beansofdeath

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1023494/Just-cricket-Eating-insects-good-environment-scientists-claim.html

This article seems to have such a miracle cure for all sorts of things. Forest and general land preservation. A good case against pesticides. A cure for hunger and malnutrition. And it seems quite reasonable. I even agree with it, in theory.

So why is it that the thought of eating a bug disgusts me to no end? There is no rational reason for it. Maybe it's the same reason that lots of people are deathly afraid of snakes or mice? It's too bad, really, especially considering that so many other people are just like me in this regard.


Somewhat unrelatedly, I can't even bring myself to feed crickets or mealworms to my gerbils. It's not because I would be disgusted if they ate insects, though, but rather because I feel too bad for the poor crickets. I HATE seeing the plastic containers with chirping crickets in one of the pet stores I sometimes go to. Their chirping always draws me over to them to have a look, and it's just so sad. Poor things!

OMG So Cute!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7342862.stm

http://xkcd.com/77/

I have found a new favourite food. Yes, sugarfied breakfast cereal. It is so incredibly delicious, especially with blueberries and strawberries and canned milk. I've just eaten two entire bowl-fulls of the stuff. So unhealthy, yet so yummy!

( Dialect meme-thingy )

Just a cute pic of NC1:



Quarter-full Kleenex boxes (with the plastic part removed) are great fun for gerbils!

On a less happy note, this picture was taken just after he was separated from his two brothers. For whatever reason, he and Logspace wanted to kill each other, and I couldn't seem to do anything to stop them. I had to physically pull them apart, and even when I was doing that, they were attacking my hand to get to each other.

On an even less happy note, NC1 also just came back from the vet, where he was prescribed some Novotrimel for what is probably a urinary tract infection. This medication is apparently intended for human children and is strawberry flavoured. Supposedly this means the gerbils will like it and will lick it out of the syringe of their own accord. Nope, NC1 hates it and I have to stuff it down his throat. Then he pouts and grooms the area around his mouth for half an hour. Poor guy :(

Cross-posted to gerbilowners

Yesterday morning I saw an owl. It flew right in front of me and landed in a tree right beside me. It was really small, probably a bit smaller than a pigeon, and sooooo beautiful. I think it's the first time I saw an owl that wasn't in a zoo. I'm going to have to start taking my camera to work with me; the city is really a much more beautiful place at five in the morning than later in the day when it's bustling with humans.

http://www.worldcongress.net/2002/proceedings/B2%20Waiblinger.pdf

Apparently bar-chewing in gerbils is caused by prematurely separating them from their parents. Hmmm. My gerbils were separated at about five weeks, which is too early. I was so paranoid about one of them getting pregnant I didn't want to take any risks. Now, I did leave the boys with their father, and Jamal with her mother, so maybe that doesn't count as full separation from their parents. I don't know.

Both Jamal and her mother did eventually develop stereotyped bar-chewing, but it's not a behaviour they always had, so there might be other causes for it. I think it's because their cage was too small, but I don't know. People used to think that stereotyped digging occurred because gerbil cages were too small as well, but it turns out that that's not the case at all, so, again, I don't know. My boys do chew on the bars, but only occasionally.

All my gerbils do, unfortunately, exhibit stereotyped digging. They tend to dig endlessly at the insides of cardboard boxes instead of the corners of their cage, but it's still, as far as I can tell, stereotyped digging. Poor gerbilies :( As much as I like gerbils, I'm more and more inclined to believe that keeping them as pets is just cruel.

On a more positive note, my girls now have a new cage:

( new cage next to the old cage )

I hope they like it. So far it seems that they do, especially since I've now added even more bedding than is shown in the picture.

These are just some pictures of the view from my apartment. We're on the fifteenth floor, with south-facing windows, at the northern end of the city, so we have a very nice view of the city, and even the lake.

( Pictures )

Ok, so last night, I finally got around to using the camera my lovely parents got me for Christmas. I didn't play with the settings or anything, so since there aren't really any great pictures, I've included a great many pictures to make up for it :)

Seriously, don't click on the link if you have a slow connection.

( GERBILS!!!!!!! )

Cross-posted to gerbilowners

Today the flyer that was slid under our apartment door was an advertisement for a dog-walking service. We don't have a dog, but a lot of people in our building do, so it's a pretty reasonable service to be advertising. However, the price they charge to take your dog for a half-hour "1 on 1 walk" is $20.00. Twenty whole dollars for a half-hour walk?! Who on earth would pay that? Isn't dog-walking something you pay the kid down the hall/street a couple of bucks to do? Heck, sometimes kids would volunteer to walk my parents' dog for free. Maybe I should start a dog-walking company.

