14 December 2006

Nothingness

I can already tell that this is going to be one of those entries that are short on substance and long on nothingness. Nothingness is one of those words that just shouldn’t be a word. Just because you take a real word and add the suffix –ness doesn’t make it a real word...except that it does, so that sucks.

I’ve been doing journal article searches all afternoon. I’ll enter search terms like “phoxinus” and “diet” and I’ll get such useless responses as The effect of selenium on mercury retention in the offspring of treated hens. It’s a boring activity, to say the least. However, it’s nice when you find those rare applicable articles. The ones that actually use my study species and not a closely related, but different, Genus; or the ones that take place in the same country as my work. That’s reference gold, my friends. Many of my references are from research done in Japan and various Nordic countries. I’m usually just happy to I find a paper from North America.

See, what did I say? Nothingness.

Oh, I wanted to do some shout outs while I have your attention. 1) Shout out to Annie for the post card. [Aside: There’s something amazing about getting postcards from faraway places. My mind gets boggled when I try to think about how many individuals had to do their job correctly for me to receive that. You’d think with small things like postcards, they’re more likely to get lost or mis-sorted or something, but they somehow manage to arrive. Snail mail is really underappreciated. Have you ever really thought about home-mail delivery? How in every city and town in North America thousands of people, everyday, go from house to house delivering mail? It seems like the most inefficient way to do it, but somehow it works. Amazing.] 2) Shout outs to Deb and Oz for posting haikus that were way better than mine. The rest of you that didn’t post haikus get whatever the opposite of a shout out is...a reproachful murmur, let’s say.

I was looking for a Christmas-y picture to post, but I couldn’t find one. Instead I’m putting up a picture of Moby. Aww.

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