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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) ratties
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) stormphyre | |
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I'm sad to say that I have realized I need to rehome my four rats. I really do not want to do this but after moving out and not getting quite the pay I was hoping for, I'm realizing that if my rats get ill, which is most likely to happen, whether it but tumor or what not, I'm unable to pay their vet bills. I have one male dumbo and 3 females. Uno, the male, is neutered and nearly 2 years old. I really feel bad for having to rehome him as this will be his 3rd home. Breve, my siamese, is about a year, and Cybil and Toffee are about 6 and 5 months (born this past summer/spring). These three females I took in after bonding with them a bit too much at the pet store I had been working at and couldn't bare to watch them become snake food (yes I know its how things go). Breve does tend to be a biter as i got her when she was a bit old and not used to being handled. Cybil and Toffee are total sweet hearts, as is Uno. I'm not looking for any adoption fee, I just want them to go to really good homes, preferably together, and to someone who will be able to meet all their needs as I am now unable to, unless something changes quickly. If anyone is in need of a second cage, I have a SuperPets cage (purple and green type http://www.smallanimalchannel.com/images/ferrets-magazine/product-spotlight/superpet-60248-bg.jpg) that's almost brand new. They've only been in it for the last two months that I'm willing to sell for $70 and I also have a ferret nation cage that they were in before I moved. The pans are pretty chewed up, but otherwise its in great condition, and I'm willing to sell it for $100 (or make an offer).  Uno and Cybil. Cybil is the more silver one.  Toffee  And Breve  x-posted to other rat communities
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crossoverfic
auselysium | |
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 Banner by: kari77Title: In Search of What Comes Easy Fandom: Harry Potter/QAF crossover Part: 28 of ?? Rating: Over all NC-17. This chapter is PG Pairings/Characters: Brian Kinney/Draco Malfoy, Harry, Draco, Harry/Draco Warnings: This story begins and ends with Brian/Draco - they are the OTP in this fic but I hope you will also be able to appreciate the relationship - both sexual and otherwise - between Harry and Draco. M/M sex. Some violence. Summary: Brian knows that Draco is a wizard. He knows about his shady past. But strangest of all, Brian also knows that he wants Draco in his life. But sometimes wanting something isn't enough. A/N - You will need to have read both Nothing as it Should Be to Chapter 8 and And So it Begins in its entirety for this fic to make sense. Thank you for all the comments and support!! ♥ Part 28 here at my journal! All previous parts under the "in search of" tag at my journal!! Tags: harry potter, queer as folk
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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif) mr_shetterly | |
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http://www.bspcn.com/2009/11/10/top-10-reasons-why-the-world-wont-end-in-2012/ http://www.bspcn.com/?p=1242
Written by Ray Villard
My Take: Ray Villard takes on some of the more popular doomsday theories, debunking each in turn.
In the early days of computers, when hard drives weighed as much as a piece of furniture, a popular phrase was “Garbage-in, Garbage-out” (GIGO). It meant that computers would unquestioningly process the most nonsensical of input data and produce nonsensical output.
“GIGO” describes the abysmal lack of intelligent thought and critical thinking on the Internet when it comes to all the hysteria about the end of the world coming on December 21, 2012 — just in time to ruin Christmas.
I’m getting e-mail about this weekly and I expect the nonsense to ratchet up.
This latest installment in decades of flaky astronomical apocalypse predictions is loosely based on the Mayan calendar that marks the end of a 5,126-year era. Apparently the Mayans knew something about the heavens we don’t, according to numerous hot-selling 2012 doomsday books on the market. Our multi-billion dollar telescopes, space probes, and 6,000 professional astronomers somehow just can’t keep up with the mystic knowledge of an ancient superstitious culture.
With the much-ballyhooed release of the film “2012″ opening on November 13, end of world chatter will be the topic from backyard cookouts, to bars, to wine and cheese parties.
