Couldn't sleep last night. It was well after 2:30 before I got any reasonable kind of sleep. I don't know why. Didn't seem like there was that much going through my head. Wasn't that hot.
I'll trade you... it was that hot here. Sometime around 3:something it got cool enough to stick the fan in front of the screen door. 3+ hours of sleep, now it's time to go play rocketman.
*LOL*! No, i was talking about work! Though it is a good song. Today was my last productive day at JPL. Tomorrow, I go through the exit interview process, and then part company. Monday I start back at my old job, except with much higher pay. I think things will work out better for both myself and JPL/NASA with me back at my old work. Aside from better pay, 3x the vacation time, and a bigger travel allowance, I'll still be able to work for JPL - and other NASA offices. It'll sort of be the best of both worlds. :-) Things will definetly work out better for me - with the higher pay, I'll be able to afford a house like the one Cindy and you are about to put on the market - except out here it'll be somewhere in the $400K range, and won't have a basement. By the way - I hope this weekend's Lawn Party turns out fantastic. Both Cindy and you have been working a lot lately, and you both deserve to have a great reception.
It's still rather hot outside here. I'm guessing it'll be another "up till the wee hours" kind of night. Kind of like the night you're having right now!
I used to not take the affect of the moon seriously in .. well anything, because it is just a ball of rock in the sky right? That was before the sense of (IMO) "if it affects the oceans enough to form tides, how can it NOT have an affect on something that is 98 percent water?" Got through to me, and caused me to open my narrow view enough to let some information in.
I am not a werewolf, or one of those people who choose to use the affect of the full moon to let go of all social boundaries, but I DO have trouble sleeping during the full moon, and I don't THINK it has much to do with the light.. although that might be part of it, or the noise from those people who choose to go crazy during it. *grin*
Did you know that the whole world's oceans run on a lunar cycle? Even corals follow the moon. On full-moons is when corals, jellyfish, and other benthic/broadcast-spawning sea critters cast their spawn into the waters... and in their cases, it's exactly the light that makes the difference. :-)
I knew that is when they spawn, but no I did NOT know it was the light.. I thought it was the water level or temp, or... something. How interesting... perhaps the light does make more of a difference than I gave it credit for..
Back in about '92, a bunch of us were talking about stuff on sci.aquaria (usenet newsgroup), about how to set-up the perfect saltwater reef tank. One of the folks had been working on getting corals and annenomies to spawn, had very healthy animals, but they just wouldn't spawn. We all kicked around ideas, inclding running timers and different wattages of small light bulbs in the corner of the room at night. When he started running small lights at night, simulating phases of the moon, the second month all the corals and the annenomies spawned! It was very cool to read about it - the progress we were all hoping for. Basicly it means that if folks did things right, the coral reefs woundn't need to me harmed to supply coral (etc) for the aquaria industry. :-)
Now THAT would be wonderful, anything we could do to stop overharvesting anything natural is an improvement.
When I was in college, and head lab asst. for the bio labs, I set up a series of aquariums that all ran together as a "wall" in the Zoo lab. It was a great learning experience. I only tried salt water once or twice, and it was such a pain to keep regulated, I never tried it on my own once I left the lab environment.
They sure are pretty though, particularly the ones with enhancment lights and wave action.
