity. READ MORE

That French "veil" law that we have been making fun of for ages has finally gone into effect and, predictably, it is going poorly: it looks as if 61 people (only 19 of them women) have been arrested today for demonstrating against it, for starters. (Most offensively, while you may be fined for covering your face in public, you may also be required to take classes in "French citizenship," which has got to be, at best, stultifying. Also, most stupidly, the police can't stop you on the street to ask you to remove your burqa or what-have-you: instead they are required to escort you to a police station. Now that's good planning!) Two other women have been "detained" (whatever that means!) and also so have their "male colleagues," who were presumably... not wearing burqas? And of course France considers this an incitement to "racial hatred." I understand that the French have a different idea of "being" French (now more legislated than ever!) than we do of "being" American but this is some serious idiocy.

Thanks to the college basketball championships, in which both Richmond, Virginia-based teams (Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Richmond) performed admirably, we had cause to ponder, "Not sure why people are so into Richmond, Virginia." That's a reasonable question! Richmond is a mostly busted-ass city on the banks of the James River that's played host to such luminaries as George Allen, and also George Allen's wife—what's her name, the one who married George Allen. It's best known as the capital of the Confederacy, and, as many of the old-school Richmondites—by which I mean the "racist" ones—will probably tell you, that's basically where the city peaked. READ MORE

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