I am *not* a geek....

Really. I'm not. The fact that I have a total of six foam penguins, four of which are mini Tux-es and all of which have red hats, does NOT mean that I am a geek. And before people doubt my ability to count, the sixth penguin is at the office. Geek people I know are requesting handknit hats for their penguins and monitors.

Moscow Speaks and the Plot Thickens....
British officials have now declared the death of Alexander Litvinenko to be the result of murder. The Russian government denies any involvement in the issue and, to prove that it is uninvolved, has blocked the extradition of suspects in the poisoning. Not only that, Scotland Yard detectives are not allowed to actually interrogate suspects themselves. The suspects will be questioned by Russian investigators while the British guys observe. Wouldn't you want to cooperate so that you can be proved to be uninvolved? Surely the Russian government has some idea how this looks to the rest of the world. (Like they're absolutely guilty and trying to hide it.) Surely the Russian government has figured out by now that "secret operations" have a habit of becoming un-secret. (See also the "secret camps" the US was holding terrorism suspects at in other countries, among other things.)

Chicken Contamination
The January 2007 issue of Consumer Reports includes an article investigating the rates of bacterial contamination of whole chickens purchased at various retailers. There is good news and bad news. The good news is that Salmonella contamination has been going down. The bad news is that Campylobacter contamination is going up and greatly exceeds the rate of Salmonella contamination. Chicken which was organically grown, was raised without antibiotics
or was air chilled in processing had higher rates of contamination than conventionally raised and processed chicken. Yum! (Campylobacter image from Adopt-a-Microbe.)

Speaking of germies on your food....
I got the go ahead today to start work on a microbial contamination research paper/project. w00t! It's going to involve a *lot* of library work/literature review, but it's something to do, it looks like fun and I should be able to publish it too.

Now, *this* is a science fair project!!
A co-worker's son is working on the effect of various chokes on the spread of steel bird shot from a 20-ga shotgun. Contrary to the working hypothesis that he and his father had developed, the full choke results in the best spread for the purposes of duck hunting. They were out on the water this past weekend hoping to put the research to good use.

Knitting news....
I worked a bit on the Kiri last night. Most of my fiber time has still been spinning up the merino. I put in another hour or so last night and I started prepping some silk caps for when the merino runs out. (Like that's going to happen any time soon. I think I have six POUNDS of merino roving left.) I picked up the silk several years ago at a fiber festival. It's mostly purple and indigo/cobalt blue with a bit of teal. I may make a scarf out of the resulting yarn. I'll figure that out once it's actually yarn.


I've also finished two hats for The Dulaan Project. I expect to make two more this coming weekend. I think I have some yarn which would make a couple of nice kid-sized sweaters too. Actually, there is probably a lot of yarn in my stash that would be well-suited to that purpose and which I am unlikely to use for my own purposes. Might as well put it to a good use, right?