What follows is the Lateral Thinking Department inaugural post, written in June of 2015. I felt like I should dust it off and spruce it up a bit.
One day in June 2015, my wife Jeanette and I found ourselves sitting in an outdoor bar in downtown Austin, Texas. Austin is well known as a cultural center but also for the large number (more than a million) of Free-Tailed Bats which spend part of each year living under the Congress Avenue Bridge (also downtown).
They are renowned for their aerial abilities, stamina, and long tails which, unlike those of other bats, extend beyond the membrane that stretches between their hind legs: hence the free-tailed apellation. These bats can reach speeds approaching 100 miles per hour in level flight and can cruise at 10,000 feet. When they aren’t in Austin they are probably equipped with tiny cameras and are flying surveillance missions for the U.S. government. Or maybe the IMF. Rumor has it that Tom Cruise actually trained with these bats.
For the record, my wife Jeanette loathes bats and refers to them as “flying mice”.
Flying monkeys might be closer to the mark. Bats actually belong to the order Chiroptera which is related to primates including lemurs, monkeys, nuns, apes and chiropractors. I might have more to say about these bats later, but right now I need to get to Topology. This will require discussing Microbiomes.
to find out what the heck microbiomes have to do with topology, keep reading
The Department of Lateral Thinking 
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