There's cats in CSN(and sometimes Y, yuk, yuk) "Our House" has two cats in the yard.

How the Death Star works

...and...

When a small group of Rebels infiltrated the first Death Star to rescue Princess Leia, they avoided capture by hiding in a conveniently located trash compactor on the detention level. Over the years many questions have been raised about that trash compactor. Why was the trash compactor there? What was that creature in there and how did it get in there in the first place? All of these questions and more are addressed in Joshua Tyree's insightful essay, On the Implausibility of the Death Star's Trash Compactor.

Speaking of Death Stars, I recently procured a Death Star Pez.

The person keeping house with Graham Nash in that CSN song, incidentally, was Joni Mitchell.

Some of life's mysteries explained: Ten questions you never knew you wanted answered.

Does beheading hurt?

Yes. A medical study in 1983 concluded that no matter how efficient the method of execution, a few seconds of pain is inevitable when losing one's head. The guillotine, considered one of the more "humane" methods, relies on severing the brain and spinal cord after cutting the surrounding tissues. Even so, at least two to three seconds of intense pain cannot be avoided. There are many accounts of the heads of executed people continuing to show movement or expression long after the final blow. One particularly gruesome experiment in 1905 involved a French physician who called out the name of the condemned man in the seconds after decapitation. The response was for the eyelids over the severed head to slowly lift up and then the pupils focused on the doctor before then slowly closing again. The doctor claimed that when he repeated the dead man's name, the same actions took place. It was only at the third attempt that the head gave no response. The exact of amount of pain of course relies on the proficiency of the executioner. When Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded in 1587, the axeman took three attempts to sever the head and even then had to finish the job with a knife.

Bah. I've always known I wanted that question answered.

Oh, and you gotta pay £1 for the rest of the article....

[link]

Huh. If I knew that, I'd forgotten. Guess life got hard again, though, huh?

From what I've heard of the experiments, a decapitated head can remain conscious for 15 to 30 seconds if there's no sharp impact that would knock it out sooner. Can't imagine what such an unfortunate would be thinking during that time, though.

Who did you fear?

The Most Amazing Man in the World (at least according to Katie Holmes).

I fear The Smartest Man I've Ever Met according to Harriet Miers!

I'm still...boggled by that. Serious boggle-age.

Jilli, you may have this by now, but these guys are 24 hours [link]

gronk.