I agree - and that was one of the most rewarding things about being a part of that sci.aquaria group back then. "reef tanks" were becomming very popular, fitler technology was taking off (ozonereaktors were dropping in price, foam fractionation collumns were becomming cheap, wet/dry filter technology for home tanks was in it's infancy, and bio-balls were only just being thought of). Nearly every aquarium shop on the west coast had corals and "live rock" that could be bought, most likely harvested from Floridan or Mexican reefs. Most of us on the sci-aq group were going nuts about the destruction of it all, and while discussing the ideas of how-to breed things like corals, we were working out do-it-yourself versions of the very expensive filter kits. I made a wet-dry filter out of irrigation pipe and a spa pump, and my own foam-fractionation collumn. One of the other guys took my collumn design and used it to make his own ozone reaction collumn. Several of us were experimenting with reverse-flow under-gravel filters. My salt tank was a 55 show plexi with a blue back. I had 2 small live rocks, with annenomies, mantis shrimp (a scourge), some damsels, a few chromis chromis, a sebae annenomie and a pair of sebae clowns. The lighting was a combination of flourescent tubes - actinic, Chroma-50's, Titans, and bright-whites. The filtration moved somewhere near 20 tanks an hour (1000 gallons per hour flow). Everything was very healthy. Then... the union-chem plant down in Pt. Richmond had an accident, leaked a lot of S02 into the atmosphere. The calcium precipitated from the water in the salt tank, killing everything in short order. I lost a lot more than just that tank. But yes, we were all hoping that some of us could make a difference, breed rare fish and corals, and make the industry more eco-friendly. I only managed with a few rare-but-popular african cichlids: L. Brichardi "daphodil", and P. Elongotus "electric blue". Those two types alone kept me in free aquarium equipment and free fish food for nearly 5 years (food for all the fish except Abraxxas).
That is what I miss about it, when I was fiddling.. the knowledge that I gained about the WORKINGS of the systems, that is knowledge that I have stored and have a hard time retrieving these days. *grin* My recall system isn't what it was when I was younger.
I do remember being fascinated however at the fact that I achieved the cleanest aquariums (I NEVER had to clean them out.. their systems worked like nature intended) when I used sand as my bottom material instead of rock and a home made under"ground" filter. You can't do that these days the way the under"gravel" filters are made, they would clog up.
You have a very interesting journal, would you mind if I added you to my friends list?
[mike bows] I would be honored to add another friend to my list as well! Please do add me. Thank you for the kind compliment!
Back in the 80's you could get pre-made under gravel filters for most common sizes of fish tanks, but none of them really "fit" the bottoms of the tanks except the common glass tanks. I started making my own out of a flourescent light diffuser called "egg crate" and fiberglass window screen material. They could be made to exactly fit any tank bottom, and could be made in sections so they could fit through the tops of the plexi tanks. I always left about an inch at the front and sides so the filters would not be visible from the outside of the tank (except at the back).
With my 100, a freshwater setup, I had just enough light, and a huge mat of java moss (great live plant), and perhaps 500gph of filtration flow - once every six months I had to do a 25% water change, and I'd clean the front and side gravel at that point. The water change was more to dilute the built-up salts from adding water than for any other reason. At it's height, the 100 had 20 clown loaches, a pair of telematochromus jacobfribergi, a huge plecostomus, a huge hong-kong eel, and Abraxxas the 2 foot long clown knife. Once a week it would also have about 100 feeder comets, but Abraxxas usually ate them all up within 2 or 3 days. Quite a bit of bio-load, but ballanced just right to work out well.
Many of the commercial filters now are very nice, some backfilters have bio-wheels, some setups even have affordable sand-filled modules and UV-sterilizing modules. But I've not yet seen an under-gravel filter (UGF) that can come close to a home-made UGF, and even the setups that are designed for reverse-flow (RFUGF) lose pressure and aren't as good as home-made RFUGF's. With an RFUGF, the water is mechanicly filtered with easily cleaned sponges or wool, then pumped down under the gravel. The water "boils" up out of the gravel bed, and that's where the bacterial action takes place. Add in a huge mat of plant, and some light, and that's really all you need.
I know what you mean about recall. I used to know more about fish than I can remember. It's bad enough i've forgotten many of the latin names, but they've gone and changed many of the cichlid names. Damn scientists!! :-)
I feel the same about plant names and families.. they keep changing the things, and the only reliable way to KNOW what plant anyone else is talking about is to use its latin name, common names are so regional.
