Owner: Every Topic in the Universe(s?) URL:http://omniverse.blogspot.com/ Join Date: Sun, 27 Aug 2006 01:45:45 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: "Science, the unknown, and the human race... and how it might all be connected."
That sums it up so well that it's hard to come up with more when required... er... well, just click and you'll see, lol. Site statistics:Click here
Odds and ends 2007-01-18 09:48:00 Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!
Believe it or not, I have ANOTHER karma-related post forming in my mind; while this is FAB after last year's spiritual dry spell, out of respect for those readers who aren't into that sort of thing I'll toss out some other stuff to give 'em a break:
I did a new tech thing for the 1st time in ages: Although I generally enjoy BlogMad
Purse-onal eBay story 2007-01-22 11:54:00 Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!I know, bad pun-sorry. It occurred to me that I hadn't chronicled my adventures on eBay for a while, so I'll fill you in on what SHOULD have been a short and simple search; my attempt to find a purse. Why have I been reduced to looking on eBay for something that every department store has hundreds of? My mother is to blame for that; thanks to her training, my purse contains every item I could possibly need when away from the house... including folding scissors (for dangling threads), a mini tape measure (so I can record the sizes of furnishings that might fit in my mostly-unfurnished house), and a little calculator (to figure out tips at restaurants). Because of the sheer volume of stuff I carry, I can't use a small purse, but, because I'm not using my purse as a gym bag, lunch box, briefcase or receptacle for kids' stuff (other than the occasional thing for my husband, lol), a tote-type purse doesn't suit my need Read more:story
FINALLY: How/Why evil people are shielded from karma 2007-01-26 10:32:00 Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!This post was originally intended to be about how the karma
of evil people
affects those around them. My starting point was going to be about their souls (or lack thereof), and then I was going to segue into how that energy could interact with the energies of others, when it hit me; it'd always been clear that evil types aren't tied into the tapestry of karma in the normal way, but the mechanism of it had always eluded me, to the point where I couldn't even GUESS what it was, and had to accept the unsatisfying complication that evil people "just were" separate from the standard flow of karma, but tonight, when I was trying to explain my intuition about what sort of "soul-ish" thing they might have, that line of thought crashed headlong into the understanding that all the energies involved are natural forces, and so should act in similar ways to other natural forces, and... an answer appeared on the screen, with me barely
It looks like low-fat diets do NOT protect against disease 2007-01-30 10:13:00 Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!From the "The Top 13 Medicine Stories of 2006" section of the January 2007 issue of Discover magazine comes the following (asterisks are mine):"Low-Fat Diet A Bust?The largest-ever experimental study examining whether a low-fat diet can prevent cancer and heart disease
brought discouraging results. After following 48,835 postmenopausal women for eight years, scientists concluded that cutting fat from the diet doesn't significantly reduce the incidence of breast or colorectal cancer, heart disease, or stroke. Results of the $415 million trial, part of the National Institutes of Health's Women's Health Initiative, were reported in three papers in the Journal of the American Medical Association.Revised ideas about the role of fat in disease could help explain the murky data, notes Michael Thun, who heads epidemiological research for the American Cancer Society. For example, women in the study cut their total fat intake rather Read more:against
Why do we have favorites? 2007-02-03 09:08:00 Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!What's your favorite color?Why do you HAVE a favorite color?Why do you have a favorite ANYTHING?Put another way; why would primitive humans have had a need for favorites
... what was the survival advantage? I'm not talking about the rational preference for one non-trivial thing over another, such as "That valley is my favorite because it has more fruit trees than any other" or "That river is my favorite because it has more fish in it than any other": these boil down to "That valley/river gives me a better chance of surviving than any other" and thus are useful, but things like "The color of this flower is my favorite color" are different... what could have led to the 1st primitive human to choose that sort of favorite having such a thought, which was not only not related to survival but wasn't related to anything they were doing? (It's not like they were choosing a color to paint their cave, right?) What led to them
How does the karma of evil people affect YOU? 2007-02-07 10:55:00 Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!If you shout to someone, everyone within range will also hear you. If you shine a flashlight on someone, nearby people
will also be illuminated. Karma is just energy, and behaves analogously to other forms of energy, so karma
flowing to someone will touch everyone near them... how could it NOT?Most folks see karma as a totally individual phenomenon, such that your karma can only affect YOU, but that doesn't make sense; not only is it contrary to how the other natural forces work, it carries the unspoken, and perhaps unrealized, under-thought that there's some sort of sentience directing karma that "makes it" stick tight to just its "owner"... but there's no reason whatsoever to think that. Karma has no more analysis, judgment or intention than gravity or magnetism; it doesn't reward, it doesn't punish, and it's not "fair"... doubly so because you can benefit, or suffer, from karma that you had no hand in creating.
