Are you one of those insane geniuses?

No. It's just the dire combination of history and sociology program in the first year, with all of the joy of coordinating between two different faculties. The second semester has only 24 hours per week. I'll score 51 out of the 120 credit one has to have to get his/her bachelor diploma in Israel this year.

New cat still hiding and growling this morning. Must. remain. patient.

Score one point for doggies: Dogs can read emotion in human faces

Dogs are the only animals that can read emotion in faces much like humans, cementing their position as man's best friend, claim scientists.

Research findings suggest that, like an understanding best friend, they can see at a glance if we are happy, sad, pleased or angry.

When humans look at a new face their eyes tend to wander left, falling on the right hand side of the person's face first.

This "left gaze bias" only occurs when we encounter faces and does not apply any other time, such as when inspecting animals or inanimate objects.

A possible reason for the tendency is that the right side of the human face is better at expressing emotional state.

Researchers at the University of Lincoln have now shown that pet dogs also exhibit "left gaze bias", but only when looking at human faces. No other animal has been known to display this behaviour before.

A team led by Dr Kun Guo showed 17 dogs images of human, dog and monkey faces as well as inanimate objects.

Film of the dogs' eye and head movement revealed a strong left gaze bias when the animals were presented with human faces. But this did not occur when they were shown other images, including those of dogs.

"Guo suggests that over thousands of generations of association with humans, dogs may have evolved the left gaze bias as a way to gauge our emotions," New Scientist magazine reported.

"Recent studies show that the right side of our faces can express emotions more accurately and more intensely than the left, including anger. If true, then it makes sense for dogs - and humans - to inspect the right hand side of a face first."

Surprisingly, when the dogs in the study were shown an upside-down human face, they still looked left. In contrast, humans lose their left gaze bias altogether when shown an inverted face.

ION, it was cold today, so I wore a wool sweater under my leather jacket. Now I'm all comfy and warm.

Also, I think my new meds are working. I saw an attractive woman on the train, and managed to make eye contact. She smiled at me, and instead of quickly looking away, I smiled back. (I generally find it rather difficult to make and maintain eye contact.) She got off the train a few stops after I got on, but the event did cheer me up.

Yay tommyrot, eye contact and new drugs!

(Seriously, I'm impressed. I usually don't keep eye contact either, even with friends and family. I think it's weird - the staring to other person in the eye (unless they are really close), not necessarily me on this matter).

I have trouble with eye contact because I can never decide on which of the other person's eyes I'm supposed to be contacting with.

While working at the bookstore, giving my spiel on the membership card, I tend to look straight into the customer's eyes, not blinking while I go through the pitch.

I also noticed Obama doing the same thing last night (not blinking while looking straight at the camera).

I guess that means time for the winter coat, huh.

I've been wearing mine for most of the week. And I just noticed today that one of the buttons (a non-functional one) is missing. Janky!

This was a really good idea--Bush builds huge federal Ebola lab, with horrendously deadly bugs, in path of hurricane

Much of the University of Texas medical school on this island suffered flood damage during Hurricane Ike, except for one gleaming new building, a national biological defense laboratory that will soon house some of the most deadly diseases in the world.

How a laboratory where scientists plan to study viruses like Ebola and Marburg ended up on a barrier island where hurricanes regularly wreak havoc puzzles some environmentalists and community leaders...

Built atop concrete pylons driven 120 feet into the ground, the seven-floor laboratory was designed to stand up to 140-mile-an-hour winds. Its backup generators and high-security laboratories are 30 feet above sea level...

The laboratory will do research into some of the nastiest diseases on the planet, among them Ebola, anthrax, tularemia, West Nile virus, drug-resistant tuberculosis, bubonic plague, avian influenza and typhus.

From Electoral-Vote.com.

Watchdogs Warn of Trouble on Election Day

Many experts say that despite 30% of the electorate voting before election day, the crowds will be so large on Tuesday that there could be chaos everywhere. Florida, among other states, has a "no match, no vote" law, which prevents anyone from voting if information in the voter registration data base differs from that in other state data bases, all of which are riddled with errors from top to bottom. These people will no doubt argue with the poll workers, slowing down the voting process. In principle, disputed voters can cast provisional ballots, but many precincts are expected to run out of them. In Georgia, people with Latino names have been flagged because they might be illegal aliens. Lawsuits are flying all over the country and poll workers are memorizing the election administrator's prayer: "Lord, let it be a landslide."

I'm really hoping for a landslide too. I'm quite concerned about the election being decided by litigation.