āThis Machine Starts Automaticallyā
Obviously it was a typo.
I clearly meant 7th century.
BC or AD? (Though I think that the diolkos wasnāt built till a later century BC.)
I wonder what that says about Kansas? No mountains on our horizons now. It mostly seems quite mild. But there was the Bleeding Kansas era, and our local friends tell us that William S. Burroughs used to live here in Lawrence, speaking of dark passions.
Thereās a surprisingly deep-seated feeling when oneās in the āwrongā terrain: those great flat plains that you get in the US midwest, and Cambridgeshire, and southern Sweden, always feel bare and unwelcoming to me, whereas give me some hills to break up the sightline a bit and Iām happy.
Kansas is actually surprisingly pretty, at least around the eastern end, where there are trees and rivers. And its sky is huge. But I miss seeing mountains on the horizon. We had them in Riverside and I got to feel very much at home with them, especially in winter when their tops were white.
Ask a Finn, and theyāll say that of course you put your lakeside holiday cottage a few hundred metres back into the forest, otherwise you could be seen.
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I agree with that. Open plains with nothing breaking the horizon do make me uncomfortable somehow. Norfolk and Cambridgeshire do not affect me too much, the British landscape is often broken by hedges and forest. My partner is from Lithuania and also I donāt struggle there, with plenty of forest now and then to break the horizon. But the Atlantic side of France, or La Mancha (famous from Don Quixote) in central Spain, where you donāt see even a fence for miles, that unsettles me.
Funny enough, I donāt have that problem when out at seaā¦
Gosh, that cat is good at laying and folding blanketsā¦
Okay, Iām not sure if these creatures techically count as āpetsā but theyāre very pretty pictures and I wasnāt sure where else to put them.
I found them in an unfortunate location on a cat last week - the organisms that put an end to Lord Byron and George Orwell. Mycobacterium are almost invisible on our standard stains - theyāre the tiny white lines all over the slide and being ineffectually munched on by those huge angry macrophages.
This second picture is a ZN stain to highlight them - suddenly it looks like Christmas, although this isnāt really the sort of present youād want.
I really really love my job.
Good all TB, Bovis, or avian?
Donāt know into they type it, could be either, but Iām afraid the cat might not get that far. Iāve seen a few cases of M. Tuberculum, caught from the owner, and M. Microti, not sure where those came from!
Microtus is the genus of voles. Do they have something to do with rodents?
Vole bascillus, first identified from field voles
Actually yes, I think rodent bites are most commonly implicated. We see another version from seals too but I think thatās a different species now.
So how are those related to the human TB? Is it crossing between human/animals?
In 2019, at the school of one of our friendsā children there was a small TB outbreakā¦ thinking back it was like a test run for covid. Everyone was tested repeatedly, there were quarantines, schools had to be disinfectedā¦ the whole of the town was in an uproar but it was contained with I think a small number of cases or so.
I think many people have forgotten how fortunate we are that we donāt have to deal with TB, polio or measles etc. etc. etc. anymore for the most part.
Looking forward to seeing more pictures of pets from the outside 
I can cross but it needs very close contact or implantation with bites and so on. Thereās several different species of mycobacteria - M. Tuberculum causes TB in humans, with M. Leprae the cause of leprosy (cats can also get leprosy - M. Lepraemurium). Most cats have M. Avium or M. Bovis. The risk of zoonosis - infection spreading from animals to humans - is a real problem in cats, especially if the owner is immunosuppressed (I.e. on chemotherapy or immunosuppressive treatment, or has a disease suppressing the immune system). Dogs seem relatively resistant but Iāve seen a few cases.
Cows get M. Bovis mostly, which is a problem here in the UK, and why I would strongly recommend not drinking unpasteurised milk. And Iāll stop path geeking sorry 