Sunday 26

[madgravity]

Sunday 26- I did my stretches.
Today’s Weather was: Temps of around 71 to 104 degrees, slight breeze, humidity around 9 percent, clear skies.
According to the National Weather Service: “Monday: Sunny, with a high near 101. West northwest wind around 5 mph becoming calm. Monday Night: Clear, with a low around 69. Southeast wind at 6 mph becoming west.”
I started the day by typing some Latin words into the Anki flashcard program and did a review. Then I did my pre-algebra studies. This chapter was on word problems; I hate word problems!
I read aloud from the textbook “Astronomy Today” about the Magnitude Scale. 6th magnitude is the limit of the human eye, the Sun is -26.7 magnitude, and the Hubble Space Telescope limit is at magnitude 30 (the lower the brightness the higher the number). “Absolute Magnitude is a star’s apparent magnitude when it is placed ten parsecs away from the observer.” Obviously Astronomers haven’t the ability yet to move stars around! :)
Dang hot outside! I stayed inside and called on family and friends that I missed yesterday.
NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft is now headed to comet Hartley 2 and a young scientist, Dr. Sebastien Besse, is blogging about it at The Daily Comet. As the little spacecraft that could nears Hartley 2 it takes images of the comet and Sebastien posts them on his blog. There are three images now posted one week apart; the latest was 09/20/2010. The spacecraft will rendezvous with the comet on November 4th and will be well worth watching The Daily Comet.
I went on my evening walk taking pictures of ant holes, why? Because I can! There’s lots of activity going on in them ant holes and it’s pretty cool to study them.
I watched the new episode of “Fringe”; I really love this show. And watched a short film called "Kirill" that was strange but interesting; a man from the future is trying to communicate with the present to stop an earth changing event.
I did my stretches, practiced my guitar and broke a string, wrote to my journal, posted it to the web, and called it a night.

Comments

[marahmarie]

Ants are the most fascinating insects in the universe. We got Invasion of the Carpenter Ants at the last placed I lived (just a few weeks ago, really) and it was bad: big red and black ants covering the ceiling, the floors, landing on my head, jumping on tables and furniture...I stayed up half the night just killing them, and had about 80 dead by the next morning. Crushed them underfoot..No ant spray, obviously.

The next evening I came home from work and looked for where they were getting in. It seemed to be through the wood fence that separated my place from my neighbor's. So I spent the next few hours chasing them around out there, crushing them underfoot. The fascinating part of this was what happened to the bodies I created outside... the tiniest little red fire ants you can imagine came and carried each carpenter ant body away. One red ant to each dead carpenter ant. This was the equivalent of me dragging my car away on one shoulder...how something so tiny can drag something so much bigger than itself such distances is beyond me.

[madgravity]

Wow those Carpenter Ants sound like some big freaken ants!!!!!!
I know the little piss ants you're talking about; they may be tiny but their bite hurts like all hell. Got bit by one just yesterday!
Yes ant are fascinating; I liked how you wrote "was the equivalent of me dragging my car away on one shoulder" Made me laugh :)
Sometimes I just sit and watch them for a long spell. The things they drag into their hole, dang!

[marahmarie]

Yes, but between Arizona and Florida I'm sure there are regional differences in which slang names are used for each sort of ant. So in my region of FL, "piss ants" are also referred to as "sugar ants"; in our case, they're tiny, black, don't bite, just annoy you - and occasionally take over your kitchen...while "carpenter ants" are indeed huge, but from what I recall someone telling me years ago, aren't true carpenter ants, because they don't have wings or fly, and "red ants", also know as "fire ants", are tiny, red, angry little things that often attack in swarms and can sense the vibration of your footsteps, even on grass, from up to 25 feet away. Red ants are by far the most fascinating and industrious ants FL has, but they are not even native to the US.

I've been swarm-attacked so many times by our red ants, my ankles are permanently scarred from them (I used to garden a lot more than I do now, and I even worked as a landscaper for a few years, which definitively added to my overall red ant agony).

[madgravity]

When I was much younger me and my friends were driving around stoned at night and hungry. One of the guys said he knew where there was some donuts, he had put them under a bush earlier in the day(never did think to ask him why). It was very dark when he ran out to get them and brought them into the car. We started eating the donuts and I felt something crawling all over my hands and face. The five of us jumped out of the car yelling and laughing trying to brush off the ants :)