Odds And Ends And Apologies

If you're a Meow regular, I have to apologize for the flaky blogging of late. I've been quite busy--some work, some play--but I know that is no excuse!! If it weren't late February already, I'd make some sort of resolution, but for now let's just say I'm giving myself dispensation to only write when I'm inspired to do so. Truth is I'm not getting a lot of inspiration from what I'm reading right now. The political stuff is either boring me, or ticking me off (thus the rant that was my last post); a lot of the current events are making me sad, and while I'm reading some cool science stuff, I'm not sure how interested you all are in the sciency bits I bring you. Anybody have an opinion?

Actually, in the midst of work-related busy, I've been having a lot of fun lately. We went bowling last night for the first time in at least a decade. I had forgotten how much fun bowling is. I've never been much good at it, but that's never really mattered. I'm not the competitive type (or at least I have suppressed those tendencies as much as possible--it's a survival technique from childhood), so I don't care about winning or losing. It's just fun to throw heavy things and knock other things down. The friends we went with have adorable kids, too, and anything is more fun when you get to watch a six-year-old do it too. Other fun stuff is keeping me occupied as well. We're hitting the slopes again today, and from what we read at the Mt. Hood Meadows website, it's powder on top of powder, on top of tilled powder. Doesn't that sound nice? Can't wait to swoosh along the trails. Falling is so much easier when the snow is soft, too!!

Speaking of skiing, I should get ready to go soon, but I'm going to send a little reading material your way first. I don't usually just toss out links without summarizing, or commenting, or ridiculing, or something, but I'm going to today, because I found a couple of science articles over the last few days that I thought were really cool, but I've realized I'm not going to get them blogged in a more elaborate manner right now.

From NewScientist.com: 'It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their “immortality”.' Doesn't that make you want to read more?

From Wired News (via Futurismic): How about a mind-reading wheelchair? "Patients who suffer from disease or injury that leave them unable to move have little hope of independent mobility. But that may be about to change. Researchers are developing a thought-controlled robotic wheelchair." Who could possibly not want to read the rest?

From Space.com: This one's for the geekier element. Star news: "A star found spinning more than a thousand times every second is thought to be the fastest rotating star known. The neutron star is a burned out corpse that's collapsed into an incredible density rivaled only by black holes. It packs the mass of the Sun into a sphere the size of a city. It has been reduced to nothing but tightly huddled neutrons. A thimbleful would weigh a hundred million tons back here on Earth."

Okay, I know that's one more than a couple, but I'm over-compensating for my previous neglect. Plus, I couldn't choose. I thought they all were neat. Happy reading!!