Fish Out of Order, Daily Edition

Hi guys,

This isn’t for me, but someone else in Perth who posted to the 9 Lives Cat Rescue page on Facebook. Thought I’d pass the message on in case anyone here can help;

I have been offered a the opportunity to go to Egypt for one year with my job. I have a 7 year old x-Abyssinian cat called Gismo whom I love like crazy but I don’t want to bring him to Egypt (not a good place for a cat). I am looking for a loving home for him for 12 months around December this year. It is very important that he gets to a home where he can get plenty of love and attention as he will otherwise get depressed. It would be also ideal if he can be left outside but only during the day (with access back inside home) as he tends to get into catfights at night (we have a cat door for him during the day - which we close at night to leave him in). Ideally the house you live in is also not on some busy road. I will pay for all his food supplies (he has a specific diet), litter-fill and all other costs. and also cover any vet bills if he needs to see the vet during this year due to injury, illness etc. 

He is an extremely entertaining and curious cat, loves to play, and thrives on attention. Has no bad habits apart from catching the odd lizard in summer time. He is not a lapcat though - more like a dog tends to just sit next to you:) I really need to find someone very loving and caring as my cat is extremely attached to me and i am worried that without the necessary TLC he will not cope well with the one year separation - after which I will take him back to my home. If I cannot find someone suitable I will have to send him to Switzerland to my Mum, which I would prefer to avoid as it may be stressful for him the whole flight journey etc. 

If you feel you can help me out please contact me on: arthemis.jl@gmx.ch

If you can help this lady and her cat out that would be awesome!

I've begun to notice a pattern. A down-shift of mood from mid-June onwards that won't quit. Then I remember what happened to me nine years ago in mid-June, and realise it might be a long time before these body-memories quit. 

I wish I could talk about it openly.

Nine years, and I still lose it. Nine years. I wish I could lay it to rest for good. But I close my eyes, and it's there. 

I know I'm so lucky, so incredibly lucky, to be where I am today. But I feel like I can't take hold of it. The past keeps breathing sweaty, rotting meat memories down my cranium. And I try not to forget how to breathe on my own.

Recommend a webcomic? Don’t mind if I do!

I don’t read my RSS feeds as often as I used to, funny considering the technology available these days to pull feeds is so much more streamlined (I use Feedly running on the back of Google Reader). I blame full-time work. However, I do have quite the list of webcomics buried in there.

K has said she’s after something funny and potentially science-y/nerdy. I have 38 comics sitting in my list right now… here’s the ones out of those 38 that might work for her!

• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
  Usually one-panel jokes, updates daily, has more science jokes in it than any other webcomic I read.

•  XKCD
  I doubt there’s many people left who haven’t heard of XKCD – but it fits the requirements perfectly so I include despite the well-knowedness.

•  Buttercup Festival
  Surreal humour. I love it, may not appeal to all. One-off strips for the most part, the humour is from a mixture of disciplines and philosophies.

•  Gunnerkrigg Court
  Story-driven comic – you can’t just jump into this one and start reading at any point. Through its characters it explores the tension between magic and technology, mythology and fact.

•  Dinosaur Comics
  Frequently has science/maths/language puns.

•  Dawn of Time
  A cute comic about dinosaurs and time-travel! Story-driven, best to read from start, but you can just jump in to a degree.

• Hark, A Vagrant!
  History-based jokes, great character depictions of famous people.

• Odd Fish
  Not exactly science, but geek humour in here, particularly for language nerds. Doesn’t usually have storylines that extend beyond 1-2 strips, but worth reading from the beginning to get the feel for it!

• Sluggy Freelance
  Story-driven to the extreme, must read from beginning… I haven’t read this comic for 7+ years, but I used to like it (yes, it HAS had a long run :P) One day I will go back and start reading it again from where I left off :P Lots of science/nerd jokes.

• I have not read Girl Genius but I intend to at some point – story-driven science/steampunk comic, apparently!

Also, I can recommend many other webcomics that do not fall under the “geek/science humour” category, should that not be enough :P

I'm working out at Mood Gym. It's an online cognitive behavioural therapy website, which I stumbled across while searching on Wikipedia for the answer as to why I am not a flawless and amazing human being in every way.

(Wikipedia thinks it is because I have unrealistic expectations. Oh, Wikipedia, trying to make me feel better!)

Anyway. Mood Gym. Just worked through the first module. It discusses how negative thinking can colour both your reaction to an incident, and shape your behaviour afterwards. Shocking, I know! Thing is, it's the kind of lesson that bears repeating for a lot of people. Including me.

