sweasel.com

I do hope there’s a c.darwiniensis that lives in South Kensington station. It’s only a short buzz from there to the Natural History Museum.

Can I offer you something in a Montypythonoides riversleighensis? Extinct python fossil found in the Australian town of Riversleigh.

My husband believes that mosquitos serve no useful purpose whatsoever and that they should be eradicated by whatever means possible. He’s one of the unlucky ones who skeeters just love the taste of. We can be standing in the same place and he will walk away with dozens of bites and I will have none.
Since these underground skeeters can not survive the cold – wouldn’t it be prudent to pump in some cold outside air during the winter into the train tunnels? At least until they turn into skeeters that can survive cold – then just blast them with some good old DDT.

I, too, am a feast unto mosquitos.

You’d think a subway would be an easily controlled environment, but the size and scale of the Underground is mind-blowing. It’s *gigantic*. There are acres and acres of completely disused tunnels and stations alone; the active Tube is beyond huge.

I tried to Google up some pictures for you, but I’m at work and I keep getting the Big Red Hand. There are some beautiful photographs of disused stations and tunnels.

If you ever want to waste a happy afternoon, do a Google image search of “urban exploration.” There are a number of people (mostly young men) whose hobby is sneaking into places they shouldn’t be (mostly abandoned urban structures) to explore and take pictures. The cities underneath our cities are amazing.

DDT, eh? Now that would be something!

Perfectly safe, of course, but the shade of St. Rachel de Carson would be mightily displeased, so we couldn’t have that!

Better to let millions die from malaria.

The cities underneath our cities are amazing.

I don’t think I would care to poke around in such areas. My flashlight would invariably fail and being in a dark place I’d likely be eaten by a grue.

Biting bugs such as mosquitoes use the smell of CO2 that is emitted by your pores to find you. There is a tale floating about that suggests that if you take garlic and brewers yeast supplements (garlic for mosquitoes, brewers yeast for ticks) those bugs will not find you so attractive. I’m assuming it would work by masking the natural scent of the CO2 w/ garlic. Yum!

Before the mosquito season, I was trying to choke down a couple of tablespoons of brewer’s yeast a day (I was told it was for skeeters, too). It was nasty. I finally decided DEET was less painful.

Hell, eating DEET would be less painful.

You have just Baader-Meinhofed me, with your linky mentioning the Komodo dragon, as I just watched the movie “The Freshman” last night for the first time in years.

Now I’ll probably fall over a reference to Sharon Stone’s former spouse …. 🙂

I’d love to see the underground pix, but I’m internet-nannied, too. I adore your promiscuous interests, Stoaty.

Sweasel hon, they make a powder version in time-release capsules 🙂

Dunno about that yeast stuff… damn sure it had funny mental effects on me when I tried it.

Then again, I am a badger, so your mileage may vary.

You trippin’ on yeast?

Letting millions die from malaria is the point. Greenies want to cull the herd.

And speaking of culling…if those that get chewed by mosquitos, do so because they emit more CO2, shouldn’t we report them to Algore for their high-pollutin ways?

Couldn’t they rub garlic all over exposed parts instead of ingesting it?

(snif) My verbing of Baader-Meinhof is learning to walk… (snuffle)… they grow up so fast.

‘Scuse me, I think I have something in my eye…

Sometimes when you reread weasel’s posts you catch something you didn’t see the first time. Plague pits = gross.

Perhaps plague pits and mosquitoes in close proximity are a bad thing. It sounds like the plot for a typical Hollywood action film.

Can’t help it. There are plague pits all over London. It’s extremely unlikely any disease organisms are alive after hundreds of years, but still…it’s not like we have a whole lot of hard data about antique yersinia pestis. If that was even the bug responsible.

I wouldn’t lick a plague pit.

There has been some speculation that the Black Death was actually due to both Y. pestis and B. anthracis, and the latter could potentially survive for a very long time in its spore form. Could it survive hundreds of years in a plague pit…I don’t know but I wouldn’t inhale too deeply in a plague pit, much less lick one!