I can't remember now what I made my undersand filter out of, but I know that it was home made using the information I was learning in water chemistry at the time. I even used sand out of the river and heated it to sterilize, instead of store bought sand.. we were a small school, and had to make do in many ways. But thinking back on it I remember wondering if that collected sand was the reason it worked so well.. because the organism were at least partially established in the medium already. All of this was pre 80's btw.. I graduated from college (after 6 years) in 1982.
Lol... I attended UC Santa Cruz from '81 - '87. Someday I'll go back and finish off a degree... For about the last 20 years there have been various cultures (FritZyme#7, etc) that you can add to a new tank to "seed" the gravel with bacters. They work fairly well. :-)
Back in the 80's I belonged to the Pacific Coast Cichlidae Association - it was great fun to hang out and talk fish once a month with some serious fishheads, some who would travel the world taking pictures and talking with the big professional breeders / researchers.
It's been nearly a decade since I was active. The last house I rented, if I'd had the 100 in the living room and filled it with water, it would have landed in the basement. (the 100 gallon tank, plus accessories, weighed well over 1000 lbs.) I've recently reloacated to hell, er.., L.A., and am looking for a place to buy. Once that's done, i'll definetly set several tanks up again. Probably another south-american community (100g), and a couple african breeder tanks (50's, 30's).
The largest tank I have had on my own (I own my house) was a fifty when I was in Colorado. We put in a dozen feeder fish to start the bacteria in the tank, and they DID NOT DIE.
We were feeding goldfish food, as it was the cheapest thing, and they turned a beautiful orange, and got to seven or eight inches before I had to move and get rid of them (they became oscar food for an acquaintance). The reason we never went farther with the tank.. was the "loyalty" of the carp. The tank was in a frontish entrance hall, and they would collect at the narrow door end of the tank when we walked in the door, and follow us around as best they could. They KNEW where we were, and exhibited "dog" behavior in following us. I could not flush them, even when small.. I grew too affectionate of them.
The last tank I had was a 35 I think, and I had.. err.. Thing one and Thing two in it.. I think they were some kind of tetra, but they were shaped and banded like tiger barbs. For three years every fish we put in that tank with them (they were part of the first batch of tropicals we bought to populate the tank) they ate.. although at first we didn't know it was them that was doing it. I put aggressives in there toward the end, and they still ended up eating them. In the end we left it with just them in the tank, and my ex husband stopped feeding them in the hopes that they would die. There was enough in the tank for them to survive on for another year before one of them finally beheaded the other and he flushed the survivor.
We gave the tank and set up away after that. *grin*
*lol!* One of my friends in canada had a really nasty "red devil". It killed his "green terror". Finaly he decided to put the devil in with a serrasalmous naterri (red-bellied piranha). The devil killed the piranha.
Many tetras require a small school (at least 6) to stay well enough distracted. Tetras, and the barbs, and hatchets, are all rather agressive. Barbs and hatchets are related to piranhas.
I had a red-bellied pacu (vegi piranha) that was very dog-like. I hand fed him at least once a week. When I came home from work, he'd "dog" follow me in the tank, but if I brought friends home, he'd hide in the back corner! He was great! Once I was feeding him cheese, and he grabbed my finger by mistake. The minute I moved it, he let go and almost jumped out of the tank. Paco the Pacu was a cool fish.
He'd occasionally let me "pet" him, and he'd pal-around with Albert the Synodonis Alberti catfish from Lake Albert. He never got along with the arowana I had, they fought so much I ended up having to sell the arowana back to the fish store. (I bought Art when he was about 3 inches long; sold him when he was over a foot long. Cost: about $2, sale price: about $40.)
I had Paco for about 3 or 4 years before the Loma Prietta quake shut our power off for a week. He was about the size of a dinner plate. My roommates at the time were also fishheads; we must have lost over $1,000.00 worth of fish that week.
That is sad. It reminds me of another fish story posted somewhere on my journal this week from a young man in England. He is taking care of his neighbor's pond while they are on holiday and two of the pond inhabitants were sturgeon. Their pump went out and one of them died in the heat. Now they have a hose rigged up over the fences, from their house, trying to spash enough water in the pond to aerate it enough so the remaining sturgeon and the carp won't die as well.
