Cancer

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER We haven't had a flea problem, though we check our cats often (outside of winter) and dab 'em with the flea goop preventatively.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER I'll see if I can reduce some pics and post 'em tomorrow. It's a colorful bunch: all orange, orange & white, tortoiseshell, black & white, all black.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER The problems ours have had with fostered kittens before has been with the momcats. This bunch has no mom with them, so that dynamic is absent.

Re: The Last Word Somebody dumped a handful of worms into one girl's locker. She was all but certain it was me, but as usual I got the credit for someone else's genius.

Re: The Last Word That sort of thing varied among the schools I attended, though I don't recall male-female mayhem ever happening after age 7 or so.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER Not sure when we'll let the kittens and adults associate freely. Siegfried & Felix aren't physically aggressive, they just curse at young'uns. And Hobbes is still young enough we think he'd welcome the playmates, after the initial shock wears off.

Re: The Last Word I got thumped once or twice.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER We don't know the story behind these five other than their being brought over from Yakima. Their dentition says an age of 6 weeks, but they're undersized for it. But it's a delightful crew; when I walk into the room, two or three of them purr on sight, one of whom comes over and wants to be picked up.

Re: The Last Word And, you don't need to be concerned about getting your face pounded by muscular idiots who take offense at your wit. Your "delayed response" phenomenon could be the survival instinct working subconsciously.

Re: Answers & Questions

Re: Musings on Random Musings Rather to my surprise, our weather let us see the eclipse last night. It happened right after moonrise here, and since our house is just west of a densely wooded hillcrest, I loaded the kids into the truck and we drove to the other side of the hill. I haven't transferred the images off my camera yet to see if any of them are any good.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER The kittens were removed from their mother way too early. Their preferred solid food is cottage cheese, and when my wife offered formula in a bottle to one of them yesterday, the response was so enthusiastic he literally pulled the nipple out of the bottle. So now they get their formula/milk in a pie pan. Moving the free-standing heater to the room where they're being kept seems to have perked them up substantially too (we are cheap bastiches and keep the house cool, 61-62 F, in the winter).

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER

Re: The Last Word Owl feathers + squirrel tail. It'd be interesting.

Re: The Last Word I didn't marry until I was in my mid-30's, and we waited a couple of years after that.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat Paint your butt black or dark red, and then stand on a freeway overpass and moon the cars passing underneath you. When arrested, tell 'em you're just following the tenets of your faith. You're a moonie. NT: Reasons you won't get to be a delegate to the national party convention of your choice.

Re: Intergalactic distance Yeah, intra-cluster speeds are appreciable (a few hundred km/sec; call it a thousand for estimating), but 60 Myr of time doesn't let that add up to much. 1 km/sec = 1.02 * 10^-6 parsec/year, so 60 Myr at 1000 km/s is roughly 6000 pc. That's about 10-20% of the size of a medium-size galaxy.

Re: The Last Word I'd have to ask; she might well have. She & husband both went to Harvey Mudd.

Re: The Last Word The observed solar spectrum at 6911 Angstroms is dominated by lines not of the gases in the Sun, but of gases in the Earth's atmosphere, in this case, O2. This is in what Frauenhofer called the B band, a pattern of strong spectral lines due to an electronic transition in the oxygen molecule; the bandhead is at 6867A, and the lines trail off from there for a hundred Angstroms or so to longer wavelengths. (The similar but stronger A band has its bandhead at 7593A.) In the main part of the band, the lines are so strong that there is essentially zero transmitted light in the broad line core, and the lines of the isotopically substituted varieties of O2 (that is, rather than 16O-16O, 18O-16O and 17O-16O) are present and of appreciable strength; 18O is 1/500 as abundant as 16O, and 17O is 1/2600 as abundant as 16O. The strong 16O-16O lines obliterate the spectrum where they are present, which means this spectrum interval is generally avoided, if possible, when taking data on astronomical targets.

Re: The Last Word One grad school cohort of mine ... actually, she was 2-3 years behind me ... had her first while in grad school. She's a department chairman now, and her daughter graduated from college last June.

Re: The Last Word That cuts down the range of possibilities some, but not enough to be a useful search criterion.

Re: The Last Word ... And what were you doing with that time otherwise? Sorry. Not trying to push in either direction, just make trouble. As usual.

Re: The Last Word It can be difficult at times to believe, but they do grow out of being babies.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER Actually, I'd have to consider that carefully, because I tend to prefer popular music with as little vocals as possible. Enya pops immediately to mind.

Re: Musings on Random Musings Yeah, and that latter is consistent with what I said. A decent novelty act and little more. The former could well be true too; I pay no attention to the media segment that gave her most of her publicity.