Angels make sense for once!

So why doesn't he reduce human misery and suffering?
Apparently God and all the angels have Australian accents, too.

Found on Pharyngula

WOLVERINES!!

It's been a long couple of weeks, but taxes are done and maybe eventually I'll feel like talking about other crappy things that happened. But not right now.

Right now I'm just going to say WOLVERINES!! Which you won't get unless you follow The Bloggess on Twitter. UPDATE: I guess I should note that I saw this while skiing the other day. Or maybe that's obvious. Wolverine Bowl: about this steep \

Wolverine fact: The first documented wolverine in California since 1920 was photographed last year by a graduate student who had set up a remote camera to study the effects of landscape change on American martens. It caused quite a stir. Click here if you want to see a good picture of a wolverine butt. They have more recently captured video of what they're pretty sure is the same wolverine.

Contrary to the title of the article, the pine martens the student was studying are NOT birds, and are, in fact, members of the family Mustelidae - the same family as the wolverine. I think they were getting them confused with Purple Martins. You'd think that something called Science Daily would have done a better job with their fact checking.

Brilliant post. Did I say brilliant? I meant boring.

I haven't posted recently, and I think that, along with Mr Farty, this may be my crappiest post ever. Not that Mr Farty's post was crappy. It was totally awesome! It said so in the title.

Right now, I could either be sewing my pirate costume full pirate regalia for an upcoming Flying Spaghetti Monster party, or writing this post, or sleeping. I've had a couple of gin and tonics, and if I can do this:sober, imagine what I can do completely drunk slightly tipsy. (Sorry for anyone who already saw this on Twitter (Hi Lesley!!). Strike while the iron is hot, unless you're ironing suedecloth. That works better on medium. (Speaking of Twitter, as soon as I twittered about male and female strippers, The Bloggess started following me. I'm just sayin')

[WARNING: Completely arbitrary change of topic]
Remember the post about Twister the one-eyed wonder horse? You know. The post before last? Someone (named David) pointed out to me that perhaps Twister is NOT soaking his hay to soften it up, but is, in fact brewing his own alcoholic beverage. A sort of hay beer. He does occasionally bump into things, which I attributed to his blindness, but maybe he's just tipsy.

She blinded me...with Science! She was not blinded because she was wearing her 3D glasses.

If you don't read Um...What??, specifically this post and this post including the comment sections, you COMPLETELY will not understand this post and think that I have perhaps entirely lost my mind (very likely true, but that's beside the point). Note to all my hundreds of both my faithful readers (Hi Pater and Kia!)(because most of my friends, my mother and my brother all refuse to read this blog)(Except David, who DOES read this, and he's my ex-husband! AND he's gay! Which has absolutely nothing to do with anything): GO READ Um...What??!

Proof positive that scientists DO wear 3D glasses. See?
You: Say, aren't those Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D glasses from the DVD?
Me: Uh.......no?
You: Then why do they say Journey to the Center of the Earth on the side?
Me:........... Hey! (pointing) Look over there! Isn't that Wil Wheaton? He's just this guy, you know?
Also, you can tell from these photos that, not only do scientists wear 3D glasses, they never wear any makeup. Female ones, anyway. The male ones might, if they're English. Oh, wait. That's just women's clothes they wear (will this prompt my British scientist father to comment? Probably not. Maybe Andrew? Great. I've probably just insulted half my readership. I'll just hope that Mr Farty never sees it).

The only real makeup I have is from when I got married and two of my friends M took me to have my makeup done, so its about three years old now (married to Bill, not to David - that makeup would be 22 years old now)(Note to self: Find out if makeup ever goes bad).

Then there's the professorial look:
(Note to self: Make sure you clean your lunch debris off your computer desk prior to any future photo shoots. Oh, and put some makeup on, will ya?)
Like my Hallucigenia mug from Charlie's Playhouse?

Special thank you to the Wildlife Forensics Lab for the loan of the lab coat and glassware (yes, really - you don't even want to know what smells occasionally waft down the halls at work. You should have been there the day the guys in my office accidentally left a net they found that had contained three dead otters ON MY DESK!!! (yes, there are evil people in the world who do nasty things to poor innocent wildlife, but that's for another post). The guys had been out counting salmon carcasses (the salmon died of natural causes) and APPARENTLY COULDN'T SMELL IT which was almost completely unbelievable to the rest of us standing in the hallway - because you couldn't actually go into the room without vomiting gagging. They figured that it was OK, since they had taken the otters out (I am really, really glad I have my own office now).

