A puzzle
O sibili siemgo
Fortibus es inaro.
O nobili demis trux
Watis inem? Causand dux.
What does it mean?
Fortibus es inaro.
O nobili demis trux
Watis inem? Causand dux.
What does it mean?
I think Mice are Nice.
Steph's mouse encounter got me thinking about mice. Now that I am a developmental neurobiologist (the more syllables one uses in the job title, the more important one's job is, ne c'est pas?) I spend a lot of time with mice.
They aren't very popular, despite being quite the cute and fuzzy critters if you can ever get them to stand still. My sister told me they seem like mammalian insects, which is a pretty good way of summing it up. They move so fast relative to their size that it's more of a scuttle than a run, and more like a cockroach than like a dog. Also, as another friend found out, they have objectionable parenting habits. Her nieces and nephew found that they had trapped a mouse in a non-lethal cage trap, where it gave birth. So the nieces and nephew wanted to help out the mommy mouse; they kept it in the cage and fed it and so forth, and all went swimmingly for about a week--until they woke up one morning to discover that the mouse had EATEN HER BABIES!
This is pretty common if the mother is stressed or isn't getting enough protein, but you can imagine the effect it had on the poor kids (the human kids; the effect on the mouse pups is pretty obvious).
It pains me to speak ill of animals that have given so much to science, including the technology that just won Dr. Mario Capecchi a Nobel Prize, (Hooray Dr. Capecchi! Go Utes!) and which is now the basis of my own thesis work. I owe mice a lot, but...I hate to say it...
Rats are a lot nicer.
They aren't very popular, despite being quite the cute and fuzzy critters if you can ever get them to stand still. My sister told me they seem like mammalian insects, which is a pretty good way of summing it up. They move so fast relative to their size that it's more of a scuttle than a run, and more like a cockroach than like a dog. Also, as another friend found out, they have objectionable parenting habits. Her nieces and nephew found that they had trapped a mouse in a non-lethal cage trap, where it gave birth. So the nieces and nephew wanted to help out the mommy mouse; they kept it in the cage and fed it and so forth, and all went swimmingly for about a week--until they woke up one morning to discover that the mouse had EATEN HER BABIES!
This is pretty common if the mother is stressed or isn't getting enough protein, but you can imagine the effect it had on the poor kids (the human kids; the effect on the mouse pups is pretty obvious).
It pains me to speak ill of animals that have given so much to science, including the technology that just won Dr. Mario Capecchi a Nobel Prize, (Hooray Dr. Capecchi! Go Utes!) and which is now the basis of my own thesis work. I owe mice a lot, but...I hate to say it...
Rats are a lot nicer.
Oddities
I find it interesting Neil Gaiman (American Gods, Anansi Boys, Neverwhere) and Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon, Quicksilver, The Confusion) are so well represented on the list, relatively speaking.
It's quite the eclectic mix; curiosity demands that I look at how they generated this list.
It's quite the eclectic mix; curiosity demands that I look at how they generated this list.
The Book Machine
Courtesy of the Great Roscivs, I bring you the latest in blog memes for our neck of the woods--What Have You Read?
