Reached a state of non-motility on the couch last night immediately after finishing my twelve rows of Purple Flower sock, thwarting my plans to trick Marvin into grooming Willow by smearing a bit of mushed banana onto her head. Maybe I'll get to that tonight. That or the vacuum-induced-mutual-terror plot. (I was noticing last night -- when they'd approach and sniff each other, she'd put her head forward and down to demand grooming and he'd just turn and hop off, annoying her exceedingly. A bit of manipulation is called for.)
Also, got around to opening my package that arrived from ThinkGeek earlier in the week. A pair of Star Wars plushies -- Boba Fett and R2-D2 -- for my nephew's birthday gift, and a canned unicorn for myself. It was smaller thanI expected, making the plushy bits of dismembered unicorn contained within heartbreakingly small. I brought it to work with me -- let's see how long it takes for a coworker to notice and comment.
Links from my Yahoo! page:
Grameen Bank and the Public Good -- "The elephant in the room is the question: If microfinance doesn’t accomplish anything positive, then why are 128 million poor families busy taking loans? Should we assume that poor people simply don’t know what’s in their best interest? Or do we need to look more deeply into the way poor people survive? That’s what a number of creative researchers are doing today. One example is the collaboration between Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford and Orlanda Ruthven that culminated in the excellent book 'Portfolios of the Poor: How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day.' The book takes a penetrating look into 300 poor families in Bangladesh, South Africa, and India, with interviews conducted every two weeks to track expenses, earnings and cash flow at a granular level. What the researchers found was striking, and it gets to the question of what it really means for most people to be poor: to live with perpetual uncertainty. 'What the research taught us is that the problem of living on $1 or $2 a day is that you don’t actually earn $1 or $2 every day,' explained Jonathan Morduch. 'That’s just an average. Some days you receive $5 and then nothing for two weeks. Life is unreliable. So the challenge for the poor is that you need to put together the right sums to deal with the right challenges in life. And what we saw microfinance was doing for people was offering them a reliable source of money. With microfinance, you get a sum of money that’s promised on the day it’s promised in the amount that’s promised. It’s often the only reliable service that poor people have - and that’s incredibly powerful.'"
Baby dolphin saved after dumped in rice field by tsunami -- "A baby dolphin has been rescued in Japan after being dumped in a rice field by a giant tsunami that hit the coast on March 11. The dolphin was spotted in the flooded field, about 2 km (a mile) from the coast, said Ryo Taira, a pet-shop owner who has been rescuing animals abandoned after the 9.0 magnitude quake and tsunami left 23,000 people dead or missing. 'A man passing by said he had found the dolphin in the rice paddy and that we had to do something to save it,' the 32-year-old Taira told Reuters."
Bomb sat for weeks at federal office -- "A package found by a security guard at a U.S. federal office building in Detroit sat three for weeks before someone thought to screen it and found it was a bomb, an official who represents unionized guards said on Wednesday."
Government tightens lid on dolphin death probe -- "The U.S. government is keeping a tight lid on its probe into scores of unexplained dolphin deaths along the Gulf Coast, possibly connected to last year's BP oil spill, causing tension with some independent marine scientists. Wildlife biologists contracted by the National Marine Fisheries Service to document spikes in dolphin mortality and to collect specimens and tissue samples for the agency were quietly ordered late last month to keep their findings confidential. The gag order was contained in an agency letter informing outside scientists that its review of the dolphin die-off, classified as an 'unusual mortality event (UME),' had been folded into a federal criminal investigation launched last summer into the oil spill. 'Because of the seriousness of the legal case, no data or findings may be released, presented or discussed outside the UME investigative team without prior approval,' the letter, obtained by Reuters, stated. A number of scientists said they have been personally rebuked by federal officials for 'speaking out of turn' to the media about efforts to determine the cause of some 200 dolphin deaths this year, and about 90 others last year, in the Gulf. Moreover, they said collected samples and specimens are being turned over to the government for analysis under a protocol that will leave independent scientists in the dark about the efficacy and outcome of any laboratory tests."
Archaeologists discover saber-toothed vegetarian -- "Surprised scientists have discovered the remains of a saber-toothed vegetarian. The leaf-crunching animal - about the size of a large dog - lived 260 million years ago in what is now Brazil, researchers report in Friday's edition of the journal Science. Its upper canine teeth were nearly 5 inches long. Such large teeth are more often the mark of a meat-eating animal, used to capture and kill prey. The enormous canines were likely used by the plant-eating animals to fight each other or protect against predators, said research leader Juan Carlos Cisneros of the University of Piaui in northeastern Brazil. For example, they might have fought for territory, resources or females, like the modern musk deer, which also have a pair of large, tusklike teeth, he said via email."
Stone tools 'demand new American story' -- "Archaeologists have unearthed thousands of stone tools that predate the technology widely assumed to have been carried by the first settlers. The discoveries in Texas are seen as compelling evidence that the so-called Clovis culture does not represent America's original immigrants. Details of the 15,500-year-old finds are reported in Science magazine. A number of digs across the Americas in recent decades had already hinted that the 'Clovis first' model was in serious trouble. But the huge collection of well-dated tools excavated from a creek bed 60km (40 miles) northwest of Austin mean the theory is now dead, argue the Science authors."
2,500-Year-Old Human Preserved Brain Discovered -- "A 2,500-year-old human skull uncovered in England was less of a surprise than what was in it: the brain. The discovery of the yellowish, crinkly, shrunken brain prompted questions about how such a fragile organ could have survived so long and how frequently this strange type of preservation occurs. Except for the brain, all of the skull's soft tissue was gone when the skull was pulled from a muddy Iron Age pit where the University of York was planning to expand its Heslington East campus."
I'm short on sleep again this week, but the good news is I should be able to sleep in tomorrow and Sunday. And my Saturday will go really well if I manage to get to the gym tonight before bed instead of leaving it for some time tomorrow (which will probably be in the late afternoon, and just break up the day). It's even fine if I go home and take a four-hour nap and then go to the gym around midnightish and come home and shower and sleep some more...
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