A bird's-eye view of my birthplace, Québec (the city, not the province.) We flew last Saturday for about an hour in the early morning. There was a bit of a haze at first but the weather was absolutely gorgeous. We might have caught the most colorful time of the season, it was incredibly beautiful.

The flamboyant death of nature.

I took a few pictures.

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▲ Houston car mechanic Edgar Garfield Gibbons, 41, returned to the U.S. in March after nine months in jail in Georgetown, Guyana, to which country he had been mistakenly deported when he was confused with a New Jersey man of the same name.

▲ Las Vegas police…

Another installment of completely random newsbits with which I contend that improbable stuff constantly happen.

■ Scotland Yard detectives said they overestimated the number of dead in a fiery London commuter-train crash in October because some survivors had walked away quickly and left town, spontaneously deciding to start new lives.…

Thanks to advertising, science has become the new magic.

Hair, skin, the appearance of youth and the cleanliness of every little nook and cranny of your personal space are now under the watchful guard of scientific advances. If we were to believe modern advertisers, we're already in the twenty second century...

You don't actually need to understand how dirt and grime can be eliminated from your dishwasher, how you can regenerate old body parts with lotions, how "animated"…