A couple of memes

[tree_and_leaf]

From grondfic

Comment and I'll--

1 - Tell you why I friended you.
2 - Associate you with something. A fandom, a song, a colour, a piece of fruit. SOMETHING.
3 - Tell you something I like about you.
4 - Tell you a memory I have of you.
5 - Associate you with a character/pairing.
6 - Ask something I've always wanted to know about you. (Or else I'll just ask a random question. I reserve that right.)
7 - Tell you my favorite user pic of yours.
8 - In return, you must spread this disease in your LJ.

From mrstater

Comment and I will pick 3 things from your Interests list for you to explain a little about.

Comments

[tree_and_leaf]

1. It was the Wimsey/ Who crossover fic.

2. A ski (cross country)

3. I like your sense of humour, also all the Wimsey and Harry Potter related speculation, discussion and fic.

4. How astonishingly difficult it can be to find room in a cafe in Oxford...

5. It has to be Barabara/ Uncle Paul, even though you've yet to write it

6. Who or what is Xenopus, and why?

7. "I hope your rabbit dies." It always amuses me.

Chalet School, nordic skiing, sewing

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Xenopus laevis is the clawed toad/frog in the photograph (it’s actually a third genus and not strictly a frog or toad), bred in captivity since the 1920s for lab experiments. The icon is essentially a private joke – the expression “I hope your rabbit dies” originated as a straightforward insult, but later became associated in the USA with pregnancy testing, due to the early use of rabbits for this purpose and the mistaken belief that when injected with the urine of a pregnant woman, they proved the test positive by dying. They don’t die, but they were generally killed after the test because it was uneconomic to keep them long enough to use again. (Testing with rabbits never caught on in the UK because (a) it is less reliable than a similar and cheaper test using mice and (b) the research assistants at the Edinburgh lab where it was done didn’t like killing them). Subsequently a pregnancy test was developed that uses Xenopus. Its advantages were that it was quicker, cheaper, reliable and that the animals could easily be kept and used again. Hence Xenopus, unlike the rabbits, lived.

So now you know.

[tree_and_leaf]

Good Lord. I'm speechless.