Looking up details on this I feel considerably less panicked and despairing than I did after hearing the blurb on the morning news:

"EXERCISE LINKED TO MEMORY LOSS IN WOMEN!!!!"

Crikey. Just...argh. I have no words. (To use the reported-cable-tv-euphemisms that someone on Ravelry used: Monkey fighting! Monday to Friday!)

Seriously, how you get from "women marathoners or women who play pro basketball may have a slight memory decline in old age relative to other women" to "OH NOES EXERCISE WILL EAT YOUR BRAIN!" is a leap of logic I don't want to take.

I really totally understand why some people mistrust science, if their view of it is how it's reported on the news.

(See, I exercise. I suppose what I do is "moderate," though some days it feels like more than that. And I've been doing that for YEARS, being told, "This is a way to keep from dying younger than you might want to die." So being told that exercise is potentially bad for me - well, just pull the rug the rest of the way out from under me while you're at it. Tell me that people with advanced degrees are waaaaay more likely to develop Alzheimer's, that knitting CAUSES stress, that eating green leafy vegetables will give you cancer for sure.)

Gah. It's really too bad that the cartoon channel is showing idiotic Pokemon at the hour I'm getting ready for work. If they were showing a cartoon I'd actually want to watch*, I'd watch that instead. And probably walk out into the world as well informed as I would be had I watched the local news.

And yeah, yeah: CARTOONS WILL EAT YOUR BRAIN!

(*an increasingly rare event on Cartoon Network. Where have all the PowerPuff Girls gone, long time passing? Where have all the Yogi Bears gone, long time ago?)

****

I am really close to done on the Bird's Nest Shawl. I think I have two of the eyelet rows left, then a bunch of plain rows, then I can bind it off and block it. I've already cleared a place to block it.

I don't know that I'm going to immediately start another shawl; for one thing, I want to finish the Cobblestone pullover. And I pulled out, and started winding off the yarn for, the Honeycomb vest from Knitty. The only problem is I have not a long enough size 4 circular. I'm going to try a size 3, which I do have, on the thought that there's only a .25 mm difference between the two - probably not enough to matter. (I'm beginning to wonder if they lie to us a bit about the insistence of getting spot-on gauge; knit fabric does stretch, after all). And besides, the size I'm making would be a tiny bit bigger than what is suggested (they want 4" negative ease - it's supposed to be THAT kind of a sweater - but the closest size will only give me some 3" of negative ease.) So a slightly smaller needle really should not matter, as long as it gives a pleasing fabric.