CritterKeeper

Listened to the Doctor Who Big Finish Audio Drama "Dark Eyes" on my way to and from my family. It's a good story, well-performed and with interesting characters. It's also the first in a series of four, and I'm not sure when I'll get the chance to listen to the sequels.

If it helps, I'm told most "lamb" eaten in the USA is actually fully grown. You should see if that's true where you're at. We had lamb Monday. We'd originally thought we'd do it for Christmas dinner, but wound up rearranging things. We experimented on Christmas Eve with a duck, and discovered there wasn't really enough meat on it, once cooked, to feed all of us. A *lot* less meat than a similar-sized chicken or turkey would have. Still, it was tasty and a fun new thing to try. :-)

Okay, I am more and more convinced that Sarah is a switch. You don't get much more basic submissive fantasy than "You can do anything you want to me, as long as I don't say the safeword...."

And the question of whether Max and Jeremy could predate the rift between Edward and Adrian (and Edward and Noriko) is why I was discussing life expectancies of cats and hedgehogs a page or two ago.

Looks like, despite being cis and knowing he doesn't feel right in a female body, Justin has enough experience by now, and trusts the technology to be temporary enough by now, that he's comfortable with short-term just-playing-around transformations to female. I suspect most people would enjoy occasionally trying out transformations like that, temporarily, just for fun. :-)

Is it just me, or does it look like Catalina is getting the bushy tail of alarm looking off to the side, away from the wall/planter, rather than towards Rhoda?

The wind is quite noisy outside my bedroom window today. Makes it sound cold, but the forecast is for things to warm up quite a bit this week. We might even manage to melt a little of this snow (before freezing again with an icy crust....)

Je n'ai pas compris un peu plus de ce que vous venez de dire.

So we've been told, repeatedly. I'm still not convinced she's actually a madwoman. I can see how older Immortals might tend to do things for which younger individuals cannot understand the reasoning. That doesn't necessarily mean they are without reason. And if Voltaire isn't over 200 yet, then he doesn't set a very encouraging bar for sanity.

Typical lifespan for a cat is mid to late teens, with early twenties not too uncommon. The oldest cat I've met personally was twenty-five. The world record, which I thought was a typo at first, is thirty-eight. Hedgehogs are currently listed as living up to ten years, but we haven't really been keeping them long enough to have maximized their lifespan, so I expect that may improve as diet, medical care, etc. are optimized. A cat-hedgehog cross could exceed them both if the gene combinations work out, or it could fall somewhere in between. In other words, Max and Jeremy could easily be older than Tedd. In fact, if they were created as part of testing the technique for hybridizing via Uryuom eggs, the usual pattern of testing on animals before testing on humans, it's quite likely they're older than any of the part-human crosses like Hedge and Grace.

So you also think Voltaire was lying, too, about his being the one who manipulated Dex?

But is she lying to herself? I thought her scene with the Emissary of Magic indicated that the other reasons she gave were more of that sort, and making the world a better place for her son was the *true* reason. Perhaps Adrian had best be careful of making her question her own motives....if Pandora were to realize she was breaking the rules when she had thought she wasn't, he might find himself with a newly-reset mother to deal with, as well as fixing the magic clog. And it would truly be a shame for that to happen before Adrian got to learn she wasn't behind the pithos amulet....

I have a cold. At least, I hope it's just a cold. Several people at work have had a cold recently, but one receptionist also had the fever and body aches that make me think flu instead of cold. My sister had a kidney transplant, so she's vulnerable to infection, and I worry about exposing her if it's a flu. There's also snow sceduled for this weekend, when I'm supposed to be driving down to visit my family. I'm starting to wonder if someone's trying to tell me something.... ETA: Huh. A line of text I did a cut-and-paste on while composing the post is showing up with a white background instead of lavendar, making it appear highlighted in the post and invisible in edit mode.

This is another area that shows up in lots of other species. "Cheaters" happen, be it stealing the hoard of nuts another chipmunk has accumulated, or mating outside of a supposedly monogamous mating. There's a whole science examining what percent of "cheaters" a system can support without going too far and collapsing, and nature is very good at finding that level. And it works even though the "decision" whether to "cheat" is made on an individual as well as genetic basis. In other words, humans are hardly unique in this behavior, and it's really only a relatively small percentage of jerks stealing others' credit, or the system wouldn't be working so well.