He posted pictures, but not of THE sturgeon, since it was dead.. but he did describe it as it lay on the bank. Someone pointed out that sturgeon are ocean fish.. and as such were never going to survive in a fresh water pond for long.. but that doesn't make sense that they have been there for several months at least. The entry is from last week or so in turkdiddler's Journal if you are interested.
Only two feet long? I wonder if that's standard for the european variety. My dad has seen them in the Wisconsin river, head on one side and tail on the other side of his canoe.
No, not at all, I was trying to comment without sounding all.. you know poopy, but I could not seem to get it right. *grin*
When I worked at the University Science Lab (during my college years) we would have the strangest people come in, with the strangest things.
More about that later, have to take the kid out to eat and shopping right at the moment, just wanted to say that I didn't take it the way my comment read like I took it before I left. :)
I went to a Southern Baptist University, extremely conservative and .. over ruled (IMO). I was a biology and chemistry major (started out pre med.. found out I had issues with blood in my junior year.. went toward research after that) and we would get some of the ... most unusual visitors during full moons. That is when I first noticed the connection between "odd behavior" and the moon.
There were several brilliant scientists that taught there, and as I have found of most scientists.. they were a bit on the odd side, and perhaps that is where the reputation and rumors started in the surrounding communities.
Normally it was people who would walk 12 miles or so to give us poisonous snakes.. so we could collect the venom for experiments and such, but one night..
I was the lab assistant on duty, and I kept the lab open late for students to study. A man came to the front door and knocked.. unusual as it was unlocked, glass, all the lights on, and people walking around inside. Someone came upstairs to get me, and when I heard the man's story, I excused myself from the forming crowd and called one of the professors to come deal with the issue at hand.
The man had heard that we were doing DNA experiments in the basement (the site of the actual water chemistry department.. don't know where that rumor got started) and wanted to offer his services. I haven't mentioned, but the school I went to was in a tiny little place in southern Arkansas, in the swampy areas.. a dismal lightly populated area. This man was from one of the backwoods communities in the area, and had discovered several years back that he had the gift of "breathing life" and wanted us to know that he could bring to life any humans we created. The man would not accept that we did not DO DNA experiments. We tried every argument we could, including that the southern baptist convention who sanctioned this school certainly would not allow those types of experiments to be carried out on school property. This man was adamant that we use his god given gift.
We finally got him to leave by .. and this part is terrible, I still feel guilty about it, but the head of the chemistry department told him that if anyone was doing DNA experiments, it would be the state university across the highway from us, and he really should try there. I never heard if he went over there or not.
Sometimes I wonder if the moon really has that much affect on human behavior, or if we as humans have grasped the IDEA that it does, and use it to allow ourselves to act in ways that we normally would not allow ourselves to act.
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chiming
no subject
Date: 2004-07-29 01:57 pm (UTC)From:Elton?
Date: 2004-07-30 05:08 am (UTC)From:Re: Elton?
Date: 2004-07-30 05:17 am (UTC)From:Today was my last productive day at JPL. Tomorrow, I go through the exit interview process, and then part company.
Monday I start back at my old job, except with much higher pay. I think things will work out better for both myself and JPL/NASA with me back at my old work. Aside from better pay, 3x the vacation time, and a bigger travel allowance, I'll still be able to work for JPL - and other NASA offices. It'll sort of be the best of both worlds. :-)
Things will definetly work out better for me - with the higher pay, I'll be able to afford a house like the one Cindy and you are about to put on the market - except out here it'll be somewhere in the $400K range, and won't have a basement.
By the way - I hope this weekend's Lawn Party turns out fantastic. Both Cindy and you have been working a lot lately, and you both deserve to have a great reception.