Am I crazy, or is Google updating PageRank RIGHT NOW? 1970-01-01 00:59:59 (I guess those 2 things aren't mutually exclusive, huh, lol?)Update, 1-10-07: *** I WAS RIGHT!! *** A well-known Google
employee admitted on his blog today that PR IS currently being updated... and *I* figured it out almost a WEEK ago!! Yay me!! :-)I've done every kind of search I can think of, checked every site, blog or otherwise, that I can find that deals with Google issues, and can't find any mention of an update. Many people have estimated an update for this month, most for the end of the month but a couple for the 1st week, and 1 even referred to odd behavior from Google going back a couple of weeks that they thought was indicative of a rapidly-approaching update, but no one that I've seen has said that it looks like an update is underway... so I'm tossing out an extra post to alert you to the following:If you query Google's data centers about a URL, you normally get the same PR # back from each one; if you get DIFFERENT #'s for the same URL, that's supposed to m Read more:PageRank
, Google updating
Husband humor 1970-01-01 00:59:59 My husband and I have had the flu for the past week or so; can you believe we're both sick AGAIN? Between this flu, the prior one (see my post of 9-8-06), and the food poisoning (see my post of 11-11-06), we've been sick more in the last 3 months than in the last 5 YEARS... him especially, since it's usually just me who gets sick (he says that germs can't approach him because they don't have gas masks, lol). The really grim thing is that we'd just gotten back to normal eating and excretory functions a week before the flu hit (yes, the food poisoning knocked us out for 2 WEEKS), so it was with GREAT dismay that we faced having to switch back to "sick food" again. We didn't have much left, so we wearily started putting together a list of what we'd need from the grocery store before we got too sick to go out; this shouldn't have been a big deal, but my husband is legendary for slurping up most or all of a bunch of food items and then developing amnesia about it... which do Read more:Husband
Hawk 1: Rat 0 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Long-term readers will recall that my patio has been swamped with a Biblical plague of rats and mice for the past year and a half; they come to consume the seed and water meant for the many little birds that flock here every day, and like the birds probably enjoy how the patio area is enclosed by the cover, fence and landscaping, making it sheltered and safe. Because we're concerned for the safety of the tweeties during the day, and the raccoons, possums and skunks that periodically visit us at night, we can't do what most folks will when plagued with vermin; if we mined the feeding area with traps and/or poisoned baits, we'd kill some of our beloved visitors, which means that the UNbeloved ones have had free reign (as long as they stayed out of the shed, where we CAN safely put traps-we've gotten a few in there, but not many).Rats are sneaky little brutes, and so normally come to feed under cover of darkness; in the past couple of months, though, I've been spoiling their fun
The Beware List, Part 6 1970-01-01 00:59:59 The Beware
List began when I had a major epiphany a few years back; that the evil, the manipulators, and the socially clueless depressives all follow the same patterns, give the same hints about their true natures and intentions, and even use the same lines, and that this makes it possible to figure out what they are, and what they're up to, BEFORE it's too late... BEFORE they screw you. Below is the latest installment from the list; to read entries 1-50, see my posts of 5-31-06, 7-6-06, 8-31-06, 10-6-06 and 11-19-06. Beware of anyone who:51) Defends some ugly thing that they or someone you're fighting with has said by invoking "free speech," especially if their subtext is that YOU are somehow the bad guy if you "try to impede free speech" aka demand an end to the ugliness.The invocation of "free speech" is a BIG red flag; good people rarely use it to defend what they've said (as they have VALID reasons they can use instead), and NEVER use it to excuse bad behavior.
