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Getting in touch with our inner pussycat

The Chelsea Grays -- Tiny, above, just after snatching the kitty brush from our hands this morning and going for its jugular -- "are deeply attuned to their environment," as we blogged last November, contrasting our feline familiars' adrenal/cerebral response to environmental cues with the cluelessness of politically correct deniers of the existence of bad guys out there trying to kill us.

"Get in touch with your inner trout," we blogged last fall in our post "The head can be removed after cooking," where we wrote about animals' ability to learn and process new information in contrast to some of our fellow humans' loss of that ability:

As with the trout [in a study cited in our post], the Chelsea Grays are deeply attuned to their environment, ever on the alert for signals of danger but comparing every new situation with past experience to allow for rational decision making . . .

When they sense possible danger, they are all ears, eyes and sniffing the air, but there is a pause during which they decide whether it is something big or not really anything to worry about after all.

"She enjoys being a cat," Tuck always says of Tiny. "She also enjoys brushing her ears."

As for our own species, specifically Homo sapiens sinister -- our friends on the left side of the aisle both here and abroad -- we quoted Dr. Sanity, who had blogged that day about passengers' gut response to the unnerving behavior of a group of imams [see below for the encouraging denouement* of all that this past week or so] on a US Airways flight and the Darwinian usefulness of fear:

We all feel the emotion of fear. And it is good that we do so. Fear and all our other emotions are the software "shortcuts" that encourage our mind and body to act. An emotionally mature individual tries to understand his or her fear -- i.e., he or she uses the rational faculty and reason -- because in doing so, one may determine the appropriate course of action for countering a perceived threat to youself or your loved ones.

Pretending that you aren't afraid; displacing or minimizing your fear; ignoring the slow-moving rhino heading in your direction or other dangerous realities; are hardly effective strategies to deal with the many threatening things in the world today.

"Exactly. And that's what's so wrong-headed about multiculturalism and its handmaiden, political correctness," we continued:

That seems to us to be what's wrong with the politically correct rhetoric of the left, both here and in the larger world of elite "thinkers" worldwide. Like zoo-born animals that have never had to deal with the vicissitudes of their natural predators and prey "out there," these reality-challenged folk neither recognize their mortal enemies nor have the skills to fight for their own survival.

Now we are totally thrilled to learn that some commonsensical fellow Americans are just saying no to the flying imams' trumped-up test case designed to abuse our justice system for their own nefarious reasons. Remember creeping socialism? [Just ask the Oprah-blessed, charismatic, socialist-lite Obama about that. We had been inclined to like him, but the more we hear about his political philosophy, the less we like the idea of his becoming the Leader of the Free World.] *Now we're facing its twin sister, creeping Sharia. Glenn Beck -- who's been naming the hatred that dare not speak its name on CNNs Headline News, sandwiched between half-hourly news updates and the inedible Nancy Grace for the last period of time -- explains [via Little Green Footballs]. Music to our ears.

The most unflattering headgear known to woman

As we are always reminding all those doubters out there, girls just wanna have fun. The body language of Faye Turney (photo above left with cocky beret as she sees herself, a Woman Warrior) -- the British gal being psychologically and probably physically abused by the gynophobic leaders of the Republic of Iran (photo above right, with the most unflattering headgear known to woman, the one preferred by Islamic men who choose to project their unwanted sexual urges onto us gals) with an assist from the moral-equivalency left who unfavorably compare her "compassionate" treatment at the hands of those anti-American hate-mongers with the all-American treament of prisoners of war now held at Guantanamo -- reveals all to anyone still in touch with common sense and human nature.

What's in a hat? The two faces/hats of Faye Turney, that British sailor who "admitted" under duress that she loved being kidnapped by Iranian Muslim terrorists (just as Fox News correspondent Steve Centani admitted at gunpoint he'd seen the light and "converted" to Islam):

1. As she sees herself, above left, a woman with a mission -- "I know by doing this job I can give [my baby girl] everything she wants in life and hopefully seeing me doing what I do, she’ll grow up knowing a woman can have a family and have a career at the same time."

2. As the gynophobic Islamicists see all women, above right, submissive to their male betters. The cigarette is quite a statement, no doubt an expression of the terrorists' "compassion" for their victims. No word yet from the anti-tobacco lobby.

