When my mom was on home dialysis, her dog was extremely intuitive to how she was doing. If she didn't plug in at her regular time, he would sit by her machine and whine and fuss until she got all set.

Supposedly this cat knew that its human had lung cancer. I have my doubts.

Why? Dogs have been used for certain kinds of tumor detection by smell for years now, which has also led to research on what kinds of chemical markers are detectable in the breath. Cats may not be as trainable for the work, but they share having way more sensitive noses than humans.

(I would want to know how the convo with the doctor actually went -- it seems like a bit of a leap from "my cat keeps poking me", but "I have a feeling that something's changed", in a patient with an extensive history of lung disease, seems like a perfectly reasonable flag.)

Why? Dogs have been used for certain kinds of tumor detection by smell for years now, which has also led to research on what kinds of chemical markers are detectable in the breath. Cats may not be as trainable for the work, but they share having way more sensitive noses than humans

They can also be trained to detect upcoming epileptic attacks, in time to alert the person to get somewhere safe. There's nothing mystical about it, just highly trainable beings whose senses are attuned very differently than ours.

And also dogs iz cool.

I like her, but I still feel ooky about it.

Yeah, ugh. And honestly, the baby/wedding shower thing can get ooky too. Because as much as we all like to think we're not in seventh grade, the fact is that some people will draw a lot more attention, contributions, etc. and it's way too much middle school popularity contest to be comfortable in the workplace.

What's the likelihood that an animal can tell where the cancer is originating?

See, I'm just thinking the cancer-cat story is anecdotal. It could just be a coincidence that the cat was poking at the guy's side.

Yeah, ugh. And honestly, the baby/wedding shower thing can get ooky too.

like my former workplace that did nothing for expectant fathers or me when I adopted, but gave a shower to a pregnant female. I should ask if they gave a shower to a much lower level employee who I know was pregnant after I left. But that place was awful about favoritism wrt such things.

Damnit. Missed a meeting I really should have been at. I just got too absorbed in something else I was working on.

Random bit o' "put everything into perspective": One Hundred Billion Trillion Habitable Planets

Alan Boss, whose new book The Crowded Universe will soon be on my shelves (and reviewed here), has driven the extrasolar planet story to the top of the news with a single statement. Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting in Chicago, Boss (Carnegie Institution, Washington) said that the number of Earth-like planets in the universe might be the same as the number of stars, a figure he pegged at one hundred billion trillion.

A universe teeming with life? Inevitably. The Telegraph quoted Boss on the matter in an early report on his presentation:

“If you have a habitable world and let it evolve for a few billion years then inevitably some sort of life will form on it,” said Dr Boss.

“It is sort of running an experiment in your refrigerator - turn it off and something will grow in there.

“It would be impossible to stop life growing on these habitable planets.”

Plus I like this quote:

Apropos of Boss’ comments, our man in the maritime antipodes, Paul Titze, sends along this memorable quotation from Christiaan Huygens, who wrote of these matters in 1695:

What a wonderful and amazing Scheme have we here of the magnificent Vastness of the Universe! So many Suns, so many Earths, and every one of them stock’d with so many Herbs, Trees and Animals, and adorn’d with so many Seas and Mountains! And how must our wonder and admiration be increased when we consider the prodigious distance and multitude of the Stars?

And that reminds me of this:

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars;
It's a hundred thousand light-years side to side;
It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick,
But out by us it's just three thousand light-years wide.
We're thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point,
We go 'round every two hundred million years;
And our galaxy itself is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
In all of the directions it can whiz;
As fast as it can go, the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth;
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!

OK, back to our regular Nattering....

Yeah, I think that's literally illegal now. dammit.

But what is that, like 100 instructional days?

Actually, they still have the same schedule now. With boarders from Asia and the Middle East, breaks have to be fairly long for them to return home.

I can't remember what it works out to, but we had half our class schedule on Wednesday and the other half on Saturday, which may have counted as full days, because the second half of each day was for team sports. You needed the whole afternoon because away games could mean 1 to 2 hours of traveling. So I think the 6-day-a-week schedule made up for the longer vacations.

Oh, Saturday. Well, if you've got Saturday, then yes.