I hope their copywriters got paid. They have managed to create a sense of playfulness and lightheartedness without cheapening the subject overmuch or coming off as TOO cheesy.

The part that inspired me to post? They just had an example of a negative thought chain, which I summarise here:

Person X goes for job interview, stuffs it up royally. Their thoughts: "This is the end of my career prospects..." They feel distraught. Then they buy a crowbar.

That gave me a good laugh.

(And to those who might say "But Wendy, how can you laugh at that, some people do turn to a life of crime when their prospects seem non-existent and it is a terrible thing!" - YES, THANK YOU. I shall curb my amusement at this hypothetical situation henceforth! Clearly comedy should only be used for things like people slipping over on banana skins, and not for helping people to discuss difficult situations and deep-seated issues.)

(What, me? Have a bee in my shoulder? A chip on my bonnet? Heavens no! Where do you get these ideas.)

Photograph by Leo Reynolds.

While reading this post on the end of NHS-supported naturopathy, I can’t help but draw connections to another topic close to my heart.

Read this quote;

Everything that is happening to this baby is explainable within the internal logic of the homeopathic narrative. If the symptoms get better, then homeopathy is working. If things get worse, then we have an ‘aggravation’. If things stay the same, then change the remedy. At no point would a homeopath stop and ask if they are simply observing the natural course of an illness. They are the agents of everything that happens. Belief in the pills is total. The homeopath has to keep trying different remedies and different potencies – and the patient should avoid the ‘allopath’ at all costs. And a significant part of that narrative is the evil of vaccination and medicine. Anti-vaccination views are not fringe beliefs, but thoroughly mainstream within this world. Rochelle does not have to explain why it is significant that the eczema started after vaccinations. The other homeopaths will understand that these were undoubtedly a probable cause of this baby’s distress.

It is so easy to allow your personal bias, your paradigms, your beliefs, to short-circuit your reasoning. Human beings like patterns. We look for them even when there are none. And when we ‘find’ one, we always explain it with the mental tools we use most often.

To look at it another way, an engineer of the steam age thinks with metaphors of valves and pressure, heat energy. An engineer of the digital age could easily think of the world in terms of silicon, signals, electrical energy. We interpret the world based on the metaphors, the mental patterns most entrenched within us.

This can allow us, in some cases, to assign meanings where there may be none, assuming the actions of others are all in some way connected to you. The butterfly flaps its wings… because it doesn’t like your perfume. It is all about us.

It all comes back to that topic that I love so much – your thoughts creating your reality. All our sensory perception, all the data we take in – our brains re-construct and re-enact every single bit as bursts of energy leap between neurons – and there is no way to entirely escape its bias. The cogwebs run deep. (Ctrl-F to ‘cogweb’ on that linked article, it takes a while to reach the definition. If you’re interested in learning more about cogwebs, check out Katherine Turner’s fantastic book, Brainwashing – The Science of Thought Control <- click for Google Book preview of one of the pages on cogwebs).

I love this topic. So much. Can someone pay me to write about brain science and perception philosophy all day long?

So due to budget cuts it looks like Scitech has had to relocate somewhere with slightly cheaper rent... and by "Ticket Office" we mean "that bush behind the bin".

That empty chip packet? My new office. Finally, natural light!

This is actually probably the least weird thing I have ever seen inside/by our skip. That's a science museum for you, I guess!

Some biscuits I've baked for my birthday, based on this recipe from Pioneer Woman;

The chocolates in the centre are either Bacci dark chocolate balls (which contain a hazelnut), original Toblerone pieces (note the pyramids) or squares of Cadbury's Black Forest chocolate. Unfortunately, I didn't realise Cadbury now makes that chocolate bar in large squares as opposed to the old-fashion tiny squares, so I had to divide each square into quarters to fit them into the biscuits rather than following the neat factory-made indentations.

Half were gluten free and the other half not, but unfortunately even though the dough was different shades when they went in, they're indistinguishable now. Next time I'll have to differentiate via chocolate type.

I've tested out one or two and they're really, really good. The Baci is fantastic (would love to try with Ferraro Roche and other similar chocolates) and the Toblerone is also surprisingly good. The Black Forest works well taste-wise but visually they don't impress as much as the other two do.

In regard to my previous post, at least some people are getting it right. Check out Sweden’s progressive policies!

“Companies have come to expect employees to take leave irrespective of gender, and not to penalize fathers at promotion time. Women’s paychecks are benefiting and the shift in fathers’ roles is perceived as playing a part in lower divorce rates and increasing joint custody of children.”