My boyfriend was channel flipping a little while ago, and happened upon a documentary about Niagara Falls. Apparently one of the early tourist gimmicks in the area was a "show" involving filling a boat full of live animals, lighting it on fire, and sending it over the falls.

Why? Seriously...just...why? Who would ever actually go through with an idea like that? What on earth would be wrong with just sending an empty boat over the falls? What do you gain out of killing a bunch of animals in that way? Why is that even something people would want to hear about, much less see? I am very upset and angry about this, and it happened probably over a hundred years ago. Grr, people are evil.

( just a rant on my food addiction )


Man, I feel better after writing that, though. Whereas I have always been and always will be addicted to food (and especially sugar) on a certain level, lots of exercise and stuff to do will keep it under control. The food addiction actually does interfere with the doing stuff, but with lots of exercise the cycle can be broken. I have been here before, and I know how to get out of it, so it's time for me to act on that.

http://media.www.dailycampus.com/media/storage/paper340/news/2007/02/09/News/Ccsu-Op.Editor.Calls.Rape.magical-2709737.shtml?sourcedomain=www.dailycampus.com&MIIHost=media.collegepublisher.com

Someone actually wrote and published an article extoling the virtues of rape? I mean, firstly, how can anyone actually think that way, and secondly, how on earth did he think he was going to get away with it? I can't believe this actually happened.

EDIT: Oh, apparently it was satire. From the article above, that wasn't clear at all to me.

( I can't find the article on the paper's in question website, but I did find it copied somewhere else )


It looks pretty clear from the actual article that the author isn't being serious, but it's still very tasteless, at the very least. The only reason he even wrote it is apparently to sell more newspapers. You'd think that if you were going to write something so inflammatory, you'd have some deeper motive.

Ah, so I haven't posted in a very long while.

We finally got some snow yesterday, and there's still a little bit of snow/slush on the ground. To be honest, the weather is creeping me out. I mean, it's the middle of January. I know Toronto is warmer than and gets less snow than Fredericton, but this is what, the second not completely insignificant amount of snow I've seen all year? I only recall seeing even ice on top of a puddle only once. I've been going outside regularly in just a light sweatshirt and not being cold. Even though there's snow on the ground, the temperature can't be less than -2C, and I'm pretty sure it's actually closer to +1. That would be fine if there had been some cold days mixed in with the warm ones, but no. It's so weird. I hope we get a real winter next year.

I had a very good day yesterday. I played Diablo all morning, and then, because it was snowing, and because it'slooking like this is going to be a rare phenomenon, Tim and I went out walking in the graveyard. It was all pretty, and there were lots of very cute puffed up black squirrels. When we got back in, we ate some sandwiches with Miss Vicki's Lime and Black Pepper Potato Chips, and then we drank coffee and played Combat Commander. It took us a long time to get going because Tim had to explain the rules to me and it took me a long time to set up my troops. To be fair, though, I was the defender in the scenario we chose, so my troop placement was crucial. After the set-up, the game went fairly smoothly. I also won :) In the evening we ate kraft dinner and watched an episode of Battlestar Galactica. Man, I have to say that I am disappointed with that show after it had such a great first season. Still, it was something to do.

Combat Commander's actually a really fun game, and it's not too too complicated. Because you can only make moves associated with the cards you have in your hand, your options are limited, which makes the game flow along much more smoothly, I think, than games where you can choose to do anything every single turn. We're going to play again tonight. I'm going to pick a scenario and make some potato salad for supper before Tim gets back so we will be all ready to go when he does. Wheee!

Merry Christmas!!!!!

Snow snow snow snow! It's snowing! Yay! The first snow I've seen all year. It's about friggin' time!

( Okay, another time-waster, about fantasy and sci-fi books )
Apparently I need to do more reading as well.

Last night I was having some difficulty going to sleep, because for some stupid reason I was full of regrets about dropping out of school a year ago. I've just reread my old livejournal posts from when I was in school, though, and man, I can't believe I stuck with it for so long. They really reminded me how much I hated it, and how impossibly hard it was for me. I no longer regret my decision.

Hey look, livejournal's actually good for something besides wasting time!

Well, I'm not American, so I guess it's not surprising that my "American" accent is the one people would mistake for Canadian. Found the quiz through violetice .

What American accent do you have? Your Result: North Central "North Central" is what professional linguists call the Minnesota accent. If you saw "Fargo" you probably didn't think the characters sounded very out of the ordinary. Outsiders probably mistake you for a Canadian a lot.
The West
The Midland
Boston
The Inland North
The South
Philadelphia
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes