If wildebeest is your totem, you wield the awesome power of extreme awkwardness and profound stupidity combined. Use gnu energy at parties, driving others away from your favorite foods with your honking voice, lack of focus, and random, [...]

Recently, though, I’ve had to update the concept “new normal.” Change has gotten so incredibly zippy and sustained that it’s pretty obvious the only “new normal” possible anymore is “no normal.”

Now, the word “normal” comes from the Latin “norma,” meaning a carpenter’s square (not to be confused with “norma rae,” [...]

Happy-Go-Lucky in a Dangerous World I’m into Passenger Pigeons this month because their closest relatives—Band-Tailed Pigeons—have been showing up at my bird feeders. Scientists are now asking people (this means you!) to put up feeders, because human interference appears to be killing off all birds, everywhere. Buzz-kill, huh? But wait! It gets worse!

Passenger Pigeons were once the most abundant birds in North America, so numerous that flocks of them could darken the entire sky. They were also very friendly, so people used to club thousands of them a day, just to pass the time (this was before YouTube). This continued [...]