The envelope, please:
I have read, for my own amusement: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (149) The Hobbit (104) Life of Pi : a novel (94) The name of the rose (91) Pride and prejudice (83) Jane Eyre (80) The brothers Karamazov (80) The time traveler's wife (73) Emma (73) The kite runner (71) American gods : a novel (68) Atlas shrugged (67) Quicksilver (66) A portrait of the artist as a young man (63) Brave new world (61) The Fountainhead (61) Anansi boys : a novel (58) The once and future king (57) Dracula (59) 1984 (57) Angels & demons (56) Dune (51) The prince (51) Frankenstein (59) Sense and sensibility (55) Mansfield Park (55) Oliver Twist (54) Les misérables (53) Cryptonomicon (50) Neverwhere (50) Dubliners (50) Slaughterhouse-five (49) The confusion (46)Persuasion (46) Northanger abbey (46) The catcher in the rye (46) Watership Down (44)
I read for school: Crime and punishment (121) One hundred years of solitude (115) Wuthering Heights (110) The Odyssey (83) A tale of two cities (80) Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies (79) Love in the time of cholera (62) The sound and the fury (51) Beloved : a novel (49) The scarlet letter (48) The inferno (56)
Books which I read a significant part of: The Iliad (73) Gulliver's travels (53) Freakonomics(45) Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance : an inquiry into … (45) The Aeneid (45)
Books which I have started and not finished: Don Quixote (91) Moby Dick (86) Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West … (65) The Canterbury tales (64) A clockwork orange (59) The picture of Dorian Gray (55) One flew over the cuckoo's nest (54) Tess of the D'Urbervilles (54) The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay : a novel (52) Lolita (46) Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Pu… (48) Catch-22 (117)
Books which I should probably read at some point: Anna Karenina (132) Madame Bovary (83)War and peace (78)Vanity fair (74) Great expectations (70) Middlesex (66) Foucault's pendulum (61) Middlemarch (61) The Count of Monte Cristo (59) The grapes of wrath (57) The curious incident of the dog in the night-time (52) A confederacy of dunces (50) The unbearable lightness of being (49) The mists of Avalon (47) The hunchback of Notre Dame (45) Gravity's rainbow (44)
Books I have never heard of: The Blind Assassin (73) Mrs. Dalloway (70) The historian : a novel (63) Oryx and Crake : a novel (47) Cloud atlas : a novel (47)
Books that sound too long to be enjoyable: A people's history of the United States : 1492-present (51) A short history of nearly everything (50) Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed (47)
Books that I do not much expect to read ever: Ulysses (84) A heartbreaking work of staggering genius (67) Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books (66) Memoirs of a Geisha (66) The poisonwood Bible : a novel (57) The satanic verses (55) To the lighthouse (54) The corrections (53) Angela's ashes : a memoir (51) The god of small things (51) On the road (46)
The envelope, please:
I have read, for my own amusement: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (149) The Hobbit (104) Life of Pi : a novel (94) The name of the rose (91) Pride and prejudice (83) Jane Eyre (80) The brothers Karamazov (80) The time traveler's wife (73) Emma (73) The kite runner (71) American gods : a novel (68) Atlas shrugged (67) Quicksilver (66) A portrait of the artist as a young man (63) Brave new world (61) The Fountainhead (61) Anansi boys : a novel (58) The once and future king (57) Dracula (59) 1984 (57) Angels & demons (56) Dune (51) The prince (51) Frankenstein (59) Sense and sensibility (55) Mansfield Park (55) Oliver Twist (54) Les misérables (53) Cryptonomicon (50) Neverwhere (50) Dubliners (50) Slaughterhouse-five (49) The confusion (46)Persuasion (46) Northanger abbey (46) The catcher in the rye (46) Watership Down (44)
I read for school: Crime and punishment (121) One hundred years of solitude (115) Wuthering Heights (110) The Odyssey (83) A tale of two cities (80) Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies (79) Love in the time of cholera (62) The sound and the fury (51) Beloved : a novel (49) The scarlet letter (48) The inferno (56)
Books which I read a significant part of: The Iliad (73) Gulliver's travels (53) Freakonomics(45) Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance : an inquiry into … (45) The Aeneid (45)
Books which I have started and not finished: Don Quixote (91) Moby Dick (86) Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West … (65) The Canterbury tales (64) A clockwork orange (59) The picture of Dorian Gray (55) One flew over the cuckoo's nest (54) Tess of the D'Urbervilles (54) The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay : a novel (52) Lolita (46) Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Pu… (48) Catch-22 (117)
Books which I should probably read at some point: Anna Karenina (132) Madame Bovary (83)War and peace (78)Vanity fair (74) Great expectations (70) Middlesex (66) Foucault's pendulum (61) Middlemarch (61) The Count of Monte Cristo (59) The grapes of wrath (57) The curious incident of the dog in the night-time (52) A confederacy of dunces (50) The unbearable lightness of being (49) The mists of Avalon (47) The hunchback of Notre Dame (45) Gravity's rainbow (44)
Books I have never heard of: The Blind Assassin (73) Mrs. Dalloway (70) The historian : a novel (63) Oryx and Crake : a novel (47) Cloud atlas : a novel (47)
Books that sound too long to be enjoyable: A people's history of the United States : 1492-present (51) A short history of nearly everything (50) Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed (47)
Books that I do not much expect to read ever: Ulysses (84) A heartbreaking work of staggering genius (67) Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books (66) Memoirs of a Geisha (66) The poisonwood Bible : a novel (57) The satanic verses (55) To the lighthouse (54) The corrections (53) Angela's ashes : a memoir (51) The god of small things (51) On the road (46)