It's still rather hot outside here. I'm guessing it'll be another "up till the wee hours" kind of night. Kind of like the night you're having right now!
no subject
Date: 2004-07-29 03:57 pm (UTC)From:i always blame the weather- it's just easier! ;)
too much to do and not enough time
also make me antsy- my body is telling me this
even when i think i'm calm and sleepy~
no subject
Date: 2004-07-29 09:54 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-07-30 05:09 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-07-30 12:09 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-07-30 12:24 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-07-30 01:15 am (UTC)From:That is cute!
I used to not take the affect of the moon seriously in .. well anything, because it is just a ball of rock in the sky right? That was before the sense of (IMO) "if it affects the oceans enough to form tides, how can it NOT have an affect on something that is 98 percent water?" Got through to me, and caused me to open my narrow view enough to let some information in.
I am not a werewolf, or one of those people who choose to use the affect of the full moon to let go of all social boundaries, but I DO have trouble sleeping during the full moon, and I don't THINK it has much to do with the light.. although that might be part of it, or the noise from those people who choose to go crazy during it. *grin*
no subject
Date: 2004-07-30 05:22 am (UTC)From:Even corals follow the moon. On full-moons is when corals, jellyfish, and other benthic/broadcast-spawning sea critters cast their spawn into the waters... and in their cases, it's exactly the light that makes the difference.
:-)
no subject
Date: 2004-07-30 09:56 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-07-30 02:00 pm (UTC)From:small light bulbs in the corner of the room at night. When he started running small lights at night, simulating phases of the moon, the second month all the corals and the annenomies spawned! It was very cool to read about it - the progress we were all hoping for. Basicly it means that if folks did things right, the coral reefs woundn't need to me harmed to supply coral (etc) for the aquaria industry. :-)
no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 02:32 am (UTC)From:When I was in college, and head lab asst. for the bio labs, I set up a series of aquariums that all ran together as a "wall" in the Zoo lab. It was a great learning experience. I only tried salt water once or twice, and it was such a pain to keep regulated, I never tried it on my own once I left the lab environment.
They sure are pretty though, particularly the ones with enhancment lights and wave action.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 03:11 am (UTC)From:I made a wet-dry filter out of irrigation pipe and a spa pump, and my own foam-fractionation collumn. One of the other guys took my collumn design and used it to make his own ozone reaction collumn. Several of us were experimenting with reverse-flow under-gravel filters.
My salt tank was a 55 show plexi with a blue back. I had 2 small live rocks, with annenomies, mantis shrimp (a scourge), some damsels, a few chromis chromis, a sebae annenomie and a pair of sebae clowns. The lighting was a combination of flourescent tubes - actinic, Chroma-50's, Titans, and bright-whites. The filtration moved somewhere near 20 tanks an hour (1000 gallons per hour flow). Everything was very healthy.
Then... the union-chem plant down in Pt. Richmond had an accident, leaked a lot of S02 into the atmosphere. The calcium precipitated from the water in the salt tank, killing everything in short order. I lost a lot more than just that tank.
But yes, we were all hoping that some of us could make a difference, breed rare fish and corals, and make the industry more eco-friendly.
I only managed with a few rare-but-popular african cichlids: L. Brichardi "daphodil", and P. Elongotus "electric blue". Those two types alone kept me in free aquarium equipment and free fish food for nearly 5 years (food for all the fish except Abraxxas).
no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 12:12 pm (UTC)From:I do remember being fascinated however at the fact that I achieved the cleanest aquariums (I NEVER had to clean them out.. their systems worked like nature intended) when I used sand as my bottom material instead of rock and a home made under"ground" filter. You can't do that these days the way the under"gravel" filters are made, they would clog up.
You have a very interesting journal, would you mind if I added you to my friends list?
no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 03:44 pm (UTC)From:Back in the 80's you could get pre-made under gravel filters for most common sizes of fish tanks, but none of them really "fit" the bottoms of the tanks except the common glass tanks. I started making my own out of a flourescent light diffuser called "egg crate" and fiberglass window screen material. They could be made to exactly fit any tank bottom, and could be made in sections so they could fit through the tops of the plexi tanks. I always left about an inch at the front and sides so the filters would not be visible from the outside of the tank (except at the back).
