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calliarcale Free

Recent Comments

  1. about 7 hours ago on For Better or For Worse

    Thank you for resisting the temptation. ;) These are teenagers, after all.

    Seriously, there were some very impressive costumes. She went as a character from My Hero Academia, whose name I could not possibly remember. She built an elaborate mask with a wire frame and plaster. In a couple of weeks, we’re going to go to a sci-fi convention so she can cosplay with it again.

  2. about 7 hours ago on For Better or For Worse

    Oh, AWESOME!!!! If your program is in a sufficiently chill place, that’d be a cool way to sign off at the end, or a fun way to keep things light at the beginning. My limited experience dealing with NASA types is they’re usually pretty chill (as long as the program isn’t running behind schedule) and are every bit as nerdy as one would expect.

  3. about 7 hours ago on For Better or For Worse

    My daughter went to the Halloween dance at her school, last year and this year. Not only did the kids wear costumes, but there were some pretty spectacular ones, and there was a contest. My daughter didn’t win despite an impressive costume of her own, but she had some pretty stiff competition.

  4. about 7 hours ago on For Better or For Worse

    Our dogs will be in costume! One will be a witch, the other will be a dragon.

  5. about 8 hours ago on For Better or For Worse

    Likely the red pigment was to blame.

  6. about 8 hours ago on For Better or For Worse

    I am currently dressed as a Hershey’s Kiss.

  7. about 9 hours ago on Savage Chickens

    The cinnamon bun is kinda brilliant. ;-)

  8. about 9 hours ago on Frazz

    Oh, there’s a classic!

  9. about 9 hours ago on For Better or For Worse

    raises hand I want to walk around looking like a total dork. Today is the one day a year I can really be myself. :-)

  10. 1 day ago on WuMo

    Talking of plants and bugs, one of the more interesting ironies of trans-atlantic species transmigration is the story of malaria. From the old world came a spirochete called Plasmodium falciparum (and a few close relatives), but from the new world came the cinchona tree, also known as the fever tree: it’s where quinine comes from, and it’s native to the Andes, although of course now it’s widely cultivated throughout suitable climates globally for both medicinal and culinary uses. (Anyone want a gin and tonic?) It was the first truly effective treatment for malaria.

    Second irony: after quinine-resistant malaria strains evolved, another plant turned out to have anti-malarial properties, and this one came from the old world. It had been overlooked all along: the drug artemisin is derived from a specific Asian species of sweet wormwood, Artemisia annua. Unfortunately, unlike quinine, you can’t just use the plant directly and expect it to work; the chemical levels in the plant are far too variable, which is probably why nobody had caught onto it before.