Blog service blunders and a couple of updates 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I mentioned in my post of 9-28-06 that Webring had announced their intention to switch from free for everyone to paid for all but those few that were only members or managers of a handful of rings; I predicted disaster at the time, and it turns out that I was right... which isn't a cause for pride, since anyone OTHER than the owners of Webring would have been able to predict that going from free to paid would make them hemorrhage members and rings, especially given their poor record of handling technical issues and the downright nastiness of their so-called support department.Mind you, I WARNED them about what was going on when I started getting flooded with emails from ring managers announcing their intention to delete all their rings and referring repeatedly to a mass exodus from Webring; the admin who responded to me denied that any such thing was going on. I forwarded him a bunch of the emails I'd gotten as proof; he never wrote me back, naturally. Eventually, though, they Read more:couple
, updates
Humans vs human nature 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Several years ago, I participated regularly in a chatroom, one of whose regulars was so well-known for snacking non-stop that when he logged in the 1st comment addressed to him after "hello" was usually "what are you eating?". The subject of dieting came up one day, and this man who probably hadn't gone more than half an hour without eating in 20 years broke into the discussion of how difficult it was to lose weight and keep it off to proclaim "Losing weight is easy-all you have to do is put down your fork." This man who had no idea what hunger was, much less the gut-twisting agony that accompanies prolonged restriction of caloric intake, honestly thought that you could just decide to stop eating and weight-loss would follow.You're probably puzzled, or even astounded, that anyone could be so stupid, not to mention insensitive... but wait, haven't you ever looked at an obese person and had vaguely disgusted thoughts about how they must lack any shred of self-control to have overea Read more:human
, nature
The year is ruined already 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Does that sound melodramatic? Silly? Do you assume that I'm upset and spouting nonsense? That I'm a drama queen? What if I tell you that I'm a mature and level-headed adult? What if I tell you that I'm speaking totally dispassionately? What if I tell you that I NEVER make sweeping statements without an inarguable reason? What if I tell you that I just found out that my mother has been diagnosed with breast cancer?In the flat, factual tone that people use to discuss issues of deep personal meaning with strangers, she told me what everyone else who knows her has known for WEEKS; that in December a lump came out just below her collarbone, that at 1st she thought it was another of the "harmless fatty tumors" (she couldn't remember the proper name for them, but I'm fairly sure from her description that they're lipomas) that she's apparently been getting lots of for at least a half dozen years and never mentioned to me, but then it suddenly began to grow rapidly, and she went Read more:ruined
"Bloggers' Night Before Christmas" and other holiday humor 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Since my last couple of posts have been kinda downbeat, I'm making up for it with some humor for Christmas
. First and foremost, I've written a little spoof on the classic poem "The Night
Before Christmas," which non-Western readers can find herehttp://www.carols.org.uk/twas_the_night_before_christmas.htmalong with a description of where it came from (did you know that the concept of flying reindeer was invented in this poem?). I didn't spoof the entire thing because it's LONG, and, while regular readers are aware that I don't shy away from long-windedness, I read some other spoofs that were full-length or close to it and found that even the cleverest of them stopped being funny after a certain # of lines, so I created accordingly. I used the same # of syllables per line as the original, and the same rhyme scheme until the last couplet; I didn't stick to the meter too closely, because that would've taken alot more time, and no one would notice much less care... you probably
A romantic getaway 1970-01-01 00:59:59 With Valentine's Day being adjacent to a weekend this year, I'm guessing that a record # of "special couple trips" are getting ready to commence; since my husband and I are geeks, we don't go for that sort of thing, but it can be amusing to think about.Have you ever seen the screamingly funny movie "History of the World Part I"? It contains one of the most hilarious scenes ever filmed; in the segment about the glory days of the Roman Empire, Empress Nympho needs to pick partners for the orgy to be held that evening, so, after the vestal virgins put on their "No Entry" signs (yes, they really did, it's that sort of movie), a bunch of soldiers come marching in. They line up, and we see them from behind; the camera pulls back... and we see that they're naked below the waist. The empress, who's NOT looking the guys in the eye, shall we say, goes on down the line, saying, "Yes... no, no, no, no, no, no... yes... no, no, yes... no, no, no, no, yes... no, no" and so forth, Read more:romantic