I am listing the 10 most popular 2012 end-of-world scenarios and providing a quickie reference guide to use in politely dismissing any friends, relatives, or in-laws whose brains have turned into a pile of GIGO mush after being suckered by the End of Days hype.
The ten top 2012 doomsday scenarios:
1. Changes in the Sun’s magnetic field will lead to powerful flares.
So what else is new under the sun? The sun goes though a well-documented 11-year sunspot cycle that is driven by its magnetic field entangling, reforming and flipping polarity. Yes, the peak of the next cycle is in 2012 (or 2013), and some predictions suggest it might be 30 to 50 percent stronger than the last peak.
But experts say it will certainly not be the biggest peak ever recorded.
The bottom line is that no dragon’s breath of flame will stretch across 100 million miles of space and blowtorch Earth. The largest solar flare recorded to date, on Nov. 4, 2003, spewed several billions of tons of plasma in Earth’s direction. The flare’s X-ray radiation that impacted our protective atmosphere had the equivalent radiation of 5,000 suns.
We’re still here.
2. The Earth’s magnetic field will reverse.
Don’t hold you breath. The last field reversal happened nearly 800,000 years ago. Fred Flintstone and our other ancestor cavemen survived. Geological evidence shows that the field has reversed its orientation tens of thousands of times over Earth history. Yet there is no definitive evidence that a magnetic field reversal has ever caused any mass extinction due to increased cosmic ray influx.
3. The Earth’s rotation axis will tip.
This isn’t nearly as easy as tipping cows. Unlike Mars, which does go though wide excursions in it axial tilt, Earth’s tilt is kept steady by the gravitational influence of the moon. An object the size of Mars would have to hit Earth to transfer enough momentum to knock us out of kilter. But Mars-sized protoplanets were kicked into interstellar space over 4 billion years ago. The solar system doesn’t make “planets-gone-wild” anymore.
4. A grand alignment of Jupiter and Saturn will gravitationally perturb Earth.
For the past several decades there have been doomsday claims that the combined gravity from grand planetary alignments will cause geologic and meteorological upheavals on Earth.
None are scheduled for 2012.
In 1962 an extremely rare grand conjunction of the classical naked-eye planets drove astrologers crazy. The conjunction happened on Feb. 4-5 and was accompanied by a solar eclipse! The most infamous grand conjunction was in 1982 and popularized in a book called “The Jupiter Effect,” which predicted earthquakes and massive tides. Life went on as usual both years. The moon has a vastly greater gravitational influence on Earth than Jupiter. It’s called location, location, location! At a whopping distance of 400 million miles from Earth, Jupiter’s tug is pretty wimpy.
5. The Sun will align with the galactic equator on the winter solstice.
So what? These are simply coordinates in the sky. It has no physical reality any more than the intersection of Broadway and 7th Avenue at Times Square influences the geology of Manhattan Island. This is greatly confused with the fact that the sun’s position actually oscillates up and down as it orbits the galaxy, like a horse on a carousel.
We pass through the galactic plane every 35 to 40 million years. It’s possible that an increased number of comets might be hurled towards the Earth because of gravitational interaction with the densest parts of our galaxy during this passage. But we are talking about the consequences spanning many thousands of years, not crashing down on our heads in any one specific year.
6. The black hole in the galactic center will affect us.
The Milky Way’s black hole has no influence on the galactic disk. The black hole is three million solar masses. The Milky Way is several trillion solar masses when we add the tug of dark matter. Any gravitational influence of the black hole over the galaxy would be like the tail wagging the dog. The Milky Way’s collision with the Andromeda galaxy will dump gas into the black hole and it will blaze as a quasar. But that’s several billion years away.
7. An asteroid will smash into Earth.
A threatening near-Earth asteroid that’s gotten the most press is the 900-foot wide Apophis. But its chances of collision have been downgraded to 1 in 250,000 at its next close approach in 2029. In theory, an uncharted asteroid or comet could come out of the blue tomorrow. But if we don’t know about it today, the Mayans certainly didn’t know about it 1,200 years ago. Earth-killer impacts are tens of millions of years apart. So there’s no reason to be a doomsday clock-watcher.
