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eftychia at 02:45pm on 2003-09-01
eftychia at 02:45pm on 2003-09-01- As most of y'all know, Mars just passed as close to Earth as it's going to get for the next few hundred years. Here's a cool photo from the Hubble Space Telescope taking advantage of that.
- Again about Mars,
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theferrett wrote an entertaining
post about
The Day Mars Left His Girlfriend. - Continuing a theme (sortakinda), here's The Scout Walker Kama Sutra (Earth Edition) uses those big walking combat machines from the Star Wars movies to illustrate sexual positions. "Within the site you will find many beautiful and erotic pictures illustrating the positions and practices Scout Walkers indulge in their more private, intimate moments that generally go unconsidered by the interstella media at large. These intelligent machines share a common bond with all other known races - a passion for passion. We hope you find your visit to this site exciting, informative and educational. It is our wish that you will leave this site with a better awareness of the culture and individuality of cybernetic and robotic races you would otherwise have continued to perceive as souless production-line killing machines thoughtlessly bent on conquest and bloody carnage alone." (Shows what I know -- I thought they were merely piloted mechs; I had no idea there was an AI on board.)
- Dark Chocolate Might Lower Blood Pressure apparently due to the presence of polyphenols, same as for red wine. "But the German researchers said the results would need to be confirmed in larger, longer studies before doctors could prescribe chocolate." (Hey, I've been describing my choclate stash (dark) as medicinal for a while.)
- Got drugs that are past their expiration date? Been meaning to clean out the medicine cabinet? Take a look at this article by Richard Altschuler: "Do Medications Really Expire? (Try An Experiment With Your Mother-In-Law)". "One of the largest studies ever conducted that supports the above points about 'expired drug' labeling was done by the U.S. military 15 years ago [...]"
- I found this quite some time ago (before I got onto LiveJournal I think?) but wanting to show it to my relatives reminded me that I don't think I've posted it here yet: there's a web site devoted to halloumi, my very favourite cheese. There are references in there to local-news type events in Cyprus that I didn't know about until my godmother saw the page and started explaining them.
- A story which I've gotten from several directions at once: the Bush administrations declares that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant .... well when I was in high school, I don't think it was thought of as a pollutant because it's not poisonous, not ugly to the eyes or nose, and is already common in the air we breathe (yeah, yeah, especially the air we exhale). But just as "light pollution" and "noise pollution" have entered our vocabulary as "quality of life" issues [noise pollution can have health effects as well], and "heat pollution" is a recognized environmental issue with serious effects on wildlife habitats, it is at best disingeneous to dismiss "the main cause of global warming" as "not a pollutant". "The decision by the Environmental Protection Agency - announced with minimal fanfare on the eve of the Labor Day weekend - reverses the stance taken under President Clinton and allows industry to increase emissions with impunity. It is also part of a pattern of casting doubt on scientific evidence, going back to the US's rejection of the Kyoto Protocols in 2001."
- Is nicotine a drug or a food?
This editorial(?) from The Washington Post
that sjo mentioned, points out that currently
it seems to depend on how it's marketed more than anything
else. While the tone of the editorial is that nicotine in
all forms should be Regulated As A Drug -- a point on which
I more or less agree (either nicotine should be
treated as a drug or other drugs of similar or lesser
impact should be treated like cigarettes) but which I can
see as being argued either way -- it brings up another
problem with this situation: "There are two big problems
with this state of affairs. The first is that no highly
addictive and harmful drug should be marketed without
substantial regulatory oversight. It is bad enough that
cigarettes themselves should go unregulated by a public
health- oriented agency, but it is simply inexcusable that
their constituent chemical compounds would be sold in
drugstores without triggering the jurisdiction of the agency
that supposedly regulates drugs. Moreover, the situation is
grossly unfair to drug companies that spend significant time
and resources to bring to market traditional nicotine-replacement
products under the usual rules of drug and medical device
development."
- Okay, to break the mood of the last two items and the next
one, here's an
adorable cat photo that y'all have to go "awwww" at. (Found by way of mohnkern's journal.)
- And for Labor Day, here's a labor story (from the New York Times by way of the International Herald Tribune: The vanishing American vacation. "A survey in May by the online travel agency Expedia.com found that 12 percent of respondents were taking no vacation, 10 percent were taking less vacation than they did last year, and 20 percent said they felt guilty taking vacation." -- apparently a combination of fear of not having a job later, companies' cutting benefits, or downsizing resulting in folks essentially having two workers' worth of work to do.
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(I shot a roll of her with the first mouse she caught here, but had trouble keeping her in focus so I'm not sure what I managed to get. And I shot several frames of her in a playful mood. I haven't gotten that high, ballet-like arc she makes shen she jumps over me on the bed yet. The problem is that I'm broke, so those rolls are just sitting in the freezer along with the crystal dragon illuminated by laser, my relatives, the last three Pennsic Wars, landscapes, interesting musical instruments, and a hundred and fifty other rolls of exposed film.)
So for now, all I've got are the photos I posted in July (http://www.livejournal.com/users/dglenn/142227.html).
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Yeah, I'll bet. I can see one of them saying to another, "You know, I think we need to study this chocolate thing at _length_. Here, have some more..."
It's what I would do, anyway.
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"A survey in May by the online travel agency Expedia.com found that 12 percent of respondents were taking no vacation, 10 percent were taking less vacation than they did last year, and 20 percent said they felt guilty taking vacation."
I feel SO un-guilty taking vacation, within reason. So much so, that I truly believe that the grief I was given for my trip to California in 2002 led to my leaving APA. Probably just as well, since there were clearly some incompatible views on work. I think work is just that -- work. I go there, I do my job well, I go home. My life is elsewhere.
You'll like this
Forthright's Phrontisery
I'm suddenly back in the Reagan years...
?!