Help! Can cats get bloody noses? I just noticed when I got home tonight that Dr. Amy Jones has something black in one nostril. I figured it was either a bit of lint, or maybe a piece of food that stuck to her while she was rooting around like the little pig that she is, but when I tried to wipe it away I realized it was pretty firmly stuck. Now I’m thinking that it’s a bit of dried blood. Have any of you ever had a cat get a bloody nose? I called the vet and they said she’d probably be okay, just to watch her over the weekend and bring her in if it gets any worse. She might have just scratched herself or run into something, right? Put me at ease, here.

The Prime Minister has finally decided to abolish ATSIC. Didn’t Mark Latham propose that a month ago? Are we going to spend the next six months in the lead-up to the election with the government copying every idea that Labor comes up with?

Hey Sis, if I were you I’d rethink that decision to forgo earthquake insurance. Scariness.

Watch as I kill your childhood: Corey Haim has apparently resorted to selling his hair and teeth for extra cash. Ick-o-rama.

Amazon have launched a new search engine today: A9. It’s apparently built on top of Google but includes other things like Amazon’s “Search Inside the Book” technology. Could be useful…

Space Invaders knitting chart. (Link via Craftster.) Man, I’m all about the knitting links today…

The Snook has been faithfully taping every episode of Dr. Who since the ABC began airing them last year. I think he’s only missed one day. He then transfers them to the computer and burns them to CD. His goal, as I understand it, is to eventually own every single episode. Unfortunately a copyright dispute means that some of the most famous episodes (involving the Daleks) can’t be re-broadcast. I learned this from a great opinion piece in today’s Herald. The author goes on to explain why copyright extensions are a bad thing and how the proposed Free Trade Agreement with the US is going to result in the removal of many works from the public domain in Australia. I mean, really, can anyone honestly argue that “life plus 70 years” is that much more of an incentive to creation than “life plus 50 years”?

Bravo, Harriet Veitch! “[W]hat are you going to do with yourself when you get old and turn into a granny or granddad? You won’t be hip-hopping to your iPod on your motor scooter the way you think; you’ll be crocheting blankets for the grandbabies or carving cots because you can’t afford to buy one at McIkea. Someone will have to teach you these crafts, and it will be people like us, the ones you scorn right now.” Let’s hear it for the knitters, the crafters, the handworkers, and the bakers!

Knitting for Charity
My KnitWits group at work has decided to do some knitting for “Wraps With Love”, a local group that donates knitted blankets to the needy. Any Aussie knitters want to join us? I’ll volunteer to collect the squares, sew them togther (or host a sewing party), and send them off to the charity. Let me know if you’d like to participate!

This is so cool. In a couple days NASA will launch a satellite filled with gyroscopic equipment designed to finally test once-and-for-all Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. It’ll orbit over the poles and “measure how space and time are warped by the presence of the Earth, and, more profoundly, how the Earth’s rotation drags space-time around with it.” I’ve just been reading about Einstein’s theory in Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything and this experiment just sounds so tomorrow. We’re testing things that previous generations thought untestable and unknowable. Bring on the tractor beams and warp drives!