sweasel.com

OMG, OMFG! Cute Overload is featuring this adorable baby weasel found on the side of the road in Wiltshire. Near Stonehenge. Sacred Druidical adorable stoatlet, then.

A world-class “aaawww” is appropriate just about now. Its fuzzy!

Ha, I just clicked in here to send you that link! Beat me to it, I shoulda figured.

Now, if you haven’t had enough cuddly cuteness, go over to The Daily Puppy and see Biggie. O. M. G. I could just die.

Awwww…poor widdle weasel. Where did his momma go?

Damn, it was beautiful out today. I went hiking in the exact spot I lost my tripod. Kind of by accident. And no, I didn’t find my tripod. But it was sunny and breezy and low seventies with deep blue skies and high, puffy clouds. I drove home with the top down and saw a blimp floating over Providence. Mmmm.

Bah, it’s over a 100 here every day and will continue for another four weeks at least.

Hey, I had a thought today. When you move across the pond they’re not going to let you take your guns with you are they? So, if the Queen of England gets all up in your grill you won’t have any way to back the old lady off!

My hubby put shelves up in my office today! And now I have a wonderful space to “display” all my craft supplies! Just thought I would share some of my joy in this very happy thread. That little weasel was so sweet, it broke my heart right in half.
Enas sure is grumpy. The heat’ll do that to ya!

I’ll tell ya what can make you grumpy. Taking your teenager to the mall to shop for clothing and not have her come out looking like a hooker. She tried on about a dozen pairs of jeans, and only three passed the ‘squat’ test. Good thing they are making the skin-tight shirts long to cover any potential plumber buttage.

Oooo, crafts, eh? Me like crafts. City where Lewis and Clark famously launched their expedition had a craft festival going on this weekend. While the temp wasn’t hot-hot per se, the humidity and lack of breeze was uncomfortable. We left before the thunderstorm rolled through.

I love it when girls hijack the thread! Crafts…I make homemade cards and knit potholders. I can’t knit anything bigger because I have to pull a stich and can never figure out how to get back to where I started. Knitting is so punk rock!
Jw or McGoo will soon pick up on teenagers looking like hookers and make this thread wholly innappropriate I am afraid, so let’s hurry up and talk about our periods or nursing babies or something.

My oldest brother used to knit. He knitted me a coonskin cap once. No lie. I wonder where that got to?

The best was when he knitted sun visors but didn’t reinforce them with cardboard or anything, so they became eyeflaps.

Kind of a retard, my oldest brother.

Pand B,

That would be St. Charles?

Eyeflaps, ha! My older brother took up embroidery for a while when he was a kid, copying Mom. But with fingers like sausages that didn’t last long.

Is this the site of the crafts festival? http://www.campdubois.com/

*into intercom*
Dispatch the P n B intercept team to Illinois.

*steeples finger tips*

Eggggscellent.

Ok, so it’s not St. C.

Yes McGoo, it is St. Charles. The show being ‘Festival of the Little Hills’. Felt sorry for those folks last evening when the storm rolled through. The lightening was something else.

*waves to Dawn*

I do a lot of different embroidery and cross stitch things. From baby blankets to pillow cases…and not the old lady looking stuff. Taught myself to crochet and will attempt the same for knitting someday. Can also make dolls – miniature felt and large soft sculpt. It’s been awhile since I have done any porcelain ones. Love homemade cards but never ventured into doing them myself.
Oh, and I nursed my children through their first year of life. 🙂

I had guessed St. C just ’cause I saw something about the fair somewhere recently. That storm last night was a nice one.

Can’t honestly say I’ve nursed any kids – being male and a bachelor. I’ve gotten a few greeting cards in my life, though. Got a jury summons once.

I got a jury summons once also. Didn’t have to go because I was nursing a newborn. HA!

McGoo, we haven’t heard any news on your how your healing in a while. Hope all is doing well.

Ah-ah. So that’s the secret about nursing. It keeps you off jury duty! I should have guessed.

I have the sausage-finger disease mentioned above so I doubt I could do that knitty-needlepointy-crochet stuff. The results usually look pretty cool, though.