With my 100, a freshwater setup, I had just enough light, and a huge mat of java moss (great live plant), and perhaps 500gph of filtration flow - once every six months I had to do a 25% water change, and I'd clean the front and side gravel at that point. The water change was more to dilute the built-up salts from adding water than for any other reason. At it's height, the 100 had 20 clown loaches, a pair of telematochromus jacobfribergi, a huge plecostomus, a huge hong-kong eel, and Abraxxas the 2 foot long clown knife. Once a week it would also have about 100 feeder comets, but Abraxxas usually ate them all up within 2 or 3 days. Quite a bit of bio-load, but ballanced just right to work out well.
Many of the commercial filters now are very nice, some backfilters have bio-wheels, some setups even have affordable sand-filled modules and UV-sterilizing modules. But I've not yet seen an under-gravel filter (UGF) that can come close to a home-made UGF, and even the setups that are designed for reverse-flow (RFUGF) lose pressure and aren't as good as home-made RFUGF's.
With an RFUGF, the water is mechanicly filtered with easily cleaned sponges or wool, then pumped down under the gravel. The water "boils" up out of the gravel bed, and that's where the bacterial action takes place. Add in a huge mat of plant, and some light, and that's really all you need.
I know what you mean about recall. I used to know more about fish than I can remember. It's bad enough i've forgotten many of the latin names, but they've gone and changed many of the cichlid names. Damn scientists!! :-)
Thank you sir.. added
Date: 2004-07-31 03:57 pm (UTC)From:I can't remember now what I made my undersand filter out of, but I know that it was home made using the information I was learning in water chemistry at the time. I even used sand out of the river and heated it to sterilize, instead of store bought sand.. we were a small school, and had to make do in many ways. But thinking back on it I remember wondering if that collected sand was the reason it worked so well.. because the organism were at least partially established in the medium already. All of this was pre 80's btw.. I graduated from college (after 6 years) in 1982.
Re: Thank you sir.. added
Date: 2004-07-31 04:18 pm (UTC)From:For about the last 20 years there have been various cultures (FritZyme#7, etc) that you can add to a new tank to "seed" the gravel with bacters. They work fairly well. :-)
Back in the 80's I belonged to the Pacific Coast Cichlidae Association - it was great fun to hang out and talk fish once a month with some serious fishheads, some who would travel the world taking pictures and talking with the big professional breeders / researchers.
Re: Thank you sir.. added
Date: 2004-07-31 04:26 pm (UTC)From:Re: Thank you sir.. added
Date: 2004-07-31 04:31 pm (UTC)From:I've recently reloacated to hell, er.., L.A., and am looking for a place to buy. Once that's done, i'll definetly set several tanks up again. Probably another south-american community (100g), and a couple african breeder tanks (50's, 30's).
Re: Thank you sir.. added
Date: 2004-07-31 05:15 pm (UTC)From:DID
NOT
DIE.
We were feeding goldfish food, as it was the cheapest thing, and they turned a beautiful orange, and got to seven or eight inches before I had to move and get rid of them (they became oscar food for an acquaintance). The reason we never went farther with the tank.. was the "loyalty" of the carp. The tank was in a frontish entrance hall, and they would collect at the narrow door end of the tank when we walked in the door, and follow us around as best they could. They KNEW where we were, and exhibited "dog" behavior in following us. I could not flush them, even when small.. I grew too affectionate of them.
The last tank I had was a 35 I think, and I had.. err.. Thing one and Thing two in it.. I think they were some kind of tetra, but they were shaped and banded like tiger barbs. For three years every fish we put in that tank with them (they were part of the first batch of tropicals we bought to populate the tank) they ate.. although at first we didn't know it was them that was doing it. I put aggressives in there toward the end, and they still ended up eating them. In the end we left it with just them in the tank, and my ex husband stopped feeding them in the hopes that they would die. There was enough in the tank for them to survive on for another year before one of them finally beheaded the other and he flushed the survivor.
