Ethical Thought

Glaxo has announced that they will likely have a low-dose bird flu vaccine ready next year! That is wonderful news. However, I wish that the world’s largest corporations would be as interested in providine clean water to the world and basic healtcare!

Dishcloths. More and More. It is kind of like the sock knitting thing. ( I have not tried socks again after my first catastrophy.) But these are easy mindless and are very portable.

I have started knitting on Boston’s Orange line. At least on the occasions when I can get a seat or any place where my nose is not in the back of the head of the person in front of me. I ride early in the AM with the construction crowd, but so far no one has said anything and I have not gotten too many looks. I did see one elbow in the ribs to a guy’s neighbor, he pointed at me then they both shrugged. I think they must have been discussing what kind of yarn I was using.

I have actually ventured out with my knitting thanks to the wonderful comments from my friends in the blogosphere. thank you all for the encouragement. It is wonderful the travel time passes so quickly I am almost hoping for a longer commute!.

Just to balance all those cat pictures on blogs!

(Yes, she is looking intently to see if I have a treat in my hand)

I am still working on that sweater! It slowly gets bigger bit by bit. I hear from other blogs that sweaters can bog down in the summer and I hope that is why I am chugging along so slowly!  It sounds like a good excuse ..er story. So I will use it!

As soon as I finished this one my 6 YO took it directly to the bath. I think he wanted to make sure that this one did not get away. These cloths are so easy to make and make minor variations on that I love them. I am certain that they will become less of a novelty as time goes on and more of a simple gift project but at the moment I am really enjoying making these. An up date on the sweater – I am about 1/3 to 1/2 of the way up the back panel. Even at 4.5 stitches to the inch it is slow going.

A recent article in PhysicsWeb says that all news stories on the web start to be ignored, or rather not clicked on, 36 hours after publication! This is not even a half-life, whic is common in the standard scientific publishing world. The half-life of a science article is the point at wich an article will have recieved approximately one half of all of it current and future readings. The new article in PhysicsWeb says that all news stories posted on the web become virtualy unread 36 hours later!

I know blog cruisers have a different style and motivation to surfing than do news junkies but it does lead me to wonder how this applies to articles written in a blog? I could not find data on a partiucular posting but I did find information about the halflife of Blogs that are hosted at live journal which suggests that the halflife is either 351 or 392 days depending upon the model used. So the typical Blog lasts about 2 years before sliding off into the abyss. Many of us are familiar with sites which are no longer posting and a few that we wonder why they started in the first place. Food for thought.

Have you ever wondered what the heck those doctors/nurses/physician assistants were saying? What the heck does (insert doctor speak here) mean? Now the Medlical Librarian Association has guides to help you with the terminology! If general terms are not what you need they also have guides for breast cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. Deciphering Medspeak! I recommend it!

This is a very interesting quiz with commentary provided by the BBC. It has the if there who will you save kind of questions. I will not comment but leave the comments for the BBC site or you can add yours here. ( I found the link to the quiz from this blog)

After reading the Washcloth threads in the Knitter’s Review Forum I thought I would jump on the bandwagon. ( Being the fourth of July, joining the parade seemed appropriate!) It was really easy and the Sugar and Cream Yarn was quite inexpensive. Unfortunately it is about 120 yards and I have no idea how much I really used but the pattern calls for 100 yards that leaves me with 20 yards of cotton yarn. Maybe I will use it for tieing up newspapers to recycle! It looks like more so maybe I did not use the full 100 yards? I hate the idea of pulling out a yard stick but I might have too.
This is a very easy pattern and fairly quick even for a slow knitter like me. It took a few hours, maybe 6-8 but I did not have to pay much attention to the project while I was working on it. The pattern is in the forums but apparently it is a very common pattern because I have found it in a few places on the web.

Just when I thought I was comfortble knitting in public it happened. I brought my knitting with me to get my car worked on I thought I would half an hour of free time. But when I got there there were a bunch of men talking well I chickened out. They probably would not have carred but it was me who was struggling with the issue of taking out my knitting. Oh well someday I will be more comfortable with it.