It's unbelievably hot out there. I wandered around the Fenway with a liter bottle of water, feeling guilty that I had to guzzle it all myself and not share a little with the parched, brown grass I was walking on. I miss Downeast Maine.

Idiocy on the march once more: a conservative Christian group is challenging UNC Chapel Hill's decision to require incoming freshmen to read Michael Sells' Approaching the Qu'ran: The Early Revelations, on the grounds that it would be tantamount to promoting Islam. Talking head Bill O'Reilly of Fox News (paragon of journalistic integrity) compares the requirement to making students read Mein Kampf in 1941, since apparently to him and many other empty-headed fools Islam is the "religion of the enemy". Remarks like that are exactly why we need more education about Islam, which claims over a billion souls as adherents. I've got news for you, folks - if every single Muslim man, woman, and child was a holy warrior dedicated to the destruction of civilization as we know it, we'd all be long gone by now. But this isn't really about Islam. It's about a growing segment of American society who want to live in a bubble, where they're always right and everyone else is always wrong. These bubble people pull their kids out of public schools, lest they be exposed to multiculturalism, evolutionary theory, or (gasp!) sex ed, or else they hire an expensive battery of lawyers to force those schools to remove the offending subject matter from their children's sensitive eyes and ears. They're not just religious zealots, but jingoistic zealots as well, who wrap themselves in the flag and scream bloody murder when teachers dare to explore the darker corners of American history. The slave trade? Attempted genocide against the Native Americans? The necessity of dropping two atomic bombs on a nation that by almost all accounts was on its last legs and ready to surrender? "Traitor!", they cry, and call for the offending instructor's head. Make no mistakes about it, folks, we are fighting a war, but it's not the one they advertise on television every night with creepy-crawlie factoids and slick graphics - it's a war between tolerance and intolerance, and the stakes are much, much higher than the outcome of any damned fool military crusade.

Whew! Where did that rant come from? It must be the heat. Why don't we all chill out and enjoy the sunset in Santorini. Or the sunrise. Or anytime in between. Because that's the beauty of webcams.