Thanks, Fred.

Are you enjoying an exam-fuelled lull right now?

billy, I'm finishing up with that class, and hopefully all the loose ends will be tied today, so that I won't have to think about it until the students' second exam (how do you call that in English, where there is a second exam after the first, for those who failed or couldn't take it on the first time? The Hebrew name is something like "second timing", and I have no idea what is the English equivalent, or even if there is one).

If you miss the test, you can take a "make-up" (different kind of make up) exam. But if you fail, I think you just fail, usually.

you can take a "make-up" (different kind of make up) exam

Thanks, Jesse (funny how the combination of "make" and "up" keeps returning to the conversation).

[Edit: 1+7=6+2]

Mmmm, a Nilly-riffic morning, Very nice.

Not-so-nice news about London, though. Stupid terroristic buggers.

He's, just, well, having a very fluid notion of time. Which, as a physics professor who just finished teaching a class on special relativity, is not necessarily a bad thing, mind you.

This cracks me up.

I swear, this whole waiting for the layoffs to be implemented is tortuous, even for those staying on. Someone teared up in my office the other day. Which, I mean, I get. I sniffled my way home the day I found out about coworker. But...NO CRYING AT WORK PEOPLE. I can be a sympathy crier. STOP THAT.

Plus, with the heat and some other things, I've been running a couple degrees warmer than usual (which mean I actually have the "normal" 98.6) but it is making me feel all yicky. And the cooling at work is all erratic. Which isn't helping.

the entire US is a battlefield in the War on Terra Terror.

Love is a battlefield.

There's a new version of the periodic table of the elements that's gaining popularity: [link]

It's pretty. I want a poster of it.

As Oliver Sacks has written, the periodic table reflects "a deep order in nature [and] the transcendent power of the human mind … to discover or decipher the deepest secrets of nature, to read the mind of God."

Panda baby boom(let)! [link]

WASHINGTON - Zookeepers in Atlanta and San Diego are hopeful their giant pandas are pregnant, which would create a record U.S. baby boomlet of the rare species that began this month with the birth of a cub at the National Zoo.

The possibility of three U.S.-born cubs in the same year reflects the coming of age of the giant pandas on loan from China in the past several years as well as a burst of scientific knowledge on producing and caring for their offspring. Artificial insemination techniques are more precise; pregnancy tests are more accurate; and the odds of a fragile newborn surviving are improving dramatically.

Do you still have to mark Air Mail on international mail? Does anything still go by boat?

Also, is there a French equivalent of Ms.? Or is it just Mme/Mlle?