I would also like to give a really special thank you to my friend S who enthusiastically took the photos.

UPDATE: On reading through this again, I think I could almost rival (((Billy))) the Atheist for number of parentheses. Almost.

Twister the One-eyed Wonder Horse

WARNING: IF YOU'RE SQUEAMISH ABOUT EYE-SOCKETS, DON'T EVEN LOOK AT THIS POST

UPDATE: Apparently, don't look at it if you are squeamish about the trots, either. (No pun intended)(Okay, I lied. Pun intended)

Yes, I have one of the smartest horses in the world, and I'm not the only one who says that.

A little bit about Twister: He's about 25 years old, and we've had him since he was 18 and William was 12. Come to think of it, Bill and Twister came into our lives right around the same time.William and Twister's first 4-H competitive trail ride. Third place!

As I've said in previous posts, he was born with a huge cataract in one eye, and developed equine recurrent uveitis, aka moon blindness in the other. When we got him, he had had recurrent infections for many years, and his eye was very scarred and caused him constant pain. It was very light sensitive so he kept his eyes closed and fell asleep a lot:About three years ago it abscessed and I had to have it removed (and not put back in like SOME people). He's been MUCH happier ever since. Interestingly, Twister isn't the first blind horse I've had. Paleface, the Pony of the Americas I had when I was growing up also went blind due to moon blindness. He also adapted and lived for many years after. (Yes, the common denominator seems to be me, but Twister had it well before I got him)

Other problems we've dealt with are: mild arthritis, mild navicular, occasional very painful hoof abscesses, and a leg wound that didn't heal for well over a year. Oh, and his teeth are almost worn down to nothing on one side, and not much better on the other, so he can't chew his food properly. I am an expert at bandaging legs, packing hooves, putting ointment in eyes (the left one, anyway), and giving shots. He also had almost constant diarrhea, for which I took him to the vet several times. They just told me that he's an old horse and there wasn't anything I could do.

What's this banana slug photo doing here? Oh, right. I'm a biologist.

Last summer, I started noticing that his poop (yes, this is a technical term - if you're a sailor) was more horselike and less cow patty-like (a scientific description). The ranch owners and I also started noticing that his water was full of hay, disgustingly stinky (another scientific description), and had to be cleaned out far more often than all the other horses. I thought he was just drinking with his mouth full, and dropping some hay in. We also thought he might be accidentally pooping in his water - after all, he IS blind. Well, turns out he's blind but he's not stupid.

One day, while I was cleaning his paddock, the ranch owner came around to feed. While we were chatting, Twister grabbed a huge mouthful of hay, carried it over to his water trough, and dropped it in. The owner and I looked at each other. Did he just do that on purpose?

I went over, scooped it out and said, "Twister, don't do that, you idiot!" He immediately sniffed around, picked it up and plopped it back in. He then spent the next few minutes slurping it off the surface. He went back over and picked up another huge chunk of hay, carried it over and dunked it in the water, and then happily slurped it up. I couldn't believe it. He was softening it up so he could chew it. We were astounded. We watched as he did this with the rest of his hay. He must have originally done it accidentally once or twice, and discovered the hay was softer and easier to chew when soaked for a while. I would never have credited a horse with the reasoning abilities to connect the dots.
And because he's able to digest his food better, an added benefit is that he managed to "fix" his own diarrhea problem.

I just have to clean out his bathtub trough frequently. I might think it stinks, but Twister's next door neighbour, Spicy, thinks it's delicious when I drain it. After:Is that a smart horse, or what? Handsome, too.

What's the square root of hemoglobin?

In honor of Square Root Day, I donated blood today.

My blog is good for something, because I looked up the last time I donated. July 17, 2008. I'm up to 35 donations or 4.375 gallons, now. It will be YEARS before I hit 5 at this rate.

I would donate far more frequently if they wouldn't keep deferring me because they say I don't have enough iron. Although, no, they didn't defer me all seven months. I've managed to donate 35 times in spite of low hematocrit and other things. Other things such as: (Kia will remember this, and thanks Mr Farty for reminding me) The second or third time I donated, the needle hurt a lot. Then my mouth went very, very dry and I started feeling queasy. I could feel the blood draining out of my body.

"Does anyone ever throw up while doing this?"

Every phlebotomist in the place was suddenly looming over me holding a waste paper basket. I leaned over and threw up, managing to miss every single one. The needle was immediately whipped out of my arm, my chair was tipped back so my head was lower than my feet, and a cold compress placed on my head while I croaked, "I'm sorry." over and over. They wouldn't let me finish donating, even though I asked....

