“What’s important about these findings… is that they show you people can actually get killed from something from out of space.” Did a comet trigger the Great Chicago Fire? Pretty neat. Maybe it’s time to exonerate poor Mrs. O’Leary’s cow!
Month: March 2004
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Day 2 of Cat Ownership
I’m tired. I feel like Dooce. Okay, that’s not true. If there’s a scale of maternal misery, she’s at, like, 100 and I’m at 7. But my level of sympathy for her is going way up. I spent the whole night lying awake listening to Amy meow pitifully in the bathroom. I knew she’d go to sleep eventually but it just broke my heart to hear her. Then I started envisioning all the things that could happen in there. “Snookums, our toilet seat isn’t very heavy. She could push it up with her head and fall in and drown! Oh, and I left the bottle of hand soap on the sink. She could accidentally push it and then lick the soap and get poisoned!” He’d just grunt, turn over, and start snoring again. Eventually she quieted down and I feel into an uneasy sleep. This morning we gingerly opened the bathroom door to see her peeking out at us from her new cat bed. And lo and behold, she’d done a poo and a wee in her litterbox! Good girl, Amy!
I’m going to get her a scratching post tonight. So far she’s tried scratching her little claws on the couch, the bathroom rug, my jeans, and the dining room chairs. Only the first two are acceptable. Now the only decision is whether my cat-mommy guilt will allow me to purchase the cheap one-tier post or whether I’ll shell out $100 for the ultra mega three-tier-and-a-tunnel playground. We’ll see.
I swear this isn’t going to become a total CatBlog. It’s just the novelty of the thing. You may have to sit through a few more pictures though… 🙂
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Introducing Dr. Amy Jones!
Introducing Dr. Amy Jones!
And just like that, we’re a family.
The cat’s name was originally going to be Dr. Alowicious Jones, but that’s really more of a boy’s name and she’s a girl. So then we came up with the idea of naming her after my sister, for the pure comedy of saying, “Amy shat all over the floor!” and “Amy’s coughing up a hairball.” Think of it as a compliment, Sis. 🙂
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Smells like Albania.
Okay, these Texas sayings from MetaFilter cracked me up. They’re hilarious. I was trying to think of any regional Indiana expressions but we don’t seem to have much colorful slang.
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Another FO – Columbine Peak Socks
(That’s “Finished Object” for you non-knitters.) After doing two pairs of simple basic socks, I was ready to expand my skills. So I cracked open my copy of Socks Soar on Two Circulars* and picked out the “Columbine Peaks” pattern. The leg of the sock has a lacy pattern that forms little v-shaped mountain peaks that continue down onto the foot. It wasn’t too hard, though you do have to count and sometimes I have difficulty with that. (Handy tip: Knitting and wine don’t go together so well.) Now they’re finally done. Unfortunately the Sockenwool I had was rainbow-colored so the pattern doesn’t show up so well, but I still like them. They give me the craziest urge to buy some Birkenstocks and walk around like a German tourist. (Note: That second image is a big scan and shows the stitch pattern nicely.)
* Although I like the technique used, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this book for beginners. I’ve found several frustrating errors in the patterns. You can see a list of some corrections here.
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Australian sheep produce world’s finest wool
Australian sheep produce world’s finest wool. That’s not a generalization, like saying that Aussie wool is the best. They really have produced a bale of the finest – in terms of thickness – wool ever seen. It’s worth thousands of dollars and will probably be sold to a top fashion house. Gee, you could make some lovely soft sweaters with that!
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Space links
Mars had water. How cool is that? I want to be an astronaut.
Astronauts on space walks have to wear adult diapers. Okay, I take it back.
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More in periods and birth control…
John Rock’s Error: What the co-inventor of the Pill didn’t know about menstruation can endanger women’s health.
I just read this absolutely fascinating article on the development of the birth control pill and its ramifications for women’s health. It completely debunks the idea that having a period every month is in any way “natural”. You all should read it. Seriously. Even you men. (Well, I guess the gay ones are excepted, but you still might find it interesting.)
It starts off talking about Dr. John Rock, the Catholic doctor credited with inventing the Pill, and his belief that the Church would approve it as a “natural” method of contraception. After all, human females already have a safe time each month where they can’t conceive, and all the Pill does is provide more of the body’s own hormones to extend that time frame. The Church already approved the rhythm method and Dr. Rock saw the Pill as merely a regulator and helper for that. As we all know, the Pope didn’t quite agree.The second part of the article is about the research of Beverly Strassmann, who travelled to Africa in the 80’s and lived with a tribe for two years. They use no contraception and live as they did thousands of years ago. She reckoned that by observing the women’s reproductive lives she’d be able to see what really was “natural”. In the end, her records showed that healthy women spent most of their lives not menstruating (either from pregnancy, breastfeeding, or menopause). These “natural” women had on average 100 periods over the course of their lifetimes. Western women average around 350-400. From the article:
In other words, what we think of as normal–frequent menses–is in evolutionary terms abnormal. “It’s a pity that gynecologists think that women have to menstruate every month,” Strassmann went on. “They just don’t understand the real biology of menstruation.”
The last part of the article delves into the health problems menstruating causes (and we’re not talking PMS here). Every time you have cell division, there’s an increased risk of cancer. The monthly hormonal fluctuations caused by menstruation result in a lot of cell division. Researchers have long wondered by Japanese women have a much lower risk of breast cancer than Western women. Two scientists named Pike and Henderson were able to correlate this increased risk with a number of hormone and period-related factors: age of first period, weight, and diet. Japenese women weigh less, eat less fat, and start menstruating later in life. This means on average they produce 75% of the estrogen Western women do. Pike reckons that by limiting the amounts of progestin women have (which is augmented by the Pill), their risk of breast and ovarian cancer would fall dramatically. He’s now working on a new contraceptive inhaler that would do just that.
The article concludes by returning to Dr. Rock, who felt so let down by the Church’s decision about the Pill that he lost his faith entirely. He died poor and alone. I was left feeling sorry for him but amazed at the effects of his work. We modern folks tend to think that we’re so advanced but in reality we’re just bumbling and stumbling. Our knowledge of one of the vital processes of life is laughably vague. Sure, we don’t necessarily have to sit in a menstrual hut every month anymore, but modern women are still exposing themselves to unnecessary trials and risks.
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Ebert answers the question
Ebert has answered Major’s question from yesterday. There have been two previous major films that won every Academy Award they were nominated for: Gigi and The Last Emperor. They both went nine-for-nine.