Doesn't this look Cthulhoid???

I took this photo over near the sidwalk at on the campus of St Joseph East hospital. The colony is about two feet long by 1 1/2 feet wide. We've had so much rain lately, I've seen several mushrooms and other fungi. But this one was the most interesting.

Aw, they're so sweet

I so hope they get to marry soon. 61 years is a long time to wait!

Via Joe.My.God.

Maybe all that sleep I've been getting isn't a good thing

Some nights I get 10-12 hours (I used to get 5-6).

Sleeping too little — or too much — bad for middle-age mind

People who moved to the long end of the sleep spectrum — sleeping more than eight hours a night — fared the worst, according to the authors.

"Almost all the experimental work that's being done in sleep laboratories is all about sleep deprivation," Ferrie said.

"But when we look at disease outcomes, when we look at mortality and now, cognitive function, which is the first time anyone's done this, it's the long end of the sleep distribution that seems to be the most harmful."

It's not clear why. One theory is that people who report long hours of sleep have fragmented sleep, Ferrie says. "They're actually in bed and sort of asleep for quite a long time, but they don't have the benefit of the deep sleep, which is the bit that's really restorative."

People suffering from depression also tend to sleep more, and depression itself has been associated with worse cognitive function.

Via Lin (@lwu5 on Twitter).

Speaking of sleep, it's 1:15 and I'm ready for bed. Good night.

It's a little after midnight and I'm just getting home from a productive day

I am a bit damp, as it is raining steadily (not that we need more rain just now). Today was rather typical. I:

• Reset the copier, which was giving an error code when I came in.
  
• Filled said copier, and the other one, to the brim.
  
• Changed the water in my flower vase and cut the flower stems. Those flowers have been going strong since the Friday before last.
  
• Waded handily through e-mail and explored Outlook 2010's task options.
  
• Figured out how to send encrypted messages for confidential information.
  
• Explored style sheets in Word 2010.
  
• Figured out where they hid the hanging indent. :)
  
• Figured out how to create a PDF from Word using Word 2010 itself. Felt stupid when the co-worker and I were going through it, because Save As didn't seem to bring up that file type. Then I realised I hadn't hit the scroll down and there were a whole bunch of other types available. (Smacks head with hand.)
  
• Collected titles for a book order. If I order before July 15, I get a 22% discount.
  
• Moved boxes of books to storage.
  
• Assisted someone with printing.
  
• Checked the mail. One was for a discount to a book I contributed to. It wasn't my best work, and I'm a bit afraid to see how it turned out.
  
• Processed the lobby magazines and medical journals.
  
• Put the magazines in the lobby. All 92 of them.
  
• Tracked down a mystery message and sent and article to the requesting doctor at an area practice. Faxed it to them as per their request. They had faxed the request. The doctor had written in cryptic handwriting on a prescription paper that when copied, has 'void' all over it. Fun. :)
  
• Helped a patron find a book. Discovered a new edition had just come out. Added the requested book update to my order.
  
• Got a TB skin test.
  
• Updated my statistics file.
  
• Checked for arrived interlibrary loans throughout the day.
  
• Changed jobs at the time clock.
  
• Made my rounds to pick up the data entry sheets.
  
• Put in today's data entry items.
  
• Verified said items.
  
• Tracked down some problem cases and e-mailed the appropriate people.
  
• Verified one section of data entry from where I was behind a bit last week (I got them all in on time, but not as quickly as normal).
  
• Straightened up the library, especially printouts that have not been picked up.
  

Then I went to a friend's house and finished the things I needed to do on Sunday, and sat and visited for awhile as he cooked. Unfortunately, I couldn't stay for supper; the last bus left at 10:30 or so. Listened to music there and back (so glad I can hear out of my left ear again). Now I'm home, out of my damp clothes and into warm jammies, with my contacts out, ready for bed. Tomorrow I need to shelve books, shelve the medical journals, work on the book order some more, and start cataloguing the rest of the collection. I had everything on Library World at one point, but the exported file was nearly useless for putting things into LibraryThing (there were a lot of extraneous numbers), the latter of which works pretty well considering the size of the collection. I've got about 250 books of the 1300 or so we have catalogued already. Yes, it's a tiny library. I have more books in my apartment than that. There are about 35 journal subscriptions. I'm thinking of using the smartphone application I got the other day to speed things along. The only modification I've really had to make is putting the National Library of Medicine call number in the comments field.

