All Things Considered is historically ferret friendly. In fact, Meeteetse's crush on the voice of one of their professionals wound up being mentioned on the air twice. A quarter of a century ago the girlfriend of a friend called one day and asked what I knew about volcanoes. Now I was taking geo classes at the time but am NOT a hard rocker, let alone a volcanologist, so I started to give her possible reference leads. She said that was not what she desired; what she wanted was to have me tell her all I knew about them and that would be the (her employer's publication which I don't recall) encyclopedia's inclusion on volcanos. I refused. From that weird ferret paragraph it sounds like (at least some) encyclopedias have not improved any as resources or investments in a child's future. Errrrr, Ed ... this is off-topic so I will be very quick, but from what I have read (and I am not a professional in any related field) HIV does not tend to survive in saliva and hence is not kiss borne to ANY species, is mostly HETEROsexual when world-wide numbers are seen (with the anomaly here being simply that it was by chance first introduced to the gay community), that it may be most easily contracted by females, and that it is quite hard to transmit by routes other than unprotected vaginal or anal intercourse, needle-sharing, gestation or birth (not sure which), and possibly but not commonly by unprotected oral sex (because of cuts or abrasions which may be unnoticed). We've lost gay friends to it, and have not been able to trace a very dear, old friend who some others here kindly helped us try to find so suspect we've lost that friend, too. Neither Steve nor I have nor would hesitate to hug or kiss our friends or their pets. We DO think the idea of having the little one go to an HIV positive family is wonderful; the more love and cuddles shared, the better. Sukie [Posted in FML issue 1830]