Why is science, space, and history so inportent?

On 2005-06-08, Pat Flannery wrote:

Huh. There's a thought. I was staying with an old friend of mine last
weekend, who I first encountered as a 15-year-old girl who'd recently
discovered Usenet.

So, do you still have your police-supplied GPS tracking system locked to
your side? :-)

To be fair, that *was* quite a while back...

(and it's the ankle, surely?)

(I fondly remember dissecting a rat in sixth year. Highlight of my
biology courses; same general idea)

Somewhere out there Rhonda is screaming right now.

I tend to find people scream even more when I say it was heavily
pregnant. This appears to have been an accident - they'd have waited for
it to give birth had they noticed - but it certainly made it more
interesting, all these little thumb-joint-sized ratlets.

Strangers of his counsel, hirelings of his pay,
These shall deal our Justice: sell - deny - delay.

[Written in 1899, if you're wondering...]

Oh, I'd love to hear Dubya take a crack at reading that out loud. :-D

Some of it is astonishingly timely. I saw a version somewhere with
various phrases linked to news stories...

"It is the King!"--inexorable Trumpets--
(Trumpets round the scaffold at the dawning by Whitehall!)

If only.

http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/wo.../oldissue.html

--
-Andrew Gray

"Rhonda Lea Kirk" wrote in message
...
Scott Hedrick wrote:
"Rhonda Lea Kirk" wrote
in message
...
You guys are just jaded, cynical and curmudgeonly.

I do not smell like OM!

And you know how OM smells because...?

Because *I* prefer Hai Karate, while OM is more a Canoe person. Or, Flaming
Auto person, though that one's a bit more toxic.

Andrew Gray wrote:
Pat Flannery wrote:
Andrew Gray wrote:

(I fondly remember dissecting a rat in sixth year.
Highlight of my biology courses; same general idea)

Somewhere out there Rhonda is screaming right now.

Nah.

White (lab) rats are god's gift to scientists (budding or
otherwise) and reptiles. I have killed quite a few
barehanded. Hooded rats and their kin, however, are not
food, but children.

I tend to find people scream even more when I say it was
heavily pregnant. This appears to have been an accident -
they'd have waited for it to give birth had they noticed
- but it certainly made it more interesting, all these
little thumb-joint-sized ratlets.

I used to feed pinkies (mice mostly, but sometimes rats--ya
takes what ya can get) to my iguana and to the smaller
snakes. Also, they were a good source of protein for the
aquatic turtles.

free associates I cannot eat smelt to this day, because it
is turtle food. I cannot eat turtle because it is
cannibalistic. I would not eat (white) rat because there's
not enough meat to make a meal, although the males are
certainly well enough endowed that a mere few would make a
large serving of Rocky Mountain Oysters.

rl

On 2005-06-08, Rhonda Lea Kirk wrote:

Nah.

White (lab) rats are god's gift to scientists (budding or
otherwise) and reptiles. I have killed quite a few
barehanded. Hooded rats and their kin, however, are not
food, but children.

Aren't hooded rats just a subspecies of Rattus norvegicus, anyway, or am
I misremembering?

I tend to find people scream even more when I say it was
heavily pregnant. This appears to have been an accident -
they'd have waited for it to give birth had they noticed
- but it certainly made it more interesting, all these
little thumb-joint-sized ratlets.

I used to feed pinkies (mice mostly, but sometimes rats--ya
takes what ya can get) to my iguana and to the smaller
snakes. Also, they were a good source of protein for the
aquatic turtles.

Yeah, but these were unborn, and thus even neater to examine. Tiny
muzzle indentations where the whiskers would grow, and things. (We had a
quick debate, and reckoned they were only a few days off full-term)

free associates I cannot eat smelt to this day, because it
is turtle food. I cannot eat turtle because it is
cannibalistic. I would not eat (white) rat because there's
not enough meat to make a meal,

Might get a stew out of them, I guess.

although the males are
certainly well enough endowed that a mere few would make a
large serving of Rocky Mountain Oysters.

An acquaintance of mine does genetics research on mice. Large amounts of
his time is spent cutting the balls off white mice and grinding them up.
I do wonder abut Modern Science, sometimes.

