web analytics

A Friday miscellany

plague

They’ve been replacing the fusebox at work for two days. It means I haven’t had power, so I couldn’t really work, but I had to be there to babysit. No power for two days means the battery ran flat on the burglar alarm. Do you know what happens when the battery runs flat on a burglar alarm? It uses a backup battery to scream its lungs out.

I asked the alarm company if I could just pull the battery, and she said, “oh, god no! Don’t do that!” So I have sat under a howling alarm for six hours today, surfing the internet on a wifi signal stolen from the business next door. Coherence, I hasn’t any. Have some miscellaneous links instead.

Ah, now I know why the plague has been in the news lately: they’ve confirmed the plague organism of the Great Plague by DNA testing skeletons they dug up during Crossrail. I thought they did that ages ago, but I guess that was the Black Death of 1348, not the Great Plague of the 1660s. And, yes, in both cases the organism was Yersinia pestis.

On my morning slog through cute cat pictures (don’t judge me!) I ran across this article, making the case for a “tortoiseshell personality.” I’ve never had a tortie, but I surely believe from experience there’s a ginger personality and a tabby personality. The interesting nugget was this: “And now that there is a a study correlating coat pattern with behavior, our characterizations have been validated.”

Oh, how I want to find that study. And also point out if you correlating coat pattern with behavior in human beings, you’d be up on charges. Which brings us to our next article.

Apparently, AIs are turning white supremacist. The idea that feeding tons of data about white people into the database gives the conclusions a bias toward whiteness is perfectly sensible. Though I would also suggest that “risk of reoffending” data targetting blacks may not be a distortion of the data.

Finally, have you seen this? Wikipedia is trying to get people to take pictures of local monuments for them. The prize seems to be “Wikipedia will use your picture in Wikipedia,” so…woo, I guess. Anyway, I checked the interactive map to see which of my local monuments were in demand and discovered…our house made the list!

This isn’t a thing, really. They’ve obviously just used the data for listed buildings, of which there are 200K in the UK. Still cool. And no, I’m not sending Wikipedia a picture of my house.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

Comments


Comment from Skandia Recluse
Time: September 9, 2016, 9:56 pm

I love your blog Miss Weasel.

And also point out if you correlating coat pattern with behavior in human beings, you’d be up on charges.

Heh, I hinted at that with my Red Headed Amazon Clone Warrior Womens who keep large alien cats as familiars the way witches do. In my imagination the Blonde haired busty and lusty ones love horses and men. (No explicit naughty stuff. Use your imagination.) The Red Heads are predators who think everything is a war scenario.

And I put up a ‘Second Taste of Imagination’ (B01L7P3MNI) which starts out with a truck driver’s account of a close encounter of the Art Bell kind. Followed by a mystery man who seems to be a government spook. A story about an old man walking his salamander (something you don’t see every day). Dead Drop, an impossible rescue mission my red headed amazon warrior priestess pull off. A New Friend shows up on your doorstep, you feed him, and you have a friend for life, and a dark and angry End to civilization as we know it.

The last collection of short stories was well received here, so I offer up another batch. The kindle preview serves up the first story and part of the second. Read for free on kindle unlimited.

Oh, and I just finished “King of the Khyber Rifles” by Talbot Mundy, free on Amazon. Loved it. Very British Empire stuff from 1916. Read like James Bond, and had me looking at online images of the Khyber Pass.

Let’s not dig up Yersinia pestis. We have leprosy in Los Angles schools now. No need to repeat all the historical old time scourges of ancient times.


Comment from gromulin
Time: September 9, 2016, 10:30 pm

I tend to agree. Had two ‘russian blue’ mixes, and both were nuts, hilarious cats. Had a couple tuxedo cats, both standoffish. I remember calicos from my youth that were universally loud purring and drooly. There is correlation at some level.


Comment from Uncle Al
Time: September 10, 2016, 2:47 am

The DuckDuckGoFu is strong in Uncle Al.
The Relationship Between Coat Color and Aggressive Behaviors in the Domestic Cat

For a less technical discussion:
Your Cat’s Coat Color May Be Linked To His Personality


Comment from Mitchell
Time: September 10, 2016, 3:05 am

I had a tortie a few years ago and yeah, a lot of that applied. The only cat I’ve ever heard of that didn’t like fish / seafood of any kind. She even turned her nose up at albacore tuna.


