My tweets

• Sun, 14:52: Sunday in the kitchen http://j.mp/ncHpb1

Monday

The blog is getting pounded with spam tonight. Mostly Facebook links w/ gmail accounts. Not sure if they’re quick ‘n’ dirty set-ups or hacks. Make sure your accounts are secure.

Spam quality is pathetic. My postings have “saved much time.” Key words misspelled. Where are the imaginative names, the fortunes awaiting me if I send key personal information to an email address in Serbia? Dull, dull, dull. Sherlock-shooting-the-wall dull. Try harder, you dull people!

I love Akismet. Have I mentioned that?

Not much new. Had the furnace check. Outside temp at the time? About 82 degrees. Got a bit warm inside, yes.

Watched “The Girl Who Waited.” I can’t say I enjoy an episode like that. Too emotional. Too sad. I wanted them to save Rory the Robot, too–isn’t that idiotic? And we got to see a little more of the manipulative chill behind the bow tie.

It’s a wonder that more companions don’t come to hate the Doctor.

Mirrored from Kristine Smith.

Halloween’s coming

Scare the neighbors! Alarm your friends!

Or they may all just squee all over the place, who knows?

Green glowing kittens. Can puppies be far behind?

When these green kitties were still twinkles in their parents’ eyes, scientists investigating a macaque gene thought to protect monkeys against feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) inserted it into cat eggs with a lab-grown virus, intending to test whether cats carrying the gene were resistant to FIV as well. Researchers are interested in seeing how the macaque gene guards against FIV, which is the feline version of HIV, in hopes of transferring their insights to combating HIV.

But here’s where things get wacky: The team also included in the virus a jellyfish gene that makes a glowing green protein, to act as a signal. The virus does not always succeed in transferring the genes entrusted to it, but by including the jellyfish gene, the team gave themselves an easy way to tell when the transfer took place: kittens that glow green under fluorescent light, showing that they carry the jellyfish gene, almost certainly carry the macaque gene as well.

Mirrored from Kristine Smith.

Planet in habitable zone, possibly with Earth-like atmosphere, discovered 36 light years away

I love these stories. It seems as though we’re getting closer and closer to uncovering Earthlike worlds.

Planet in habitable zone, possibly with Earth-like atmosphere, discovered 36 light years away.

Today, along with the announcement of 50 other exoplanet discoveries, comes news from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) of the second planet ever detected in the habitable zone of another solar system:

Astronomers using ESO’s world-leading exoplanet hunter HARPS have today announced a rich haul of more than 50 new exoplanets, including 16 super-Earths, one of which orbits at the edge of the habitable zone of its star.

Mirrored from Kristine Smith.