Ashley Richards

I’m not quite sure what to make of this new book: Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters: From Dating, Shopping, and Praying to Going to War and Becoming a Billionaire– Two Evolutionary Psychologists Explain Why We Do What We Do. From the review in the New York Post I read it seems that the book [...]

So I went to the optometrist today and made the mistake of trying to be chatty with him. After shaking my hand, he asked how I was doing. I took that as a conversation opener (silly me), and I said I had a bit of a cold. He looked at me as if I said [...]

Watch The Story Tree animated short.

Summer’s finally here. Yes Summer, not Spring. May in the old Celtic tradition marks the beginning of summer and summer solstice is midsummer. You can get the whole explanation here. Remember the maypole with the dancing and ribbons – comes from this day. In Scotland, they still hold bonfires to celebrate. It’s when faeries come [...]

It’s Alfred Hitchcock’s birthday today. So I’ve been watching the Hitchcock marathon all weekend. Ironically it’s very fitting that they’re playing Vertigo, because I have vertigo. I wish it’s like in the movie where it’s brought on by a fear of heights. No, it just hits me whenever it damn well pleases while causing my [...]

This past week I got my first email letting me know that Milly, the woman whose business I invested in over in Uganda, started paying back her loan I helped finance. She’s expanded her 1-room home so that her family of 6 children has more space – most women make their crafts at home. No, [...]

Who needs cell phones – JetBlue will have wi-fi. And that means we should be able to talk on the “phone” on the plane. No more need for those horribly expensive airphones. And you thought the loud couple in front of you was annoying – now we’ll have to deal with annoying loud voip conversations.

No this isn’t a lament on technology being the focus of our lives here. It’s about photography. I don’t know if it’s Bay Area folklore or truth, but according to my photography teacher, the Kodak film color palette is based on the colors that appear in nature here in Palo Alto. So for Kodak film, [...]

I keep hearing in the news that people are planning on moving to Canada because Bush won the election. If you think about it for more than the split-second you see it in your newsreader or on the evening news, it doesn’t make much sense. I lived in Canada since the last election up until [...]

So after all the brouhaha about how the elections officials in Santa Clara County were directing their people not to offer paper ballots when there were those oh so reliable electronic voting machines, guess what I was asked when I got to the registration table in Mountain View City Hall? Electronic or Paper? I picked [...]