“Long ago, in the poverty-stricken hills of southern China, a village banished its children to the forest to feed on wild fruits and leaves. Years later, when food stores improved, the children’s parents returned to the woods to reclaim their young.

To their surprise, their offspring had adapted to forest life remarkably well; the children’s white headdresses had dissolved into fur, tails grew from their spines and they refused to come home.”

Lemur slideshow: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/09/22/science/092308-Monkeys_index.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Biologist Pan Wenshi Helps a Region and a Species, the Langur – NYTimes.com.

And nothing more exposes the hypocrisy of financial elites riding the coattails of those who revere small-town religious values than a downturn that highlights the vast gulf in power between the two key components of the conservative coalition. Even cultural conservatives will start to notice that McCains tax policies are geared toward the wealthy investing class and Obamas toward the paycheck crowd. Even the most ardent friends of business have begun to argue that a re-engagement with sensible regulation is essential to restoring capitalisms health.

E. J. Dionne Jr. – Whose Elitism Problem Now? – washingtonpost.com.