I long ago lost the ick-factor when it comes to squishing aphids. I don't exactly like it, but I do squish on site and worry about gross fingers later. One thing that I find is really good for keeping them under control is neem oil. I find it stinks to high heaven, so you probably don't want to be spraying it inside, but in the fall, before plants come in I spray the heck out of them. I rarely see a bug of any kind before February, and even then I can keep it under control by spraying the worst bug attractors with neem again in the shower - that way the smell can be vented outside! I just took about half my plants outside for another spray festival and that should keep things from getting out of hand for quite awhile. Someone once mentioned that they put on cotton gloves of the sort you can buy at a drug store (for excema) and dipped their gloved hand into a bug spray solution and then ran their hand over their big plants. I've never tried that, but it might be worth it if you can't spray. You probably only need to do the tips of the plants. BP

What a smart bunch - I fooled no one this time!! Well, here it is - the ancestor of Big Blue. It really only had one function, to my knowledge, and that was to decipher Enigma messages. btw, bomba refers to the Polish machine, bombe refers to the English machine. It was developed in Poland initially, in the 30's by Polish mathematician-cryptologist Marian Rejewski. According to a top-secret U.S. Army report dated 15 June 1945, a machine called the "bombe" is used to expedite the solution. The first machine was built by the Poles and was a hand operated multiple enigma machine. When a possible solution was reached a part would fall off the machine onto the floor with a loud noise. Hence the name "bomba". Or that it made a crackling noise, like a dessert called a bombe glace. Either way, up to July 25, 1939, the Poles had been breaking Enigma messages for over six and a half years without telling their French and British allies. On December 15, 1938, two new rotors, IV and V, were introduced (three of the now five rotors being selected for use in the machine at a time). As Rejewski wrote in a 1979 critique of appendix 1, volume 1 (1979), of the official history of British Intelligence in the Second World War, "we quickly found the [wirings] within the [new rotors], but [their] introduction [...] raised the number of possible sequences of drums from 6 to 60 [...] and hence also raised tenfold the work of finding the keys. Thus the change was not qualitative but quantitative. We would have had to markedly increase the personnel to operate the bombs, to produce the perforated sheets. The initial design of the bombe was produced in 1939 at the UK Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park by Alan Turing, with an important refinement devised in 1940 by Gordon Welchman. The bombe was an electro-mechanical device that replicated the action of several Enigma machines wired together. A standard German Enigma employed, at any one time, a set of three rotors each of which could be set in any of 26 positions. The standard British bombe contained thirty six Enigma-equivalents, each with three drums wired to produce the same scrambling effect as the Enigma rotors. A bombe could run two or three jobs simultaneously. Each job would have a menu that had to be run against a number of different wheel orders. If the menu contained 12 or fewer letters, three different wheel orders could be run on one bombe; if more than 12 letters, only two. Colonel John Tiltman, who later became Deputy Director at Bletchley Park, visited the US Navy cryptanalysis office (OP-20-G) in April 1942 and recognised America's vital interest in deciphering U-boat traffic. The urgent need, doubts about the British engineering workload and slow progress, prompted the US to start investigating designs for a Navy bombe, based on the full blueprints and wiring diagrams received by US Naval Lieutenants Robert Ely and Joseph Eachus at Bletchley Park in July 1942. Funding for a full, $2 million, navy development effort was requested on 3 September 1942 and approved the following day. A contract was let with the National Cash Register Corporation (NCR) in Dayton, Ohio. This established the United States Naval Computing Machine Laboratory. Engineering development was led by NCR's Joseph Desch. Whew, sorry, that's as short as I can make it!! So, for Lorna, Thin Man, Annette, and Cyn: Now, as to the actress, Hedy Lamarr, she was indeed a smart cookie. I will spare you here, but suggest you check out her biography. She was very much ahead of her time!! Thanks for playing. Nancy.

Yep, there's lots of dumb ways to do anything, aye? Wars, for example, since you mention them, are a dumb and ultra-expensive way to resolve disagreements.

Lily, huck toweling? Just googled it and hard to tell what it is... Can you enlighten me? About microfiber, honestly I cannot stand the way that stuff feels on my hands, it's similar to chalk on a blackboard and it snags on cuticles. I have to wear a pair of disposable latex gloves when using them -- which sort of defeats the purpose of using something re-useable, LOL. I just noticed yesterday that the horizontal part of my PT holder is covered with PT dust. It has been up in this house for a year. It's a very nice one from Ballard Designs and was up in my last house for 2-3 years and never got any dust on it at all. It's definitely little PT fibres.