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"An annoying but irresistible combination of sounds"

"Hungry house cats use an annoying but irresistible combination of sounds when they want to be fed, a new study has found," according to National Geographic News (thanks to Goomp for the heads up). Annoying is in the ear of the beholder, and we are, of course, immune. Tiny's wish is our command.

She makes our heart sing. If we want to be annoyed, we look to the powers that be that are robbing us blind and pretending they care about us inside the Beltway.

Update: "My memorable experience with cats, which goes back some 65 years, is that they tend to be more honest and straightforward than humans," writes Goomp in the comments with a sensible suggestion:

Maybe we should limit political office to our feline population.

Update II: "Annoying? Never in life," adds Elisson:

As I recently posted [Be sure to read the whole thing, which has extended commentary by feline motivational speaker Hakuna], "A cat’s language, as we know, is all but impenetrable to the human mind and ear. Delicate, high-pitched overtones, coupled with carefully modulated subsonics, combine to create a vocal medium that can rival the complexity of a Bach concerto, the tonal subtlety of Mandarin Chinese."

Cats are smart enough to know that if they make sounds like a human baby, they activate the loci in our Reptilian Hindbrain that control the nurturing instinct. And we, of course, will therefore feed them — and think they're cute, to boot.

WICKED cute, cats and Elisson both! Goomp too.

Update: Lots more cuteness at Modulator's Friday Ark #252, now boarding.

Update II: The last word prrrt, from our 2007 post "The Cat's gone viral":

From our caption: Detail of a frame from Tandem Director Simon Tofield's brilliant animated short "Cat Man Do," -- wherein the pussycat applies the "Think System on Steroids" to get his food source up and at 'em -- that has ailurophiles all over the internet rolling in the aisles. This artist knows how to draw -- the expressive elegance of his line is deceptively simple -- and as everyone who knows cats knows, he KNOWS cats.

Click here to watch.

An inconvenient population "we don't want too many of"

Even as the world turns and our homo sapient species' totalitarian instinct runs rampant over our better angels, Tiny and Earl Grey clowder cheek to cheek.

"This guy makes Gore look good" we twittered re Obama's new Science Czar, John Holdren, who appears to share SCOTUS judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg's unspeakably eugenistic world view that it's okay to force some of our fellow Americans — "populations we don't want too many of" in Ginsburg's words — to abort their babies against their will, to "save the planet" [via Little Green Footballs]:

Zombie has a report on the book Ecoscience, co-authored by Barack Obama’s “science czar” John Holdren (with Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich) in 1977, and its radical advocacy of mass sterilization and forced abortion to solve a looming overpopulation crisis — that never actually materialized: John Holdren, Obama’s Science Czar, says: Forced abortions and mass sterilization needed to save the planet.

We should note that the book was written 32 years ago, Holdren was not the only author (and the other authors are known for radical opinions on these issues), and the context — as far as I can tell from reading Zombie’s excerpts — is that these extreme measures would be taken in response to a massive crisis situation.

Still, these are pretty outrageous opinions by most people’s standards, and Holdren should be given a chance to explain or renounce them.

In response to a massive crisis situation? Rahm Emanuel's "Never let a serious crisis go to waste" comes to mind. The Founding Fathers are turning in their graves.

Update: And speaking of "populations we don't want too many of," judges who legislate from the bench come to mind.

"Had we but world enough, and time"

Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, Lady, were no crime.

We would sit down and think which way To walk and pass our long love's day.

But at my back I always hear Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near. 

And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity.*

Update: Incurable romantic Connecticut Yankee delights us with "Tiny's reply (from Song of Solomon 2:8-13)" in the comments:

The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look, there he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice.

My beloved speaks and says to me: "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

*Many thanks to our literary love consultant — who notes that "stolen moments are always the most romantic and the most fleeting" — for suggesting Andrew Marvel's "To His Coy Mistress" to illuminate our latest photographic study of the grand passion between our own Sweet Tiny Pea and her mysterious admirer, the elusive Earl Grey.

Update II: Laura Lee links.

Rainy-day strategy

What to do when it's pouring outside and you don't like to get your paws wet?

Curl up into a silky fluffball and powernap until the sun comes out.

Update: Should it continue to rain for forty days and forty nights, head over to Modulator's Friday Ark #250, now boarding.

