• When M. and I left our hotel room on Tuesday, the lobby was full of the crackle of police radios. Everywhere you looked in downtown Chicago, there were cops standing around.

These are some kind of federales outside a federal office building on Jackson Street.

I was happy, therefore, to get home and learn that the huge crowds at Barack Obama’s rally were mostly good-natured and that there was no celebratory rioting.

• I will be watching for progress on rebuilding the Temple of Artemis.

• When Obama made his ill-considered remark about those of us in flyover country “clinging to guns and religion,” my first thought was to wonder which religion(s) he had in mind. Oleg Volk, a Russian-born photographer now living in Tennessee, created an image that mirrors my thoughts.

• And this post on “alternative” gun culture is all about others who don’t want to be victims, such as the Pink Pistols.