We gave the tank and set up away after that. *grin*
Re: Thank you sir.. added
Date: 2004-07-31 05:42 pm (UTC)From:One of my friends in canada had a really nasty "red devil". It killed his "green terror". Finaly he decided to put the devil in with a serrasalmous naterri (red-bellied piranha). The devil killed the piranha.
Many tetras require a small school (at least 6) to stay well enough distracted. Tetras, and the barbs, and hatchets, are all rather agressive. Barbs and hatchets are related to piranhas.
I had a red-bellied pacu (vegi piranha) that was very dog-like. I hand fed him at least once a week. When I came home from work, he'd "dog" follow me in the tank, but if I brought friends home, he'd hide in the back corner! He was great! Once I was feeding him cheese, and he grabbed my finger by mistake. The minute I moved it, he let go and almost jumped out of the tank. Paco the Pacu was a cool fish.
He'd occasionally let me "pet" him, and he'd pal-around with Albert the Synodonis Alberti catfish from Lake Albert. He never got along with the arowana I had, they fought so much I ended up having to sell the arowana back to the fish store. (I bought Art when he was about 3 inches long; sold him when he was over a foot long. Cost: about $2, sale price: about $40.)
I had Paco for about 3 or 4 years before the Loma Prietta quake shut our power off for a week. He was about the size of a dinner plate. My roommates at the time were also fishheads; we must have lost over $1,000.00 worth of fish that week.
Re: Thank you sir.. added
Date: 2004-08-01 04:59 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-08-03 01:48 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-08-04 10:16 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-08-04 11:31 pm (UTC)From:Some kinds live in fresh water.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-04 11:56 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-07-30 12:01 pm (UTC)From:When I worked at the public library during my teen years, there was definitely a stranger crowd in there during a full moon.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-30 02:02 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-07-30 10:29 pm (UTC)From:When I worked at the University Science Lab (during my college years) we would have the strangest people come in, with the strangest things.
More about that later, have to take the kid out to eat and shopping right at the moment, just wanted to say that I didn't take it the way my comment read like I took it before I left. :)
Now that I have a bit more time....
Date: 2004-07-31 02:50 am (UTC)From:There were several brilliant scientists that taught there, and as I have found of most scientists.. they were a bit on the odd side, and perhaps that is where the reputation and rumors started in the surrounding communities.
Normally it was people who would walk 12 miles or so to give us poisonous snakes.. so we could collect the venom for experiments and such, but one night..
I was the lab assistant on duty, and I kept the lab open late for students to study. A man came to the front door and knocked.. unusual as it was unlocked, glass, all the lights on, and people walking around inside. Someone came upstairs to get me, and when I heard the man's story, I excused myself from the forming crowd and called one of the professors to come deal with the issue at hand.
The man had heard that we were doing DNA experiments in the basement (the site of the actual water chemistry department.. don't know where that rumor got started) and wanted to offer his services. I haven't mentioned, but the school I went to was in a tiny little place in southern Arkansas, in the swampy areas.. a dismal lightly populated area. This man was from one of the backwoods communities in the area, and had discovered several years back that he had the gift of "breathing life" and wanted us to know that he could bring to life any humans we created. The man would not accept that we did not DO DNA experiments. We tried every argument we could, including that the southern baptist convention who sanctioned this school certainly would not allow those types of experiments to be carried out on school property. This man was adamant that we use his god given gift.
We finally got him to leave by .. and this part is terrible, I still feel guilty about it, but the head of the chemistry department told him that if anyone was doing DNA experiments, it would be the state university across the highway from us, and he really should try there. I never heard if he went over there or not.
Sometimes I wonder if the moon really has that much affect on human behavior, or if we as humans have grasped the IDEA that it does, and use it to allow ourselves to act in ways that we normally would not allow ourselves to act.