Sarah Palin "speaks from the heart"

Were you there at the revolution? We were as rumors of Sarah Palin's imminent retirement from her Alaska governership lit up the twittersphere this afternoon. As twitterati jockied for first place, we found ourselves at one point retweeted by Michelle Malkin herself. Highlights, latest to earliest:

Vapid NE Corridor fuddy-duddy prattle. Did SarahPalin take Krauthammer's advice to spend next 3 yrs boning up?

Saw Mitch Daniels at a conference broadcast on CNN . . . Wicked impressive.

Now you're talkin': RT @oxfordgirl: Western media appear to think if a revolution takes more than a week it is over. #iranelection

Palin speech is totally in the eye of the beholder. I took it on its own terms and liked what I heard.

I totally disagree with the totally awesome Nat Review ed @RichLowry who says Palin speech didn't make any sense on its own terms.

RT @goparchitect: "Sarah Palin" now #1 trending topic on twitter. Thank you, Sarah, for kicking Michael Jackson off the cables.

Sarah get your gun: RT @goparchitect: Palin quotes Gen. MacArthur “We are not retreating; we are advancing in another direction.”

Wall St Journal crossword clue: Stock exchange? Ans: Moos. Too cute!

Carl Cameron: She's done it again. To some, it's the end of her career. To others, it's the start of her presidential campaign.

Sarah get your gun: RT @scrappleface: @AKGovSarahPalin quits to spend more Time with Couric, Gibson.

Like Barack Obama, Sarah Palin can be a blank canvas upon which huddled masses yearning to breathe free — or in Obama's case, huddled masses yearning to be on the dole — project their inchoate longings. The difference is that while Obama speaks from the latest polls, Palin — in Fox Brit ex pat Stuart Varney's words — "speaks from the heart":

And maybe that's what Americans want.

The Shining City Upon a Hill is often taken for granted by those born under its light, and sometimes it takes an outsider like Varney to remind us that freedom isn't free. We loved this tweet from s_a_harris:

SarahPalin we're behind you all the way. $$, volunteer, whatever. Help us take this country back!

Tuck thinks it sounds funny. Is there a Palin scandal out there too big to weather the spotlight? Could be, but our preference is to take her at her word. Our favorite soundbite from her speech this afternoon:

A good captain knows when to pass the ball so the team can win!

It sounds like one for Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.

Newsbites and viewsbites and the power of crowd-sourced journalism

Like Tiny twisting and shifting her ears in all directions for environmental clues, we spent much of the day hanging around what Jordan Raynor calls the "Citizen-Powered News Bureau," turning our mind's ear to manageable portions of the 24/7 rush of 140-or-fewer-character newsbites and viewsbites from citizen journalists we're following on Twitter. Like a teaser headine, a well-written tweet invites us to follow the writer's Tiny URL links to larger worlds beyond. Writes Raynor: "News consumers are trusting crowd-sourced journalism to provide them with the news they want because they believe in the idea of a truly free-market journalism system where trusted news sources rise to the top naturally."

"You cannot sustain a campaign of platitudes and clichés over a year and a half if you're running for the presidency," Charles Krauthammer told Megyn Kelly — first woman ever to sub as host of Fox News's flagship "Special Report with Brit Baier" — last night. We cringed at the condescension towards Sarah Palin as we grumbled to the television that oh, yes you can sustain a campaign of platitudes and clichés, indefinitely, if your name is Barack Obama and big media is in the tank for you. Most annoying of all, our beloved Krauthammer agreed with liberal co-panelist Mara Liasson:

Now, as to Palin, I agree entirely with what Mara said. She is — she has star power without any doubt. She has an extremely devoted following. But she is not a serious candidate for the presidency.

She had to go home and study and spend a lot of time on issues in which she was not adept last year, and she hasn't. She has to stop speaking in clichés and platitudes. It won't work.

And how, pray tell, do Charles and Mara know what Sarah has or hasn't been doing beyond official duties since November? You can bet they don't follow AKGovSarahzPalin on Twitter, a great way to keep up with her schedule and priorities [Can't be sure whether she or a staffer does the actual twittering, but like Palin herself, her tweets have an authentic ring about them.] If Krauthammer and Liasson know something, let's have the details. We'd heard rumors just after the election that among other things the Alaska Governor was being mentored on foreign relations and government waste by Republican heavyweight Fred Thompson. As for those Northeast Corridor Republican fuddy-duddies who look down their noses at the hayseed caricature relentlessly spun by a biased, elitist media, we offer this insight from the executive producer of "Saturday Night Live," as quoted by Daniel Henninger during the last weeks of the fall campaign:

Lorne Michaels lives on the forward wave of American life. This week he gave his view of Sarah Palin to EW.com: "I think Palin will continue to be underestimated for a while. I watched the way she connected with people, and she's powerful. Her politics aren't my politics. But you can see that she's a very powerful, very disciplined, incredibly gracious woman. This was her first time out and she's had a huge impact. People connect to her."

