What is it with publications in New York?  They catch our attention most weeks, if not most days, with something that helps us understand our natural and/or cultural world a bit more thoroughly.  Or interestingly.  Click the image above for an example from today’s New York Times.  If the wonders of southern India’s traditions were not enough to get your day going, then the plebeian wonders outside your own window might:

I’ve logged thousands of miles to catch a glimpse of one exotic creature or another, to Costa Rica to be dazzled by the bird known as the resplendent quetzal, to Hawaii to admire sea turtles, to Venezuela to spy man-eating anacondas. So it seemed more than a little odd that the one time I made a sighting worthy of a scientific publication, I was looking out of my living room window.

We should all  be so fortunate to see any of these natural or cultural wonders, grand or otherwise…