I have always been fascinated with the concept of a small group of people locked in a bunker underground waiting to turn the missile launch keys. The training, the stress, motivations, failsafes, I’ve been interested in it all for years.

Here’s a great report by someone who took a tour of a Titan missile silo that’s still intact (missile included) with an ex-key turner as a guide. Fascinating stuff.

I love XKCD, it’s truly one of the most consistently funny things around. But this one takes the cake.

I think I woke the kids up laughing so hard.

Here’s a fantastic set of mini-articles from the New York Times, summarizing many of the interesting ideas from this year.

Bits on tech, psychology, politics, lasers, genetically engineered dogs and drunk people giving away money and many more. What more could you want?

Very interesting reading.

We have been looking for a dog for a while now, and we have a number of criteria:

• nonshedding (both for allergies and as a realistic recognition of the frequency of our floor cleaning)
• non barking
• large enough not to be a little floormop yappy thing
• small enough not to knock over a child in the rush for dinner
• preferably an adult dog (we’ve had enough of wiping up poop and getting up in the middle of the night, thanks)

Friends of ours have a beautiful labradoodle named Mocha. She was owned by a breeder, and was being retired from the puppy-making business. She’s calm, socialized, house-trained and non-shedding. That was all we needed to know. We emailed the breeder the day after we met Mocha, and found out that they had another dog due to be retired.

Meet Diva:

She’s almost 6, she’s an F1B Medium Labradoodle, which means her mother was a standard poodle and her father was a medium labradoodle. We went out to meet her this afternoon, and she’s a sweetie. 6 is a bit older than we were thinking, but she’s a beautiful dog, and she took to the kids very easily. She readily went to everyone, even Rachel, and she was gentle and calm the whole time, even with our mob around her.

She has this wonderfully curly woolly coat, that’s currently clipped short for easier maintenance (she had her last litter a little over a month ago). Here’s a picture of her with her brand new pups. It’s a terrible photo, but ask any Mom to look at the pictures of her a short time post-partum…

She’s due to be spayed at the beginning of January, and a few weeks of recovery later we should be going to pick her up.

Yay!

We’re planning on keeping her name. I know she’s going to rule the house, so Diva seems appropriate.