But not Charles Krauthammer and fellow members of the fuddy-duddy community. As we wrote in our very first Palin post "It's a girl?" late August last year, "Charles Krauthammer on Fox is saying McCain should pick someone 'safe' like Fred Thompson [Ironic, huh? –ed]. We LOVE Fred, of course, and our sis will remind us that we have a heart too soon made glad, but the Governor of Alaska gets our girls-just-wanna-have-fun juices flowing. Sarah, get your gun!" We're reminded of something Dr. Krauthammer said just the other day about President Obama's poor judgment in siding with the would-be dictator of Honduras:

Look, a rule of thumb here is whenever you find yourself on the side of Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, and the Castro twins, you ought to re-examine your assumptions.

To you, sir, we would add our own rule of thumb:

Whenever you find yourself on the side of Mara Liasson, you ought to re-examine your assumptions.

And look. Please try to avoid using that toe-curling Liassonism, "Look," at the start of every declarative sentence.

Update: Look, all animals, all the time at Modulator's Friday Ark #250.

Who can explain its mystery?

Tiny by palmlight seeing things we don't outside on the terrace early morning.

"I LOVE your analysis of the Tiny/Earl Grey romance and am sure you are right about the 'dashing white boots,'" we emailed friend Carol Ward, a lifelong seeker of feline wisdom and truth:

I was enthralled by your pics of Tiny and Earl. I am fascinated to know what it is between the two of them that makes them not get all territorial with each other.  (Would that Snowball and Tigger, the neighbor's other, outside, cat get along like that, even for a minute.) It seems apparent that Earl is dating "up," while I can only guess that Tiny's head has been turned by the dashing white boots.

No wonder Earl Grey is smitten. What a sweatheart, above popping her head up from the lawn, grown tall through 40 days and 40 nights of intermittent rain.

'Reminds us of "Not just another pretty face," our photographic essay of love among the maples, wherein we contrasted the "pistillate [female] flowers' exquisite refinement" with the "unkempt, seedy appearance" of their staminate [male] suitors and asked the eternal question "What does she SEE in him?"

Update: More lovely faces now boarding Modulator's Friday Ark #249.

For thy love is better than catnip*

Tiny and her dashing gentleman caller Earl Grey out together clowdering cheek to cheek on the front stoop in the early morning light.

First time we've ever seen our sweet tiny girl so taken with another member of her species, and the feeling is obviously mutual.

Fight or flight? Camera shy and people shy, Earl eyed us with suspicion when he realized a paparazza was in dogged pursuit.

*Blog title is taken — with liberties — from Song of Solomon 1:2 (King James Version): "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine."

The price of liberty

Tiny bays at the moon in the midday sun …

"Sooner or later, a society of sheep must create a government of wolves."

                 — Bertrand de Jouvenal

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

                — Edmund Burke

… and goes eyeball-to-eyeball with a Lilac trunk.

"We've always said — whether anyone was listening or not — that the forces of darkness (apologies to wolves, who have their own imperatives, which we totally respect but would always defend our own against) are forever waiting just outside the campfire of civilization to move in for the kill."

                — Sissy Willis

Update: The forces of light now boarding Modulator's Friday Ark #248.

"That's the definition of blogging! :-) And twitter!"

Tiny gazes out from the front porch into the surrounding greenery this morning, seeing/hearing things — birds, perhaps? — we don't.

"That's the definition of blogging! :-) And twitter!" twittered The Anchoress in a eureka moment yesterday, responding to our own teaser tweet citing Schoepenhauer on informational and reputational "cascades":

There are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion.

Another elusive supper-campaigning action shot captured by our camera last evening.

Like a bird flying overhead, in a eureka moment of his own, Elisson twittered down upon our head a message of his own:

Opinions are like assholes: Everybody has one, and everybody else's stinks.

"One thing leads to another," as we wrote a couple of weeks back in one of our ongoing series attempting to explain the attraction of this "free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read each others' updates, known as tweets."

Update: No need to explain the attraction of the denizens of Modulator's Friday Ark #247, now boarding.