8. The rogue planet Nibiru will swing by Earth.
There isn’t such a planet any more than the planet Naboo from the Star Wars trilogy is real. Purported Internet pictures of the interloper are photographic lens flares or hoaxes. Don’t believe every dot you see photographed in the sky.
9. Supernovae or hypernovae will irradiate Earth.
There are no stars that are so close to Earth that radiation from their supernova demise would seriously affect us. The nearest candidate, the red giant Betelgeuse, is predicted to explode in the next 1,000 years. The monster star Eta Carinae is also on a short fuse. Neither doomed star has a spin axis precisely aimed at Earth, so we don’t have to worry about being fried by a narrow beam of gamma rays ejected from the core’s implosion. In fact the kinds of stars that shoot out these Death Star beams are uncommon in the Milky Way. Earth has a one percent chance of getting zapped over 10 billion years. Scratch gamma ray bursts off of your homeowner’s insurance policy.
10. A cloud of negative energy engulfs the solar system.
Wow! A dark cloud with a bad attitude! This sound suspiciously like a Star Trek episode. Dark energy is all around us already, but it is not packaged into clouds. The same goes for dark matter.
(Photo: A hypothetical planet called Nibiru — or Planet X — is often the root of many doosmday scenarios. In reality no such harbinger of doom exists. — NASA)
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officialgaiman | |
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http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/11/half-lifetime.html posted by Neil
The editor at CBS Sunday Morning asked if I had any photos of my son Mike back at the period when I first had the idea for The Graveyard Book - late 1985. I looked. We really didn't have any. I wandered next door and asked Mary (his mum, my former wife and for these last five years my friend and next-door neighbour) if she had any photos from back then. "No," she said. Then, "Do you mean those transparencies? I have them in an envelope somewhere." She vanished and came back with a large manila envelope from a long time ago. "Here." Half a lifetime ago -- literally -- I was nearly 25, and working for magazines. Henry Fikret, who photographed a lot of the interviews I did, volunteered to take some photos of me and my family, and he did.A week later the envelope arrived, and I realised that everything he shot was on colour transparencies -- like huge slides -- and I was never sure what do with them, other than being fairly sure I couldn't take them down to Boots the Chemist and have prints knocked out. So they stayed in their envelope, and they kept their secrets, and were forgotten. Yesterday I had the transparencies scanned, and finally got to see lots of pictures I had never actually seen before of Holly as a baby, Mike at the time that I would have watched him riding his tricycle around the graveyard, and me... at exactly half my age: A young journalist who had sold a very small handful of short stories and two non-fiction books, with dreams of writing fiction and comics. At the time I was dressing in grey, but was getting tired of the way that you would buy something grey and take it home and discover that it was a blueish grey or a brownish grey, and wondering if I'd have the same problem if I just started to dress in black. And half a lifetime on, it seemed like it might be good to put one up here. I checked, and Mary didn't mind. What odd clothes we wore back then. What big glasses. And look, my hair is practically normal.    So long ago, and it went like the blink of an eye.
...
Birthday wishes are flooding in from around the globe. I wish I could reply to everyone personally, but it would take the next 365 days... so thank you. Thank you all.
... In January I will be part of a free concert for all ages on January 16, 2010, at 7pm, in the World Financial Center Winter Garden, New York. I'll be the narrator for the performance of Peter and the Wolf, performed by the http://www.knickerbocker-orchestra.org (whose website you should visit to get details).
Alan Moore is leaping aboard the Underground magazine bandwagon. Following the success of IT and OZ, Alan's Dodgem Logic is coming out. There's a great interview with Alan at http://www.mustardweb.org/dodgemlogic/
(And enormous congratulations to Alan, who is now a grandfather, and to Leah and John, who are now parents, and Edward Alec Moore-Reppion, who is now, um, born. A Scorpio, like his grandfather and his whatever-exactly-I am, sort of honorary great-uncle or something. Not that we Scorpios believe in that sort of thing, of course.)