, getaway
The things I'm thankful for 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Like everyone else, I'm thankful for the basics: life, health, a solid marriage, loved and liked ones, freedom, the military that keeps us free, a beautiful home in a safe neighborhood, living in a wealthy country, having sufficient $ to never have to worry about missing a meal (or even a new figurine), and those things
that we take for granted but that most people in the world don't have; computers, internet access and DSL. I wanted to share some more personal things that I was grateful for this year, especially since it's been a bumpy road dealing with my mother's cancer, so here's a selection of odds and ends that have been giving me happy moments:My grandmother, who's in her 90's, has regained some of her lost mental functioning: It turns out that elderly people can often get bladder infections that go undetected (because they don't have pain or discomfort from them like younger folks do), and this can cause cognitive deterioration that gets brushed off as age-related d
Group vs one 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I saw an episode of M*A*S*H recently in which a new nurse who'd decided to try to become a doctor had joined the staff, and the other nurses, far from being supportive and proud as they SHOULD have been, treated her like dirt for daring to try to better herself. Major Houlihan, who's as smart and tough as they come, analyzes the situation and tells the innocent nurse that, since the nursing staff had been running smoothly before SHE showed up, she must somehow be to blame, and she'd better find a way to magically make all the other nurses stop mistreating her or else... and at no point is there any indication that the Major said a single word to the actual wrongdoers about their catty, belligerent and therefore utterly unacceptable behavior, or even suggested that they should take any part in rectifying the situation (that THEY had created) as part of being "team players." Unfortunately, the way that problem was (MIS)handled on the show is perfectly in tune with how these things g Read more:Group
The karmic algebra of charity + prejudice 1970-01-01 00:59:59 My husband told me about the following story (the asterisks are mine):"PARIS - A top French judge ruled that an extreme-right group cannot serve pork soup to the needy, saying the charitable handouts aim to discriminate against Muslims and Jews who don't eat pork because of their faith.Judge Christian Vigouroux of the Council of State, the country's highest administrative body, said late Friday that such giveaways by the far-right group Solidarity of the French threaten public order.His ruling approved a decision by Paris police to refuse permits to the group on the grounds that such handouts could spark angry reactions.France is home to more than 5 million Muslims and some 600,000 Jews. Both Islam and Judaism prohibit eating pork, and Vigouroux said the group had shown 'a clearly discriminatory goal' with its charity.Solidarity of the French was just one of several far-right groups that began distributing pork soup across France over the last four years.Critics contend the giveaw Read more:algebra
Bah humbug (mostly) 1970-01-01 00:59:59 It doesn't even seem like the holiday season in the Omni abode; we don't have a single Christmas decoration out yet... heck, we still haven't put the ones from Halloween and Thanksgiving away. As always, I'm held hostage by the disinclination of my lazy and procrastinative husband to tackle the floor to ceiling stacks of huge boxes that all our holiday paraphernalia is in so that stuff can be packed up and replaced with, er, other stuff; I'm not remotely strong enough to shuffle the stacks myself, and I'm not QUITE willing to hire a handyman to help me, so I'm stuck in a holiday display timewarp until I can scream loud enough and long enough for my husband to give in and take time out from screwing around on forums and do his 5 seconds of work so that *I* can spend several hours tearing down old displays and then putting out my most elaborate one of the year... which, if I'm lucky, will occur BEFORE Christmas day.The real bummer is that my spectacular Christmas tree is abs
It looks like low-fat diets do NOT protect against disease 1970-01-01 00:59:59 From the "The Top 13 Medicine Stories of 2006" section of the January 2007 issue of Discover magazine comes the following (asterisks are mine):"Low-Fat Diet A Bust?The largest-ever experimental study examining whether a low-fat diet can prevent cancer and heart disease
brought discouraging results. After following 48,835 postmenopausal women for eight years, scientists concluded that cutting fat from the diet doesn't significantly reduce the incidence of breast or colorectal cancer, heart disease, or stroke. Results of the $415 million trial, part of the National Institutes of Health's Women's Health Initiative, were reported in three papers in the Journal of the American Medical Association.Revised ideas about the role of fat in disease could help explain the murky data, notes Michael Thun, who heads epidemiological research for the American Cancer Society. For example, women in the study cut their total fat intake rather than specifically targeting saturated fats and trans fats, w Read more:against
