Below The Beltway

The Washington Post today has a fascinating story about chimps who have apparently developed the ability to fashion crude weapons they use for hunting:
Chimpanzees living in the West African savannah have been observed fashioning deadly spears from sticks and using the tools to hunt small mammals — the first routine production of deadly weapons ever [...]

Entertainment Weekly has a great article this week chronicling a day of shooting for a typical episode of 24, and it includes hints at a few things yet to come including a fight scence between Jack Bauer and this season’s bad guy Abu Fayed.

From the British blog 18 Daughty Street:

The Ron Paul Presidential Exploratory Committee web site has a new look, and a new video:

If he’s still in the race when the Virginia primary comes around in 2008, he’s got my vote.

Buzz Aldrin co-authors a great piece at Pajamas Media about NASA’s plan to return to the Moon:
On my last trip to the moon I didn?t get to stay the whole day and had to share my accommodations with another man. If I could go back, I would expect not only a larger room, but a [...]

Whatever you think of the Iraq War or the British Royal Family, and I don’t think much of either right now,? you’ve got to respect this:
Sometime later this year, the younger son of Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana will be deployed to Iraq as the first Royal Family soldier to serve in a [...]

I’m not much of a hockey fan, but there is one game I’ll never forget.
It was February 22, 1980. The United States vs. the USSR. To say that the Americas were underdogs is putting it mildly. I watched that game from beginning to end (it’s probably the only hockey game I’ve ever watched from beginning [...]

A fellow member of the Old Dominion Blog Alliance, Hans Mast, has gotten prominent coverage in the Washington Post today for his series of posts about the ongoing controversy over whether to build a tunnel through Tysons Corner as part of the planned expansion of Metro to Dulles Airport.
Congratulations Hans !

Yesterday, I wrote about the case of Abdel Kareem Nabil, a college student being held in an Egyptian prison after posting anti-government remarks on his personal blog. Today, an Egyptian judge sentenced him to four years in prison:
ALEXANDRIA, Egypt — An Egyptian blogger was convicted of insulting Islam and President Hosni Mubarak and sentenced to [...]

While teachers in Prince William County complain about the low salaries they’ll be getting in the new school budget, others are beginning to question the fact that the budget incudes $ 37 million for a new administrative building:
As Prince William School Superintendent Steven L. Walts pitches his proposed $755 million budget for next year, one [...]