I do a fair amount of interlibrary loans, both lending and borrowing; not that much reference work, oddly enough. I'm updating books as I can with a grant, as well as paying for electronic resources, which are heavily used.

When I get home I need to start working on a book review that's due May 15th for the Journal of the Medical Library Association. I already sent the other one in for the Journal of Hospital Librarianship. I am getting to be a book review whiz. I finished the Doody's selections/scoring over the last month, so that's out of the way. I enjoy doing that, and if I ever come up with the money to join the Academy of Health Information Professionals, you get points for writing and doing the work for Doody's. Yay.

Okay, that's enough for now. It probably all sounds like boring stuff, but I like it.

A day of reflection, and of remembrance

Barak: IDF will guarantee never again--Israel remembers victims of Holocaust with moment of silence, reading aloud of names at Knesset

Holocaust Remembrance Day was honored Monday morning with a siren marking a moment of silence throughout Israel at 10 am.

As on every year, flower wreaths were laid at Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum. The Knesset held its annual ceremony of the reading out of victims' names.

Today is Yom Hashoah Ve-Hagevurah, the Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust and the Heroism. It is the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising according to the Hebrew calendar.

It is a day of reflection of what was lost to the Jewish community, remembering those who perished at the hands of the Nazi regime. Please take a moment from your day to remember those killed in the name of hate, the genocide of 6 million souls.

Sadly, there are those who refuse to believe this ever happened. I don't think anything can truly change that--their minds are closed to truth. But for the rest of us, we must learn our history, and remember, so that it never, ever happens again.

For more information on the Holocaust, visit:

Yad Veshem: The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Incidentally, I thought it was an excellent speech, carefully worded with the right tone

Transcript of President Obama’s Speech on the death of Osama bin Laden

Favourite part:

As we do, we must also reaffirm that the United States is not –- and never will be -– at war with Islam. I’ve made clear, just as President Bush did shortly after 9/11, that our war is not against Islam. Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own. So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.

I generally respect the life and dignity of my fellow man

But watching and reading about the death of Osama bin Laden, I have to admit to--satisfaction, and a feeling of justice served. I am very curious as to what the reactions around the world will be, whether terror attacks increase or decrease, what this means in the long run, the impact of this man's death. There has been such a high cost in lives, in resources, and in freedoms to bring us to this day. May tomorrow somehow dawn a better day without such a dangerous mass-murderer and hatemonger in our world.

Well, it is interesting

Neanderthal ancestors were mostly right-handed: Scientists find evidence in an odd place: front teeth

Humanity's right-hand dominance might be more than 500,000 years old, new research indicates. The trait of right-handedness is commonly believed to be a sign of the development of another uniquely human trait — language.

"We are right-handed because the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body, and the left side of brain is where language is processed," study researcher David Frayer, of the University of Kansas, told LiveScience. "This is important because it tells us that they were brain lateralized just like we are, and they probably had a language capacity."

Previous studies of ancient humans have shown evidence of handedness in tools, cave art, and bones, but these types of handedness data have been controversial.

A nice write up about the importance of libraries

The secret life of libraries

They have always had a dusty image – and never more so than now – but libraries are at the heart of our communities. With the axe about to fall, Bella Bathurst reveals just what we're about to lose.

Via Steven at Library Stuff.

I can hear again!

Okay, so my left ear isn't quite as clear as my right, but for the first time in days I can actually hear out of it. It was totally blocked through inflammation and infection. I still have a couple of days worth of ear drops and then a day or two after that of oral antibiotics, and hopefully by then I'll be right as rain.

I enjoyed the game today. We covered some downtime and got people back who had been gone for awhile. After going from apocalypse to apocalypse, it was kind of nice to deal with more mundane things, without being too bogged down in the details.

Okay, I think I'm going to listen to some music for awhile (it's nice to hear it in stereo) and relax for awhile, after a day of cleaning and game playing, and be ready if the game master calls (as he often does) to see how I thought it went.