Today I spent a pleasant while browsing Don Markstein’s Toonopedia, a growing database of cartoons of all types.

Where the asteroids are. I did not know that the inner edge of the Belt is so close to Mars. This chart also shows diffuse extensions of the main Belt toward both Trojan clusters, and toward Anti-Jupiter: perhaps these are companions of Jupiter that have not yet been identified as such, or perhaps they are a fluke of the moment.

2004: Alas, the chart evidently is not updated.

2006: Yes it is!

Asteroid 2002NT7 won’t hit us in 2019, but may hit us in 2060. (Later: Nor then.)

I’ve been hearing (on the Foresight Exchange lists) that minor impacts like Tunguska probably happen about once a century, going unnoticed without modern communications.

Multi-Tasking, by Mike Treder.

(Dead link replaced by live link, thanks to Randall Randall, 2005 May 21)

I don’t know who jaguaro.org might be, or on what authority they decree One Hundred Albums You Should Remove from Your Collection Immediately [new link], but what the hell. I went through the list and found five that I own (you can have my Surrealistic Pillow when . . you know), one that I culled years ago (Physical Graffiti), and about 25 whose perpetrators’ names I do not recognize. What that says about me is left as an exercise.

Catnip’s little flowers, I find on closer inspection, are not plain white: they have little pink freckles. They are somewhat orchidlike in shape.

Yesterday I caught Fluffie washing its leaves.

You may ask why a member of such an edumacated household has so dull a handle as ‘Fluffie’. It happened rather by default. Her human, my housemate, neglected to name her for months; she was ‘(the) cat’ or, being a longhair, ‘(the) fluffy’ – we being of such long acquaintance that we occasionally dispense with such formalities as articles. In the fullness of time we needed something with a capital letter to write down for the vet; and so, for the sake of (the) form, ‘Fluffie’ she became.

The List of Possible Bandnames, for those who have musical talent or a knack for names, but not both.