Another thought on popularity or lack thereof:

When a group of people about my age start talking about "school days," invariably one (or several) comments on how unpopular they were, how they were bullied, tormented, etc. But I've never heard anyone volunteer that they were popular in school. This makes me wonder.

I'd like to think that it's that everyone felt awkward and strange as a kid, that being on the "outside looking in" at popularity was actually a sham, as we were all on the outside.

Though I don't really quite think it's that. It may be that the perception of having been unpopular is far more common...I mean, lots of people felt unpopular when actually each unpopular kid, growing up, felt like they were the only one and they were unpopular in their own weird way. (Like the old, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in their own way"?)

But I also think that kids who were popular, either they just accepted that that was "how it was" (Much like any "dominant" or "majority" group accepts its whatever-ness. I once had a Jewish friend tell me, "You never had to think about what it was like growing up Christian in your community" and she is right. If you're in the majority or the "culturally dominant" group you don't think about it).

Though there may be something else. It may be that when the formerly-populars hear the bitterness with which the formerly-unpopulars discuss what things were like, they figure it's best not to speak up about having been popular, for fear of being bashed on. (Or perhaps, some of them: "Oh, wow. I didn't realize how deeply some of the stuff I said as a teenager hurt people." I know even way down in the pecking order where I was, there was stuff I said to even-less-popular kids that I still scratch my head over: How could I be that cruel, especially having known that kind of treatment myself?)

But whatever. As I said once before, one of the things that I am happiest about is that I will never have to live my 13th year again.

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The new American Scientist came yesterday (This is the publication of the Sigma Xi scientific society). I skimmed through it, nothing much grabbed me at the moment, except there was an article on harvestmen (a/k/a Daddy Long-Legs). It was the kind of natural-history article I like.

I also have a certain fondness for harvestmen. They were common little critters that hung around my parents' house when I was a kid - I especially remember they used to walk across the porch a lot, I think they took shelter at night in the corners.

With the exception of bees and wasps, I wasn't at all afraid of creepy-crawlies as a kid, and I rather liked watching the harvestmen, with their improbably long legs and fat round bodies. (And I think my mom once told me they 'ate bad bugs,' which tended to raise a critter's status in my eyes)

I had never heard the myth (which the author of the article busted) that they had the most potent venom of any spider (and I'm glad I didn't or I probably would have feared them.)

It is a myth: the Opiliones (the order to which harvestmen belong) can't even make venom; they catch their prey by pursuing and grabbing it. The author said he thinks the confusion comes because there is a different (unrelated) Australian spider sometimes called "Daddy long-legs" that does have pretty potent venom.

(And that, my children, is why using common names for organisms is often a bad idea).

Another neat fact: they are called faucheurs in French, which is similar to "harvestmen" (it means, "reapers").

Also, the name of the order (Opiliones) means "Shepherd" (I suspect a couple of my readers, and not people in the sciences either, knew what that meant already). They are supposedly so-named because there was (apparently) a tendency for shepherds in ancient days to stand up on stilts to survey their sheep.

(Another fact I did not know! And I suppose, "While shepherds watched their flocks by night, all standing up on stilts" doesn't scan quite right for the old Christmas song, nor can you easily rhyme "stilts" to something about the Angel bringing good news.)

(I like knowing random facts like that, that I can trot out at inappropriate times (because there is rarely an appropriate time for such random facts). I also like the one about how Basque shepherds would traditionally put one black sheep for every 50 or 100 white sheep in the flock - so they could tell at a glance, with really large flocks, if the flock was more or less together, because sheep don't assort by color, and so they could glance and see, for example, if they could pick out 10 black sheep they could be reasonably sure their flock of 1000 was all together, rather than having to try to judge if the mass of white sheep was 1000 or 750 or 500. I actually use that one in Ecology as an example of the same kind of thinking that goes into Mark and Recapture sampling. I know probably 1 student in 20 remembers the fact or cares, but I still like passing it along)

Another cool but sort of gross thing about the spiders: some species will mass together as protection from predators, and either will start bobbing all their little bodies up and down in unison, or will start waving their long spindly legs, if a threat comes into view. (They apparently have good eyesight; I seem to remember the species that was most common where I lived had visible eyes)

I think it would be distinctly off-putting to be met with a mass of waving spider legs, there is a picture in the article of some doing that and it is kind of unappetizing. Which is the purpose.

There's a picture of a species called Caddo agilis in the article, and it has pretty large eyes. It's actually, for a spider, rather cute, almost the amigurumi version of a spider. (Oddly enough, they observe that most of the populations are entirely female. (Little is known about these things' sex lives - so I suppose the mostly-female populations could be reproducing by parthenogenesis. Or maybe there are a few very busy male spiders...)

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I have my list of "future projects for which I will need yarn," with Potter topping the list (Though there's also a fake-Cowichan style sweater - really, almost a Starsky and Hutch sweater - in the new Knitscene that might be fun to make, too, and which would probably be a good, useful sweater).

I'm so ready for tomorrow. So ready to have a break.

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I've been picking away on various things, mostly the socks. The Mini Mochi socks are progressing; I like how the colors shift. Though I still am thinking of dropping down a needle size for the feet, to try to prevent rapid wear of the soft, barely-spun yarn. I don't know yet.