--
-Andrew Gray

"The Rocket Scientist" wrote in
message oups.com...
I really liked that keyboard, too!

That's why I went to a USB keyboard- I often need to hotswap while reading
this forum.

"k-girl15" wrote in message
oups.com...
Do you guys have fun talking are
do you just like being mean?

Why can't we do both at the same time?

"OM" om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org wrote
in message ...
wound up branding him as the one
teacher out of the bunch that nobody would stop for if he stepped in
front of their car.

That's not nice- *I'd* stop- about 50 feet behind the body...

"James Nicoll" wrote in message
...
Obviously, I am aware that English changes but is there any
way to kill off this AbZero phrase before it spreads?

Sure- right after the Queen publically and personally beheads the folks
behind "AbFab".

Andrew Gray wrote:
Rhonda Lea Kirk wrote:

Aren't hooded rats just a subspecies of Rattus
norvegicus, anyway, or am I misremembering?

You're misremembering nothing. This is about nothing more
than beauty being skin deep. Albino rats are disgusting and
fit only for food.

I used to feed pinkies (mice mostly, but sometimes
rats--ya takes what ya can get) to my iguana and to the
smaller snakes. Also, they were a good source of protein
for the aquatic turtles.

Yeah, but these were unborn, and thus even neater to
examine. Tiny muzzle indentations where the whiskers
would grow, and things. (We had a quick debate, and
reckoned they were only a few days off full-term)

If they were thumb-joint sized, mommy-rat was overdue.

free associates I cannot eat smelt to this day,
because it is turtle food. I cannot eat turtle because
it is cannibalistic. I would not eat (white) rat because
there's not enough meat to make a meal,

Might get a stew out of them, I guess.

Rats are mostly entrails, not meat.

although the males are
certainly well enough endowed that a mere few would make
a large serving of Rocky Mountain Oysters.

An acquaintance of mine does genetics research on mice.
Large amounts of his time is spent cutting the balls off
white mice and grinding them up. I do wonder abut Modern
Science, sometimes.

There is a world of difference between mouse balls and rat
balls. Mouse balls are proportional to the size of the
mouse. Male rats drag their balls behind them. I think I
read one time that if human males had balls proportionally
as large, they would need wheelbarrows to carry their balls
around.

And what a different world it would be.

rl

On 2005-06-08, Rhonda Lea Kirk wrote:
Andrew Gray wrote:
Rhonda Lea Kirk wrote:

Aren't hooded rats just a subspecies of Rattus
norvegicus, anyway, or am I misremembering?

You're misremembering nothing. This is about nothing more
than beauty being skin deep. Albino rats are disgusting and
fit only for food.

Ha! I don't know, you Americans, always concerned with form...

Yeah, but these were unborn, and thus even neater to
examine. Tiny muzzle indentations where the whiskers
would grow, and things. (We had a quick debate, and
reckoned they were only a few days off full-term)

If they were thumb-joint sized, mommy-rat was overdue.

She may well have been. On the other hand, I was but a callow youth, and
may have had more slender hands. (Or possibly we benchmarked them
against someone else - there were a couple of quite small people in that
class)

although the males are
certainly well enough endowed that a mere few would make
a large serving of Rocky Mountain Oysters.

An acquaintance of mine does genetics research on mice.
Large amounts of his time is spent cutting the balls off
white mice and grinding them up. I do wonder abut Modern
Science, sometimes.

There is a world of difference between mouse balls and rat
balls. Mouse balls are proportional to the size of the
mouse. Male rats drag their balls behind them. I think I
read one time that if human males had balls proportionally
as large, they would need wheelbarrows to carry their balls
around.

There's some quite interesting comments in one of Diamond's books -
Third Chimpanzee, I think - about the sizes of primate testicles (and
breasts) compared to body size. I forget what his conclusions were, but
one footnote that's always stuck is that testicle size is generally
correlated to number of children per birth, both in animals and in
humans (although the latter is very poorly studied). Theory was some
kind of hormonal connection.

[pokes around]

Ah, there's the numbers. Weird bit of research.
http://tafkac.org/sex/genitalia_size_twins_etc.html

--
-Andrew Gray