Happy Independence Day! I’m leaving early for Idaho today, hoping to make it to the Bar(nard) X Ranch by evening. My iPhone doesn’t seem to have synched with the local time, and so my alarm woke me at 3:30 instead of an hour later. Well, what else is there to do at this ung*dly hour except post Hili? And then I’m off to Idaho. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili once again shows us which or her organs is most active:
Hili: Are you going shopping?
A: Yes.
Hili: Look around for something tasty for me.
In Polish:
Hili: Idziesz na zakupy?
Ja: Tak.
Hili: Rozejrzyj się za czymś smacznym dla mnie.
And for you d*g lovers who don’t get your Cyrus quote, Malgorzata sent a note and a picture yesterday about him:
Hili slept at home when it was very hot (29C) but went out a moment ago. Cyrus is a happy dog because little Hania [daughter of upstairs lodgers] has a visitor – her cousin, a girl her age – who adores dogs and was patting Cyrus as much as she was allowed by Gosia [Hania’s mom]. Hania became smitten with the other girl’s enthusiasm and they both were hovering over an extremely happy dog. Hili just escaped from those small hands.
It’s 8pm in Brisbane, Australia. Sorry about the stolen hour’s sleep. Finally beginning your Faith Vs Fact on my iPad – so clear! Have noted your, ‘Faith may be a gift in religion, but in science it’s poison, for faith is no way to find truth.’
That shall travel.
Awww just 29°C? Here in Germany we have 35°C! It’s so hot… thank Ceiling Cat for tasty tap water!
Heh…It’s six in the morning and it’s already 29°C here in Arizona. It’ll be 35°C by about nine o’clock. Today’s a cool day; shouldn’t get much over 40°C.
Not sure I believe it yet, but tomorrow’s high temperature is actually supposed to remain below 100°F. No clue where this unseasonably cool weather is coming from, but I’ll take it….
b&
How dare you! Do you not know that 4th July is a day of national mourning in the UK? I demand a trigger warning before you post anything like this again! I am deeply, deeply traumatised by your insensitivity.
Oh, is it that day? I’d not noticed until just now.
Would have thought it’d be October 19.
(Surrender of Yorktown in 1781.)
I wonder how many of the young folks in the UK know what was lost in that war? Nearly all I would suspect. Over here in the colonies many do not know what county they fought in the Revolutionary War. Maybe they celebrate the invention of fire works?
…or September 3, 1783 when the Paris Treaty was signed…September 17, 1787 when the Constitution was ratified, or June 21, 1788 when it was adopted…April 19, 1775 and “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World”…September 5 – October 1774 and the meeting of the First Continental Congress…December 16, 1773 and the Boston Tea Party….
Countries are not born on a single day, but we like to pretend they are. July 4, 1776 is the official signing / effective date of the document that declares that, as far as the States are concerned, we were and would forever remain independent from any and all other foreign governments. That those other governments, one in particular, took their own sweet time and not a small amount of persuasion to recognize the fact doesn’t change that that date is when we stopped letting anybody else tell us what to do, and that’s the day we celebrate.
b&
Very true that picking a specific date is probably done only for a future holiday. It is a sad area of American education when so many seem to know so little about it that they can’t even name Great Britain as the country they were attempting to get their independence from.
We had a long way to go when this Declaration was signed in 1776. It was around the time the Invasion fleet was just arriving in New York and 7 more years before it was officially over. And it was yet another 5 or 6 years before a United States was officially in play and the individual colonies agreed to try and get along. To see the politics of today, we still have a long way to go.
Can’t have even one day without US-bashing here.
Here is something right up Hili’s back alley, and Jerry may have some fun with it too:
“Cats ‘control mice’ with chemicals in their urine”
[Short version: A compound called felinine increases stress levels in mice. It seems to be a recently evolved response.
And now the new find:]
“Despite [having more receptors detecting feline] though, mice raised around the unmistakable scent of cat pee are less inclined to show signs of fear, or to flee when they sniff it out.
“You get a higher response, but less behaviour,” said Dr Voznessenskaya, “and habituating like this is probably useful for the mice; they can’t run away, because they need to live around humans and food. And cats [also] live around humans.”
As for the cats: “They seem to be able to keep the number of mice around that they need,” she added.”
[ http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33380669 ]
So to respond to Hili and her obsession with noms:
When you stare into the mouse eyes, the mouse stares back at you.
“detecting feline” – eh, right, but more specifically detecting felinine.
Is that a quote from the Mauschwitz Guests’ Guidebook?
Meowbe. I don’t speak mouse.
You will. Unless the mouse speaks Larsson first.
I set a different ring tone on my iPhone one day then ended up with the Sandman song in my had (not the one by Metallica – that would be cool).
My dog woke me up this morning by licking my face, wagging her tail so that it thumped loudly on the wall & then whining in an “oooOOOOOhhhhh” way. It was like being waterboarded then having your ears assaulted.
Happy independence day! I once celebrated independence day in the USA, in San Francisco. There were a lot of street preachers asking pedestrians to “give up freedom and independence and submit to Jesus.” Suddenly I realized how un-american religion really is.
*Like*
What could be sweeter than that shot of the two little girls and Cyrus?