The Great Riddle

Face it, we humans are a questionable lot. We're full of boundless curiosity and throw ourselves at the horizons of the hypothetical for all we're worth.

Perhaps one of the greatest questions ever posed is Shakespeare's "To be, or not to be?" uttered by Hamlet. Another equally perplexing question is posed by Alice in Wonderland's Mad Hatter: "How is a raven like a writing desk?" And the greatest question of them all . . . . Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Well, wonder no more!

Today, scientists announced that they've cracked the chicken vs. egg mystery. The chicken came first! The chicken's ovaries contain a protein essential to egg formation, therefore the egg could not exist before the chicken. I feel immensely enlightened, don't you?

You can check out the rest of the story here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38238685/ns/technology_and_science-science

The Legendary Unicorn

This just made my day. No, make that my week! I love it when nature laughs at human assumptions of the impossible.

http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/mythical-unicorn-found-in-deer/py32t8y?from=en-us_msnhp>1=42007

The Changeling by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

I've decided to start a mini-spotlight for books that I believe should be on every Earthling's reading list (and non-Earthling, as the case may be!). There are so many books to choose from, but I can't resist. I'm going to begin with The Changeling by Zilpha Keatley Snyder.

I was about twelve when my parents first introduced me to Zilpha's books, but The Changeling will always be my particular favorite. It's a middle grade novel that juxtaposes the transcendence of two children's imaginations against the brittle harshness of reality. But it's not about escaping your own reality, more, shaping it, I think.

Martha Abbot is a lonely, suburban-born coward who forms an unlikely friendship with Ivy, a member of the notorious Carson family that is always skipping town for trouble with the law. Martha is fascinated by the peculiar, almost otherworldly Ivy, who claims she is a changeling switched at birth with the real Ivy. As they grow up together, Martha and Ivy get into all sorts of scrapes and weave an intricate dream world where both belong, but neither can stay.