All back

Rest assured that anyone who says that semi–stripping down a house, repainting the interior, and doing minor maintenance, and putting everything back, even with others to help you, is hard, painful work, is absolutely correct. Throw in the fact that I had to spend more than a weekend doing it and a place not insignificantly distant and as you can imagine I’m completely burnt out now that I’m back home.

I am so very glad for the ability to schedule posts a la Earth Hour. But there are comments to approve and respond to… later.

The killers in your house

A new study has found that domestic cats are among the most prolific predators in the world:

Domestic cats kill between 1.4 billion and 3.7 billion birds and up to 20 billion small rodents each year, according to researchers at the Migratory Bird Center of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute.

The report, published Tuesday, found that cats — particularly strays — are “likely the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for U.S. birds and mammals.”

The study went on to note that feral cats are damaging and threatening to ecosystems.

This study reminds me of an incident with a really friendly cat that used to live in my neighbourhood. Once it made a plaintive meow and wanted to come in. Turned out it had caught a starling. When it came in it released the starling and started chasing after it inside the house. At one point, the starling landed on the kitchen table, and the cat just about pulled off the tablecloth (and dishes) before I managed to stop the tablecloth. Eventually, I managed to grab the cat and put it in another room while I shooed the starling out with a broom.

I am now cited by Wikipedia

Look here, and see citation number 23.

It cites my post (Update: or rather the category containing that post, which had [at the time] only that one post in it) about Yvonne Jurewicz, who died due to a coat hanger abortion in 1990. And since I provide full page numbers and dates for the newspaper article I quote in the cited post, citing me specifically is unnecessary. Hence, this situation likely won’t last too long…

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for my blog, and I’ve decided to share it.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 4,300 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 7 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

The Words on What’s Fourth Blogiversary!

Today is the big 04, as it is my fourth blogiversary. It’s a whole four years that I’ve been blogging about anything worth talking about.

I’d like to thank all my readers on this occasion. Whether you’re a commenter, subscribe to a feed or with a reader, or are just a lifelong lurker, thank you.

Metaerrata

I’ve done some minor blog housekeeping. I’ve finally enabled sharing. The six pictures at the right link to posts I like.

I’ve finally decided to get with the times and license everything here (excluding post comments and works not written by me) under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) license, retroactive to the beginning of this blog. As a general guide, pictures (whether from the Wikimedia Commons or elsewhere) and YouTube videos are not my own works and are therefore copyrighted or covered by other licenses, or both.

I’m back

I am glad to announce that I am back from an involuntary blogging hiatus. My old computer died, and I have finally gotten a new one. This means that I will be back at blogging.