The big plague years were way back in the 1300’s (granted a few other outbreaks in later centuries). But I wouldn’t give even money as to the absence of y pestis. Those pesky bugs have a bad habit of going dormant for long periods of time.

Didn’t they recently find (live)1918 flu virii in eskimos buried during the Great Influenza?

I have to grant I wouldn’t lick a plague pit either. Wouldn’t dig around in one either.

BBG,

Yep. I’d read recently that some of the plague pits (somewhere) test positive for anthrax. And it can hang around forever, just about, or so it seems.

Make that “BGG”.

I answer to almost anything. They did not find “live” 1918 flu “virii” in the exhumed bodies, they did find enough intact viral RNA to analyze the genome and rebuild it from scratch. So yeah, we can reverse engineer and build extinct viruses these days, put that in yer bioterror pipe and smoke it.

Is not “viridae” the proper Latin pluralization of “virus“?

“Virii” means “men” in Latin (the plural of “vir“), so it can’t be that.

What happened to good old guns, fire, and bare knuckles?

Honestly…today’s whippersnappers are too lazy.

Yep. After I posted I thought maybe they weren’t “alive” but rebuildable.

Haven’t got a clue about virii. Thought I’d seen it thus, but who knows.

The pluralization of virus is viruses. At least the last time I took a microbiology class anyway 🙂

Well then, I can’t help wondering if the plural of doofus has ever been officially finalized?

And what is the plural of anal retentive, we wonders yes we wonders?

The plural of Kotex is Kotices; I know that.

…but in other news, China has banned Buddist reincarnation with permission:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20227400/site/newsweek/

Damn. There go my holiday plans.

Huh. It’s all about controlling the Dalai Lama, apparently. Weird. This is weird, too:

According to a 2005 Gallup poll, 20 percent of all U.S. adults believe in reincarnation. Recent surveys by the Barna Group, a Christian research nonprofit, have found that a quarter of U.S. Christians, including 10 percent of all born-again Christians, embrace it as their favored end-of-life view.

Their favored view? Meaning, they believe in it or they think it sounds nice?

Um…how ’bout “without” permission. Geez.

If I could just be anal retentive enough to go back to “virii,” and I believe I could: at the time it was first used I believed McGoo to be displaying silliness and using the term “virii” in full knowledge that the plural of virus (as a category) is viruses, and the plural of viral particles, as in the aforementioned permafrost-preserved samples, is virions. Thank you. Please throw money.

Nope, BGG. I had one of my regular (and increasingly significant) brainfarts and flat-out mis-called that word. I have no earthly clue where virii came from and wish it would go back quietly and expire or evaporate or sumpin.

But that is not to say that my comments are not best viewed as bon mots rather than informative or serious.

I don’t do serious…much. I’m retired.

If I came off as snippy, I apologize to one and all.

Snippy? Naw! (But then I’m socially retarded and I always think everybody’s joking about everything! Makes life fairly pleasant, at least…)

For some reason, I just remembered the “blog” of “unnecessary” quotation marks. It wears thin pretty quick, but it’s good for a few.

I don’t “know” what in these comments could bring “that” to mind. But I “like it.”

Steamboat —

The plural of “anal retentive” is “geeks.”

lb,

I figured it’d be “buncha assholes”, but you’re probably right.

Should the collective term for anal retentives be a “detail” of A-R’s? A minutia?

A minutia or minutiæ of anal retentives?

I can be the most pedantic and anal retentive person I know.

Of which We are quite proud indeed.

Um…whichever one pleases you, M.

S. weasels thus:

Before the mosquito season, I was trying to choke down a couple of tablespoons of brewer’s yeast a day (I was told it was for skeeters, too). It was nasty. I finally decided DEET was less painful.

Hell, eating DEET would be less painful.

Gack. I didn’t know one could even find brewer’s yeast anymore.

Try thiamine. Apparently it makes one stink in such a way that the CO2; is masked but isn’t terribly gross to humans.

Oh, sure. You’d be amazed what’s in the herbal section of Whole Foods.

Nice side!

Porn? Really? I got a spammer named “porn”?

That’s so awesome I had to leave it. With the link removed, of course. Might’ve been porn, might not. Didn’t click.