Chad Clark's Open Journal : 2007-08-29

1) How to turn off colours in Emacs.

The other day emacs was kind enough to highlight some text light yellow on
a white background.  The result was rather unreadable.  I turned off the
colours by pressing M-x and entering font-lock-mode .

2) Squirrels heat their tails in defense.

New Scientist mentions squirrels heat their tail in defensive against some snakes.

  The ground squirrel heats up its tail then waves it in the snake's face -
  a form of harassment that confuses the rattler, which has an infrared
  sensing organ for detecting small mammals.
  
  ... [T]he adults tails heat up, presumably due to increased blood flow,
  when they were warning rattlers away.
  
  Confronted with a gopher snake, which has no infrared sensory organ, the
  squirrels wagged their tails but didn't bother to warm them up first.