And Weasel, my younger brother is a doofus too. I once saw him stick his finger into a light socket, get the shit shocked out of his hand, and then do it again to see if the circuit breaker had opened up. It hadn’t.

Terrible thing, being a doofus. Very sad.

Dawn, my titanium knobbed hip is doing outstandingly swell! Thank you for asking.

I overworked it yesterday doing some house wiring across the street – climbing on ladders and such – so you can imagine how well its doing. I overworked it again today shopping so I dipped into the reserve opiates this evening to blunt the muscle pain. Hence my silliness.

Again – thanks for asking!

I like silly McGoo.

He makes me laugh and mispell things.

Ah-ha! My plan is working!

Congrats on the healing up McGoo! I recently purchased a titanium spork. Henceforth it shall be known as The Spork O’McGoo and I shall remember you whenever I use it to dine upon a meal that could use both fork and spoon.

A titanium spork? Whoa.

My artificial hip pales into insignificance!
I’m humbled, and will try to live up to this high honor!

I always felt that mashed potatoes and gravy was ideal spork fodder, so-to-speak.

Stoaty old man, it’s Monday.
Heh

Oh, nb…it is so very, very Monday. And, once again, I did NOT spend my weekend writing thoughtful, engaging posts for this blog.

Busy day, so I’ll just have to stitch together some crap when I get home. Crapblogging. Yeah.

It was a nice weekend. No one can blame you, mssr Weasel.

Meanwhile GeekPress (and other places) are reporting on this article on artificial life in 3-10 years.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070820/ap_on_sc/artificial_life_3

I lost a personal bet I made with myself (back in the 70’s) that life would be synthesized by 2000. Looks like I missed by 2 decades. Rats. Now I owe myself – something.

A nap!

I thought for sure the world would end before I was 25. Some fuss about Y2K.

I remember a few years ago when they were zapping flasks of amino acids with electricity, hoping that some of them would combine in a meaningful way, thereby indicating how life might have gotten started in the first place. I don’t think they got it to work.

I’ve always wanted to create a website for all the stuff that was supposed to happen “by the year 2000” and didn’t. Pity I’m a lazy sack of crap…

Actually, Weas, they were zapping flasks of base chemicals and gases (methane, CO2, O2, etc) and they GOT shitloads of amino acids – so in that respect they were quite successful.

Later, they zapped the shit longer and got li’l sacks of protoplasm-like crud or sumpin, just the thing they needed to house a dna strand. *IIRC

Still later they found that certain common clays tended to hold the sacks in an open-like or “receptive” condition for “impregnating” with genetic material and mechanisms. *IIRC

What they never could get was the dna strand to assemble or the mitochondria and other cell sub-mechanisms to assemble. *IIRC

They’ve figured out a lot of this shit now.

*If I Recall Correctly. All of above is what I “remember” reading over many years of watching this subject. My memory sucks now – so no guarantees on accuracy. But I have truly been keeping a calm, dispassionate eye on this shit for decades. It facinates me.

Whoa, McGoo. Cool beans. I don’t know how you’d get a mitochondrion to form…isn’t there some speculation that those were once independent, one-celled organisms? Or have I read too much scifi?

IIRC, mitochondria might have been independent at one time waaaay back whenever. Later they were absorbed (somehow) by another (larger) cell and assumed the energy-producing/regulating tasks of said cell.

Weas, like I said, I (informally) read and studied this shit for decades. Seems all these things are fairly simple – its just that there are sooooo many ways of forming and modifying and manipulating and combining all the pieces that no one knows what the “starting” recipe is.

Plus, no one really knows what the starting conditions were either. It may (probably, IMHO) be impossible to “start” life in today’s conditions. They’re gonna have to do it in a special chamber – or series of chambers – with special conditions forced on each one.

But you can bet the final solution/procedure will be simple, elegant, probably obvious in hindsight, and easy to do. Cause it happened – all by itself – a long time ago. IMHO.

Well, if it is simple and elegant, it’s a cinch it’s happened other places. Many, many other places, most like.

Yep. There is a school of thought on this subject to the effect that “Life will occur – repeatedly, and inevitably – wherever it is physically possible”.

The universe should be stuffed to the gills with it (or its fossils), relatively speaking.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens over the next decade.