So when I stay in bed too long (the cats were being so cuddly,) I have nightmares about plumbing disasters. It's become a theme. Weird.

Anyway, laundry is sorted and I'm about to head out the door for the day.

ION, occasionally you hear scientists talking about how for the last 50-ish year, episodes of I Love Lucy have been radiating out into the cosmos for any intelligent beings out there to see. (And yes, for some reason these scientists always mention Lucy ). Well, by any technology we posess, the range of television reception would be fairly short, like maybe a few lightyears.

It’s possible to run these numbers against a new facility, the Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR) now being built in Europe for radio astronomy work. At VHF television frequencies, LOFAR will have an effective collecting area similar to that of the Arecibo dish. Says Shostak:

That’s big. That’s brawny. But not brawny enough. In our SETI experiments at Arecibo, we could find a signal if it were about 0.1 million million million millionths of a watt per square meter. That number, you will notice if you count up the words, is a million times bigger than the “I Love Lucy” carrier at 55 light-years. The aliens’ LOFAR would be inadequate to detect the broadcast by a factor of a million, a not entirely negligible amount. Simply stated: LOFAR couldn’t hear it.

I'm disappointed. But I hold out the hope that aliens would come up with a far-superior interstellar TV reception technology, so there will be aliens out there contemplating how lame I Love Lucy is...

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I am making a lemon pound cake and a chocolate bundt cake for the shower tomorrow. I am garnishing the lemon cake with lemons (way to use that imagination there, Aims). I wanted to garnish the bundt with raspberries, but the ones I'm finding are either a billion dollars apeice or sketchy looking.

What are some other options? Kiwiw, maybe? Or chocolate chips?

What are some other options? Kiwiw, maybe? Or chocolate chips?

Or take a chocolate bar -- it'll need to have been refrigerated to a firmness level higher than it is at room temperature -- and run it over the larger-opening part of a cheese grater. Ideally, if you grate slowly, you should get chocolate curls, but even pieces of chocolate shavings are nice on a cake.

I think I have just been possessed by Martha Stewart. Send help.

I don't have a cheese grater.

Do you have an apple/potato peeler? That'd work too.

If lighting weren't such a challenge in this place to begin with, I think I might try that route. But I suspect that repainting is going to be the best plan here.

Mmmm, lemon pound cake...

You wouldn't happen to have that recipe online somewhere, would you, Aimee? I'm a real fan of anything lemon, especially baked goods.

Speaking of room lighting options:

If you've got a room in your house that never seems to get enough light, has CeeLite got the wallpaper for you. The company's Light Emitting Capacitor (LEC) panels are flexible, paper-thin light bulbs that you can hang on a wall, coming in sizes as large as 3 x 6 feet. Just a millimeter thick, the panels sandwich light-emitting phosphors between layers of electrodes. When an AC voltage is applied, the phosphors light up with a warm white glow, consuming less power than a neon or fluorescent bulb. The panel naturally glows evenly, though you can set them up to dim, glow brighter, or blink like crazy when touched.

Cool. Want.

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You wouldn't happen to have that recipe online somewhere, would you, Aimee? I'm a real fan of anything lemon, especially baked goods.

Hee. It's lemon cake mix with extra eggs. :)

I *do* have a potato peeler! Rock! Thanks, guys!