Again, thank you all for the birthday wishes...
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50bookchallenge
onlyobsess | |
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This stretches from June through November. My ultimate goal is 100, but I know that's not happening. Being in a non-English-speaking country for five months does not make reading easy. 37. Emma by Jane Austen - My second forage into the world of Jane Austen aside from Pride & Prejudice, and although it was good, Emma's character definitely got on my nerves for most of the book. 38. Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston - The survival story of a mountaineer who became trapped when his arm got pinned between a cliff and a huge boulder. On the one hand, it was fascinating to me as someone who loves the outdoors. But on the other hand, it was exasperating for the same reason, because he made some seriously stupid mistakes. 39. The Bromeliad Trilogy by Terry Pratchett - The amusing tale of gnomes trying to survive in a world so much bigger than them, when humans just won't seem to let them alone. Typically wonderful Pterry genius. 40. Fluke, or I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings by Christopher Moore - A hilariously bizarre story about a couple of whale watching scientists, in which Moore invents a whole new world and reinvents aviation history. Good for laughs. 41. Bloodhound by Tamora Pierce - The second part in the Beka Cooper story, where we learn that being a Dog isn't quite all it's cracked up to be. There's a huge counterfeiting scheme going on, and Beka's got to solve this one on her own. Although still hampered by the diary format, this sequel is far better than Terrier was, both in character and plot. 42. Howl's Moving Castle by Dianna Wynne Jones - People have told me to read this for years, and I think that honestly I refused because I associated it with the Miyazaki movie. I still have yet to see the movie, and I don't think I will, because the book was brilliant. The story of a girl turned into an old woman, and caught between the struggles of a powerful wizard and witch is more captivating than I ever thought it would be. 43. They Do it with Mirrors by Agatha Christie - Four months later, I no longer remember what this was about. I'm sure a murder happened, and it was suspenseful and all that. 44. Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt - Although I definitely like McCourt's style and think he is a great storyteller, the story of his impoverished childhood in Ireland didn't feel so much like a story as a list of how horrible his life was. Although ultimately moving, sometimes reading it felt like a chore. 45. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett - This definitely goes on the list of best books I've ever read. It's the strange turn of events that occur when revolutionaries in an unnamed South American country take hostage the guests of an international party at the vice president's house. But it turns from a hostage situation into a stalemate. Ranging from female revolutionaries to Japanese translators to German bankers to American opera singers, they begin to inhabit a world of their own where status does not exist, and time does not matter. It's one of the most beautifully written books I've ever read. I can't recommend it enough. 46. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte - As much as I tried to love this book, it was so much darker than Jane Eyre. Everyone was so angry and vengeful all of the time, and though they had reason, I just couldn't enjoy reading the novel. 47. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke - A sort of cross between epic fantasy and 19th century literature, this tells the story of two magicians trying to restore long-lost magic to England. Sometimes friends, sometimes enemies, the decisions they make and the deals they strike affect a whole country and beyond. Really engrossing and well-written. Despite it's immense length, I enjoyed the entire thing. 48. The Choice by Nicholas Sparks - A nice romance. Quite cute, but not necessarily good prose. 49. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie - 12 people get killed off one by one on an island. You knew what was going to happen, so the fun was in trying to figure out how. 50. Peace Like a River by Leif Enger - A beautiful story about a Midwestern family of an asthmatic boy, his writer sister, his janitor father, and his outlaw older brother. The journey they take to find each other is full of troubles, but also full of miracles. It was so beautiful, and not at all overdone like I thought it might be. 51. A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby - When very different four people decide to jump off the same building on New Year's Eve, they all end up walking down instead. And it's not a story about the end of life, really, it's a story about what happens when it just keeps going. Bizarre things happen. 51 out of 100 books read Tags: classic, comedy, crime fiction, fantasy, literature, satire
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