昆虫取りの子ら (Children Catching Insects)

　数年前まで、わが家から100 m ほど南に田圃があった。その一部には、いま住宅が建ち、残りも最近、住宅会社に売られたという。写真で雑草の生えているところが、その最近売られた土地である。そこで昆虫を取って遊んでいる子どもたちの姿を見たので撮影した（2010年8月9日）。

There was a rice field about 100 meters south of our house until a few years ago. The owner of the field sold part of it to a housing company, and some houses stand there now. The remaining part of the field, seen in the photo as covered with weeds, was also sold recently. There, I saw children catching insects and took a picture (August 9, 2010).

From tweets of yesterday (rephrased)

About Life

[From chiamai in reply to my words of the previous day] Interesting. How do you study quantum field theory with your citizen group? Which textbooks do you use? Today, August 15, is a holiday here. People are used to go out for picnics or so, but it's raining!

[In reply to chiamai] We use an introductory text book "Field Theory" written in Japanese by Gyo Takeda. One or the other enthusiastic person in our circle, who read some pages of the book in advance, gives a lecture. Thanks a lot for your comment on my blog post (http://dlvr.it/3pLfQ). I will write my reply soon. What kind of holiday today there?

[From chiamai] August 15 is a Catholic holiday to celebrate the Assumption of St. Mary into heaven but is now mostly considered as a midsummer day off.

[To chiamai] Posted my reply to your comment at http://dlvr.it/3pLfQ, with a question about your country. A short reply suffices.

About Peace and Politics

Mr. Gates Makes a Start, Editorial, NYTimes (http://nyti.ms/c5URb3): Defense Secretary has sensibly pledged to restrain military spending.

About Science

"An easy way to boost a paper's citations," Nature News (http://bit.ly/cGFP3P) - "[... I]t could pay to include more references."