FINALLY: How/Why evil people are shielded from karma 1970-01-01 00:59:59 This post was originally intended to be about how the karma
of evil people
affects those around them. I started with their souls (or lack thereof), but before I could segue into their karma it hit me: Although it seems clear that evil types aren't tied into the tapestry of karma in the normal way, the mechanism of it had always eluded me, leaving me with the unsatisfying partial explanation that, since souls, which are made of karmic energy (aka the energy of thought and emotion), are our link to overall karma, SOMEHOW evil people's lack of normal souls prevented them from being "linked"; then, tonight, when I was writing about what sort of "soul-ish" things the evil might have, that line of thought crashed headlong into the understanding that all the energies involved are natural forces, and so should act in similar ways to other natural forces, and... an answer appeared on the screen, with me barely aware of having typed it. I was so stunned to FINALLY see a way for these ener
2006: the year in review 1970-01-01 00:59:59 2006 got derailed for me within its 1st few days by the revelation that my mother has stage 3 breast cancer; this year she went through chemo, surgery, radiation, pneumonia, and currently a blood clot in her lung. She's feeling well enough to work, though, and we're crossing our fingers that her upcoming test to see if there are cancer cells in her blood comes out clean; thank you, again, to those of you who have been praying and sending out + thoughts for her... and thanks from her also (it amazes her that total strangers would take the time to be interested in her illness, but that's because she doesn't know the blogosphere).The stress of all this knocked out my immune system, giving me the worst flu of my life (it may have been pneumonia given the chest pain I had with it, but I never went to the doctor so I don't know) accompanied by my worst-ever case of hives; the latter continues to the present day (4 months and counting), although thankfully only 1 or 2 at a time now Read more:review
Why do we have favorites? 1970-01-01 00:59:59 What's your favorite color?Why do you HAVE a favorite color?Why do you have a favorite ANYTHING?Put another way; why would primitive humans have had a need for favorites
... what was the survival advantage? I'm not talking about the rational preference for one non-trivial thing over another, such as "That valley is my favorite because it has more fruit trees than any other" or "That river is my favorite because it has more fish in it than any other"; these boil down to "That valley/river gives me a better chance of surviving than any other" and thus are useful, but things like "This flower is my favorite color" are different... what could have led to the 1st primitive human to choose that sort of favorite having such a thought, which was not only not related to survival but wasn't related to anything they were doing? (It's not like they were choosing a color to paint their cave, right?) What led to them having a favorite bird, not because it tasted best or was easiest to catc
How does the karma of evil people affect YOU? 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!If you shout at someone, everyone within range will hear you. If you shine a flashlight on someone, nearby people
will also be illuminated. Karma is just energy, and behaves analogously to other forms of energy, so karma
flowing to someone will touch everyone near them... how could it NOT?Most folks see karma as a totally individual phenomenon, such that your karma can only affect YOU, but that doesn't make sense; not only is it contrary to how the other natural forces work, it carries the unspoken, and perhaps unrealized, under-thought that there's some sort of sentience directing karma that "makes it" stick tight to just its "owner"... but there's no reason whatsoever to think that. Karma has no more analysis, judgment or intention than gravity or magnetism; it doesn't reward, it doesn't punish, and it's not "fair"... doubly so because you can benefit, or suffer, from karma that you had no hand in creating, just
Purse-onal eBay story 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I know, bad pun-sorry. It occurred to me that I hadn't chronicled my adventures on eBay for a while, so I'll fill you in on what SHOULD have been a short and simple search; my attempt to find a purse. Why had I been reduced to looking on eBay for something that every department store has hundreds of? My mother is to blame for that; thanks to her training, my purse contains every item I could possibly need when away from the house... including folding scissors (for dangling threads), a mini tape measure (so I can determine the sizes of furnishings that might fit in my mostly-unfurnished home), and a little calculator (to figure out tips at restaurants). Because of the sheer volume of stuff I carry, I can't use a small purse, but, because I'm not using my purse as a gym bag, lunch box, briefcase or receptacle for kids' stuff (other than the occasional thing for my husband, lol), a tote-type purse doesn't suit my needs either; this wouldn't be a problem if they made purses Read more:story
