When I lived in the Arcata Bottoms we had a very good earthquake detector. The mice in the attic would come out. Basically 72-48 hours before 4+ scale earthquakes we'd start seeing mice. (They were basically trying to evacuate the house.)

I woke up before the Northridge quake, about 10 seconds before we felt the shaking. Something felt weird, there was a low bass pulse which is usually, in Los Angeles, a helicopter. In this case it was the pressure wave of the quake. Makes perfect sense that a dog can hear that.

I'm sorry, how are they supposed to monitor it themselves? By looking in the mirror all the time? Or are their friends/family supposed to notify them. (Or do they actually tint the vision?)

BTW - that article you linked to was really poorly written. (But scientists just have to do good science, right, not necessarily communicate it.)

Uh, yeah, I think you guys have just posted an ad ... for free. They followed me on Twitter today and I blocked them for being spammy.

Even as a kid I found most Golden Books rather watered down and lame. But I loved The Poky Little Puppy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Poky_Little_Puppy

Hooray! (You can post the word count widget here so folks can get updates on your progress automatically!)

I'm at 8,100 ... I only write on weekends, so I should be at 10,000 but I'm always a slow starter. I find it's much better to be a little behind than ahead, keeps me from getting cocky.

I've written seven now. I loved it so much the first year ('01) I started volunteering for the group and am now part of the staff. (And helping to build the awesomer 10 Anniversary website.)

If you're a regular blogger, I think NaNo will seem pretty easy. The continuity part is kind of hard (sometimes I'd forget that I'd written something like what a character did for a living and then go on later in the book with a long passage about their job), but then again I don't plan ... at all. One year I wrote a novel based soley on a title I thought would be good. Another was based on Murphy's Law.

(BTW - April is Script Frenzy - there are a bunch of people writing 100 page scripts right now!)

windowshoppist - there is a very good way to block simply the ads you don't like. Install Firefox's adblocker, but not the prepopulated blacklists.

Then you "vote" against ads that bother you when you see them by right clicking and sending them to your block list.

I have a terrible aversion to things that run over the screen, autoplay or blink. Most others I leave alone. All this is telling the website is that the demure and respectful ads do better with readers like me.

(And in return, on my website I do not accept such ads on it either. I've never blocked the bowling shirt one because it's not blinking and it doesn't start talking to me.)

I have a distinct recollection of using one of those at a Buster Brown store in the 70s.

Do I have foot cancer now?

I hit it once. Mostly because I paid for a clock with a snooze button and I want to get my money's worth.

I seriously doubt any true marine expert said "that these displays of attacks on non-rival, non-predatory, peace-loving porpoises and, more shockingly, of dolphin infanticide, may have always taken place."

Peace-loving porpoises? Give me a break. It's the ocean, these are animals. Top level predators. We'll understand them better when we stop looking at projecting human ideals on them.

I remember my little unmovable, unemotional minifigs too! You had to take off their legs in order to have them sit in a chair or vehicle. (I had a little police boat and a cop!)

Eventually we lost their heads and used the little square "onesies" instead. Those were referred to as the no-necks, they were like a sub-species of minifigs.

How could you be surprised that a 3 Musketeers has 40 grams of sugar? If it says it's low in fat and it's very sweet what did you think was in there?

Snappy wins the internets!

Thanks, andrew, I know what a salmon shark is. Just because something is plentiful doesn't mean that it should be hunted for sport and then further glorified as "neat."

(I chose comparable top level predators in the same ecosystem as my examples for a reason.)

Here's a more complete version of the story:

http://www.star-telegram.com/629/story/257747.html

That one doesn't banish it to the "strange" part of the news.

What I find oddest about the clerk's story is that he says that he thought the customer was going to attack him (that's why he clubbed him). Of course he didn't report it to the police, instead erased the security tape.