It was -1°F when I got up this morning, and has climbed all the way to 5°F now. It'll warm up slightly as it snows tomorrow, but is currently expected to get down to -12°F on Sunday. That's real temperatures, none of this "feels like" stuff. (That's -18°C this morning, and -24.5°C Sunday.) Have I mentioned I'm supposed to be driving to my folks', about three hours away, on Saturday afternoon? And my sister is supposed to be flying in on Friday? Note which days have snow predicted....

We evolved brains capable of inventing such things, and hands capable of creating them, or of creating tools that can create them. But brains which aren't capable of using and creating new technologies are at a definite disadvantage, and thus less likely to pass on their genes.

Uh oh, so Rhoda could start developing cat ears and tail too? That could certainly lead to hijinks!

Cool! I don't know if I missed that one, or just forgot it, but it's a fun one! And that's more like the Sesame Street I remember; when I try watching it now, an awful lot has changed beyond recognition. Why, I hear Mister Snuffleupagus is no longer Big Bird's imaginary friend that no one else can see!

Am I the only one who really wants to see if Max is reacting to Pandora's sudden appearance? And if so, is he hissing, or trying to rub against her ankles?

Or just not having as many successful children. To pick what's probably a far exaggerated ratio, if you have four, and they have two, and that ratio continues each generation, you'll wind up with a lot more descendants, even if the competition is succeeding at replacing themselves. If one of your kids mates with one of theirs, maybe they'll have three successful kids, or maybe some sort of synergy between traits will lead to the combination having five or six. Usually, you have to swim to where you find the food, dive to get it, and swim to where you left your bucket to put the food in, before swimming back to get more. But we *have* evolved traits useful for elderly individuals. We know how to make dentures and implants, how to slow progression of arthritis and treat its pain to keep people mobile far longer, how to build canes and walkers and braces and....

Hmm, so their enchantments are linked now, and that promises hijinks? I've been debating whether they have reached the level of actual hijinks yet, given that Rhoda's amazing mad skilz seem to have kept them out of most impending complications so far. Perhaps they'll come across yet another potential complication and that will bring the cascade down, or perhaps they'll just run into someone who can recognize that there's magic afoot, either Luke or Mr. Verres, and have to figure out how to get out of it without being identified....

The only version I knew was Olivia Newton-John.

Nope, evolution works by reproductive success. If something you do helps you kids' children have more or more successful offspring, or your brother's children, or any other close relative, that is what counts. Seafood includes diving to grab yummy crabs, lobster, etc. too. Diving is a very important skill in many seashore cultures. Not really, tigers are excellent swimmers. ;-) You got a source for that? Mine is my biology degree and all the lectures that led to it, as well as keeping up with the literature since then.

Another term is a "Parliament of Ravens" but I doubt Dan would be as happy about that one.

Not exactly. The brain can run on ketones, which are a product of breaking down fat for energy. Ketones can also show up in a person's urine if they are in diabetic ketoacidosis, which is a life-threatening condition, so for many years doctors automatically got very very worried if they saw ketones. However, the evidence seems to be, so far, that having ketones from following a low-carb diet (thus not having enough sugar to burn and making use of fat for energy instead) doesn't seem to be harmful in itself as long as you drink enough fluids to keep your urine relatively dilute. (Not offering medical advice here, you guys are the one species on the planet I'm not licensed to do that for.) However, long-term success doesn't seem to be any higher rate for low-carb than for low-calorie or low-fat or any other variation. Good up to a certain weight, anyway. Too heavy, and it would strain your knees and hips more than is reasonable. Swimming and water aerobics are both great exercise, you burn a little extra keeping warm in most pools, and there's a lot less stress on the joints. I used to go to a pool that they sent cardiac patients to for rehab, and a lot of them would just start out walking from side of the pool to the other and back, until they got in a bit better shape. Just tell your inner caveman you live on the shore and you're getting some yummy seafood. Again, above a certain point, push-ups and pull-ups aren't going to happen. Picture strapping on a backpack filled with a hundred pounds of extra weight, and then doing your set of push-ups. Only the very fit, long-term strength trainers would be able to do it. Dunno about better, but there is a site called Fitocracy that tries to immitate those addictive games on Facebook and such, by giving frequent rewards and having players compete against others in a similar range. They have both aerobic and anaerobic exercises. There's evidence that the selective impact of helping the offspring of someone who shares fifty percent of your genes can be significant, evolutionarily. In other words, there's good selective reasons for an infertile or older individual to help raise the offspring of their close relatives. "Aunting" behavior is well-documented in a lot of species, and there are individuals in many species who outlive their own direct reproductive systems but stick around to help make sure the grandkids have every advantage they can supply. So when grandma spoils you rotten, she's just trying to make sure her genes live on through you. ;-)