Christmas past, Christmas presents 1970-01-01 00:59:59 If you're expecting warm and fuzzy reminiscences about happy family times, you must be new here; this isn't a Hallmark special, it's another dark fragment of my past:When you were a kid, did your parents know what you wanted for Christmas
? If you were raised by human beings instead of by pod people like *I* was, you answered "yes"; maybe your parents couldn't always afford to get you what you wanted, or didn't think some of those things were appropriate for you ("You'll poke your eye out"), but they KNEW, and more importantly, CARED. MY parents had total recall of every imagined wrongdoing of mine for my entire life, and of every penny and minute of effort they ever "wasted" (their word, not mine) on me, so how is it possible that they never knew what I wanted for Christmas, even though I went on and on about each desired item like any other kid? Actually, it's theoretically possible that my father might have known, but since gift-buying wasn't his department (he's a trad
An interesting realization 1970-01-01 00:59:59 If you've been reading here for a while, you've grasped that my father was a sick, evil person, which makes him fairly unusual. There's another, even more unusual thing about him, though; he's been impotent his entire life. Today, for the 1st time, I started wondering if there's a connection between those 2 things.If you're wondering how I know about him being impotent, it's because my mother inexplicably felt it necessary to tell me; he'd just turned 22 when they got married, and should have been bursting with hormones like every other man of that age, but instead... my mother's line is that she was a virgin on her wedding night, and for several nights thereafter. He never improved his level of performance, and in fact it declined steadily; in the latter years with my mother, he never managed to complete the act at all. His lack of male functionality extended all the way down to the cellular level; he had such low sperm count and poor sperm motility that it's amazin Read more:interesting
, realization
A sad story on eBay 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I've spent a great deal of time (and of course $) on eBay over the past few years, mostly building up my collections; my husband, to his everlasting credit, doesn't complain about the $ or that the house is blanketed by my stuffies and figurines and such... unlike most men, he's neither repelled nor emasculated by these sorts of things, and even likes many of them. I'm obsessive about my collections, and my husband, although not a collector per se (he's a packrat, which is different), is also an obsessive type and understands my desire to have everything in existence that fits my criteria; and, although he was spoiled rotten as a kid, he also understands that, because I had so little during my own childhood, I REALLY enjoy having stuff now.Not every couple deals with one of them being a collector so smoothly, of course, but, as long as the amount of $ involved isn't excessive (which is a problem far more often since eBay was created, making it possible for collectors to acqui Read more:story
Odds and ends 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Believe it or not, I have ANOTHER karma-related post forming in my mind; while this is FAB after last year's spiritual dry spell, out of respect for those readers who aren't into that sort of thing I'll toss out some other stuff to give 'em a break:I did a new tech thing for the 1st time in ages: When viewing sites via BlogMad (click the image with the goofy eyes in the sidebar if you want to join), if I get distracted and just click on a link rather than opening it in a new window, there's no way to get back to the page I came from (the back arrow will take me to the blog BEFORE that one); this is a bummer, since after I go look at whatever they recommended I usually want to post a comment about it. On one such occasion, I started wondering how, on some sites, when you click a link it opens in a new page, and wouldn't that be a good thing to have for MY links so that BlogMad users could click on them to their heart's content and still be on my blog... so I did some code ch
*** It's my 3 year blog anniversary!! :-) *** 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Happy New Year!! I hope that this will be the best year ever for you and your loved ones. I found a hilarious e-card for the occasion:http://www.hallmark.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ecard|10001|10051|143940|-102001;11441;-102178||P1R7SO|ecardsI think the 3rd "resolution" is the funniest... and the most like something that'd happen to ME. I'm feeling encouraged about the coming year, because TWO of the raccoons that we haven't seen for months showed up tonight, which my husband and I choose to see as a good omen... if nothing else, it got us started off on the right paw, er, foot.It's hard to believe that it's been THREE YEARS since I started this blog, knowing absolutely nothing about the blogosphere, never having had a personal site of any kind before, and with only a sprinkling of html commands to get me started on battling with the template. I wish I'd thought to take a screen cap of how the blog looked then, with an empty sidebar, that 1st couple of tiny posts, and of
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