Spent a pleasant Saturday evening in the company of the Solent Amateur Astronomers, a special open day to view the Perseid meteor shower. Perfect conditions-clear and no moon (which apparently will rather make a mess of viewing next year). They showed us Jupiter and 4 moons through the 14 inch Meade Telescope, and the Andromeda Galaxy through some binoculars. Also saw very clearly a band of stars of the Milky Way, and the Space Station whizzed by twice while we were there, extra bright apparently due to the shuttle docked with it.
And another of the occasional series I like to call 'song lyrics stuck in my brain'-this time The Beautiful South with Dumb
"The sun, the sky, the moon, the stars, Jupiter, Neptune and Mars, all these things I clearly see"
Monday, 13 August 2007
Sunday, 5 August 2007
Foot and mouth freakout
OMFG. Pirbright Laboratory, housing the government's Institute of Animal Health and a private company named Merial Animal Health 'may' be responsible for the latest outbreak of foot and mouth.
It's being described as a possible lead, but I point out 2 rather significant comments in the BBC article today' "The strain of foot-and-mouth identified is not one normally found in animals but is used in vaccine production and in diagnostic laboratories." And "The strain of the disease identified was used in a batch of vaccine manufactured on 16 July by Merial."
The lab is 3 miles from the farm where they killed all the animals yesterday. I'm having flashbacks to the ugly pyres of 2001. Gordon Brown is apparently promising there won't be a repeat of that horrible episode.
Perhaps not. But since it's your lab that couldn't contain the virus, I may take that with a pinch of salt.
Having recently watched the tv series of Stephen King's The Stand, I'm becoming rather more concerned about how we are looking after all those nasty germs we have stored in secure labs. I love a good post-apocalyptic scenario but NOT FOR REAL.
On a more pleasant note, I've just made my first bananaloaf in the breadmaker, so I'm off to give it a try now. Lion-marked eggs so hoping that it will be a safe snack.
It's being described as a possible lead, but I point out 2 rather significant comments in the BBC article today' "The strain of foot-and-mouth identified is not one normally found in animals but is used in vaccine production and in diagnostic laboratories." And "The strain of the disease identified was used in a batch of vaccine manufactured on 16 July by Merial."
The lab is 3 miles from the farm where they killed all the animals yesterday. I'm having flashbacks to the ugly pyres of 2001. Gordon Brown is apparently promising there won't be a repeat of that horrible episode.
Perhaps not. But since it's your lab that couldn't contain the virus, I may take that with a pinch of salt.
Having recently watched the tv series of Stephen King's The Stand, I'm becoming rather more concerned about how we are looking after all those nasty germs we have stored in secure labs. I love a good post-apocalyptic scenario but NOT FOR REAL.
On a more pleasant note, I've just made my first bananaloaf in the breadmaker, so I'm off to give it a try now. Lion-marked eggs so hoping that it will be a safe snack.
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