Comment from BJM
Time: September 10, 2016, 3:39 am

I concur re tuxedo cats. Shorthair Tabbies have always been the calmest although our blue Burmese was the most loveable and the Abby was the wackiest.

We had a rather odd but totes funny feline related situation this week. Last month a very thin, friendly young female cat took up residence in my greenhouse (the veggie garden is sturdily fenced to keep our large rowdy dogs from rolling in the manure pile and cavorting through the beds).

I asked all the neighbors and posted a flyer, to no avail. We concluded that she was dumped. I called the volunteer adoption orgs but there is a surfeit of kittens this summer. I couldn’t take her to the shelter, it would have been a death sentence.

So she’s staying. I named her Sweetpea and she went to the vet early Wednesday for spaying and vaccinations. Mid morning they call absolutely cracking up. They sedated her and shaved her belly only to find a spay scar. We all had a good laugh.

Sweetpea is a grey & white tabby with just a bit of pale gold on her face and front legs…not exactly a tortie but cute as the dickens and very sweet natured.


Comment from catnip
Time: September 10, 2016, 5:35 am

An (approximately) 13 year-old Tortie resides at our house. She was a rescue, and the second we’ve had the pleasure of “owning.” She’s experiencing renal failure now, and when she’s no longer with us, we’ll be looking to adopt another. There’s no similarity between the two cats’ personalities, except for their being quiet. affectionate, and extremely funny.

The first Tortie just flat-out moved here. She’d been the initial cat acquired by a kind and very private gay couple who moved in 3 doors up the street. They began adding cats to their family, and when the number of felines in their household reached 7, this kitty packed her bags and became a permanent fixture at our back door. We advertised and asked around the neighborhood, but because she’d been an indoor cat and her owners so sub rosa, it was nearly a year before we learned where she’d come from.

All cats make wonderfully entertaining companions, including ferals, if they live long enough for you to earn their trust.


Comment from Niña
Time: September 10, 2016, 6:51 am

My miniature black panther absolutely loves the fact that I’m home all the time and spend a lot of time in his happy place: my white sheets and duvet. He’s hugely affectionate and I am clearly HIS HUMAN. My other two cats–a strawberry blonde and a tortie–are less affectionate, with the orange cat happy to demand attention at her own discretion, and the tort affectionate when the food bowl is empty.

I’m a big fan of cats.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: September 10, 2016, 12:46 pm

Oh, well done, Uncle Al!


Comment from Skandia Recluse
Time: September 10, 2016, 2:09 pm

My Ex Girlfriend had a cat that looked like ‘Morris’, the cat from the TV commercial. She named him ‘Harold’ for some reason unknown to me. He was the only cat I ever met who had a personality.

One day he kept trying to claim my office chair. Everytime I stood up, to put paper in the printer, or something like that, he would jump up into my chair. When I went to sit, there he was, in my chair. I finally got so annoyed that I turned and face him eye to eye and screamed, “Get out of my chair!” and he took off like he had been shot at.

After that, he always asked first, very politely. He would walk up and give me the eye, and I would invite him to sit on my lap, or in my chair. He would make himself comfortable and go to sleep. He didn’t purr, he snored.

He was a great cat, except for the time he left a hairball at the foot of the bed, one that I stepped in.

I miss that cat more than the ex-girlfriend; always have gotten along better with animals than with people.


Comment from Veeshir
Time: September 11, 2016, 3:30 am

I don’t know, we use a woman’s hair color to figure out her personality.
To a lesser extent, we also use the amount of hair on a man’s chest for the same thing. Or maybe that’s the amount he shows.


Comment from Anonymous
Time: September 12, 2016, 3:49 pm

Has anyone else seen this on the explanation for Hillary’s choice of those sporty blue sunglasses on a day when no one else was wearing any?

http://www.libertywritersnews.com/2016/09/huge-medical-secret-hillary-clintons-sunglasses-proves-dying-trump-gonna-win/

A mention of blue glasses from a site that’s a bit less rabid:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/10340122/Why-Johnny-Depp-and-I-see-the-world-through-blue-tinted-spectacles.html

Curiouser and Curiouser.

Write a comment

(as if I cared)

(yeah. I'm going to write)

(oooo! you have a website?)


Beware: more than one link in a comment is apt to earn you a trip to the spam filter, where you will remain -- cold, frightened and alone -- until I remember to clean the trap. But, hey, without Akismet, we'd be up to our asses in...well, ass porn, mostly.


<< carry me back to ol' virginny