I've made sure I'm completely hydrated before going in ever since.

My father was the one who got me into it, and took me to the Indiana Blood Center the first few times about 13 years ago. He's donated gallons and gallons over the years, but he is now ineligible. His cumulative visits to England between 1980 and 1999 added up to more than three months, so his blood isn't considered "safe" anymore. Those darn mad cows over there. (Photo poached from Mr Farty)

It's definitely worth doing, though. There is never enough blood. Depending on the phlebotomist, most of the time the needle doesn't really hurt at all. And don't let one or two bad experiences stop you. It took three before my mother finally gave up!

Religious thoughts

The other day, a friend of mine was going in to have fairly major surgery. I've known her for quite a long time, but she is a friend from one of the areas of my life where I'm mostly in the closet. The last time she had this surgery done, it didn't go as well as expected and it was a long and painful recovery. We were talking about this as we were leaving, and she asked me to pray for her. I was completely taken aback. I've actually never had this happen before. I wasn't quite sure what to say. I leaned toward her and sort of stuttered in a low voice,"Uh..well, I don't believe in all that stuff."

She said,"Well do it anyway! I need all the help I can get. Just tell him that you haven't done this in a while."

Actually, never would be the operative word.

I felt bad about telling her no, but I felt that it would be worse to lie to her and tell her I would. Should I have just told her yes to make her feel better even though that would be a lie? (She says she's doing much better than last time, by the way)
________________________________________________________________
On another note, the Freedom From Religion Foundation put up one of the Imagine No Religion billboards here in Sacramento! Isn't it pretty? Although FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor got the name switched around in this article. It's Atheists and Other Freethinkers.

Deer, oh deer

A couple of weeks ago, Bill and I watched the first episode of last season's Grey's Anatomy on DVD, which involved Izzy saving the life of a deer that had been hit by a car. The deer was played by a cheesy animatronic deer until it jumped up after Izzy zapped it with the paddles. Then it was played by a real one.

We recently started watching the first season of Crossing Jordan from 1991, and the episode we just watched involved the exact same animatronic deer. Seriously. The EXACT SAME ONE! There must be a limited supply of animatronic deer, because I don't even think that they are on the same networks. It was lying on the table in the morgue moaning and weakly lifting it's head, and I kept yelling, "Zap it with the paddles! It'll be fine! Zap it with the paddles!"

Unfortunately they generally don't have crash carts in morgues, so they had to wait for someone to sing Love Me Tender to the nearby dead Elvis impersonator, which apparently has the same effect.

CLARIFICATION: The Elvis impersonator was dead; he wasn't impersonating dead Elvis. That would just be gross.

UPDATE: Someone pointed out that there could be numerous identical animatronic deer, which could just give the appearance of there being only one. Maybe each network has one.

UPDATE 2: Bill pointed out that the Crossing Jordan episode was from 2001. I've never been very good with subtraction. Unless my son reads this, in which case, I am GREAT at subtraction and I use math in my job EVERY DAY

Ski report

Fog
When I went skiing the week before last, the top of the mountain was completely fogged in. The main high-speed 4 person lift to the top was closed, but they had the very old two-seater-no-safety-bar one running. I took this to the top, and almost regretted it. Visibility was less than 10 feet. Here is an actual picture I took with my phone:See the tree? Luckily, I knew the mountain well enough - I wouldn't go off any cliffs because the top portion is a bowl (with very few trees), so all I had to do was keep going down - and stay on the groomed bits. The problem is estimating speed when you can't see anything. I couldn't tell if I was skiing uphill, across, or down, and kept realizing I was skiing much faster than I thought. It was the weirdest feeling. If I looked down at my skis, I would start to get vertigo, so I kept my head up and my eye out for the very few other idiots skiers who had ventured up. I actually found it fun, in a strange way, so I did it two more times before moving on to more visible parts of the resort. It snowed on and off, and Lake Tahoe was almost indistinguishable from the menacing sky.
A lot of kids that age would be screaming
While I was riding a lift up last Friday, I watched a mother slowly working her way down some moguls with her 6 or 7 year old son, telling him exactly where to go and how to do it. I skied down, and just before I got to them, the little boy made it to the edge of the groomed area, at which point his skis flew out from under him, and he went sliding off down the fairly steep slope sprawled out on his back, slowly rotating clockwise. He slid about 20 or 30 feet and did one complete rotation before coming to a stop. His mother worriedly skied down, and as I skied by, he looked up at her and exclaimed,"That was FUUUUN!!! Can I learn how to do THAT?"