Apparently breast milk contains pluripotent stem cells–those are the ones that can turn into any cell in the body. That has got to be one of the most awesome discoveries of the century, and will be at the end of the century, too. As my cousin said, “That explains a lot about why breast milk seems to have such great healing properties.” Wow. Just wow. An astronaut’s Tumblr. Seriously, the photos here. Just wow. How zinc works on the immune system–and why less is more with it. That’s kinda cool.…
kitsnaps: snow leopard
Until this past month I’d never caught more than a glimpse of the snow leopards at Dublin Zoo. They’re very shy and usually hiding in their den, but the colder weather has, I guess, brought them out. They are *so* gorgeous, holy beans. I must go back and haunt the zoo some more before the weather warms up, because I’d love to get some more pictures. Honestly, not all the Kitsnaps will be zoo pictures. It’s just they’re what I’ve got handy right now. Once I’ve got my act together…
kitsnaps: waldrapp ibis
I love these birds. They’re so flamboyantly ugly. They’re terribly endangered, with apparently only around 500 left in the wild, and as with all endangered species, I’m perpetually grateful for not only the opportunity to see them at all, but for the conservation and preservation work that zoos all over the world do. It’s not especially easy to get a good picture of one through the glass, so I’ve been trying for, oh, two years now. This is my favorite so far, though I’ll no doubt keep going back for…
pulling. teeth.
There are a variety of reasons why the opening chapters of SHAMAN RISES have been difficult to write. One is that I knew when I sent them off to my editor as part of the proposal that I hadn’t really gotten them right yet. I had to fix them (which was made more difficult by the 3rd reason cited below) Another is that due to Life, I have gotten almost no writing done at all in this calendar year, when in my dream world I wrote 50K in January and…
kitsnaps: red panda
The red panda is the only mammal on earth whose babies are not significantly cuter than its adults. This is largely because a red panda is so absurdly cute, but also evidently because they’re so secretive about having babies that by the time even the Dublin Zoo found out they’d had some, the babies were already at least half the size of the adults. Perhaps a super-new one would be cuter than the grown-ups, but for the moment, well, here. Have some cute. :)