"'In 1981, Abol-Hassan Bani-Sadr, the first president of the Islamic Republic [of Iran], announced that 'scientific research had shown that women’s hair emitted rays that drove men insane,' writes Amir Taheri at Town Hall," we blogged three years back. (Michelangelo's Mother of Christ from "Pieta" left and "Slinky Knits" two-piece hijab)

"I think we should do our best to humiliate them" says Fox News's Geraldo, a human person we rarely quote with approval, but he's right on about the latest pathetic Iranian attempt to intimidate the weak horses of the west. Unfortunately, Tony Blair is no Margaret Thatcher. Wobbliness could occur at any time.

We're no fan of mothers of very young children who go off to war. We were lucky enough to have a mother who was devoted to orchestrating a magical fun and funny world for us kids in our early years. She gave us a zillion happy times going to the beach, having friends overnight to play dolls and doing all kinds of things both she and we thought would be fun. But Faye Turney (above with baby Molly) -- "a sea survival specialist trained to deal with emergency situations" -- made her choice. Presumably the family came to terms with her decision. Whatever her choice, there is no excuse for the Mullahs' obscene use of her as a prop in their megalomaniacal fantasy.

"If you weren’t bright enough to do science, you could go into politics"

Which one doesn't fit? Al Gore, Chuck Hagel, top, Baby Cakes and John McCain bottom. Clue: You can't herd cats.

What's the difference between a republican and a democratic loose cannon? The republican ones, like Chuck "Impeach Bush" Hagel and John "Freedom of speech for me but not for thee" McCain, are RINOs -- republicans in name only -- who bask in the cerebral-lite press's adoration of them as "mavericks" either against the war as in Hagel's case or against freedom of speech (McCain/Feingold) as in McCain's case -- while the democrats, like Joey Lieberman, are the real thing -- collectivists at heart who've never met a tax increase nor a government regulation they didn't like but draw their line in the sand when it comes to national security. When push comes to shove -- as it did in the last couple of days during the House and Senate votes linking continued funding of the war with arbitrary benchmarks for retreat and lard-heavy porkbarrel bribes -- the RINOs came out of the woodwork. These are not serious people. They are not leaders but followers of whichever way the political winds blow. Michael Crichton's assessment [a must read] of the political class comes to mind:

I was also raised in a scientific tradition that regarded politics as inferior: If you weren’t bright enough to do science, you could go into politics. I retain that prejudice today. I also come from an older and tougher tradition that regards science as the business of testing theories with measured data from the outside world. Untestable hypotheses are not science but rather something else.

Yes, you, Al Gore, and you, Chuck Hagel, and you, John McCain, whose ascientific gaseous emissions re the "sky is falling" scenario on anthropogenic global warming climate change -- just like his phony "let's get the money out of politics," incumbent-protection campaign "finance reform" law, which YouTube and the internet are fortunately leaving in the dust -- make our blood boil. We must say we were disappointed to read this very day that the otherwise sensible Rudolph Giuliani has thrown in the towel re climate change as well. 'Hope our own personal favorite, Fred Thompson -- who just the other day disavowed his earlier foolish support of McCain/Feingold -- doesn't have any Chicken-Little tendencies. Don't these people realize some of us potential supporters out here read and study the "heretics" and "deniers" who are challenging scientific "consensus"? Not to mention our understanding that tax cuts -- by stimulating the economy -- increase tax revenues? Sigh. In the current political climate -- probably it was always thus -- truthiness trumps truth.

An eye-catching brand new dish

Some fab dark purple potatoes went into the steam pot this evening. We'd bet Tuck they'd turn white after cooking, but they never did. Now he is a dollar richer, and we had the makings of an eye-catching brand new dish, Purple Spuds and Dogs Parmesan.

After steaming till just tender, the potatoes were sliced and then halved again and tossed with mayo, hotdog relish and mustard. Meanwhile, Kayem Old Tyme Natural Casing Franks [made in Chelsea] were sautéed, and Arnold 7 Grain slices were topped with shredded Parmesan and toasted in the toaster oven.

Finally we topped the cheese-melted toast with dollops of the potato mixture, squished in the dogs and then folded the toast up around to form a taste-tempting pigs-in-a-blanket ensemble. 'Hope we won't get any death threats from our Muslim neighbors -- Chelsea has quite a contingency, mostly from Somalia, who worship every Friday at a makeshift mosque at the local Roca just down the street -- for daring to publish a pork-praising post. Tuck pronounced our new dish a triumph. Note the Babe heading off toward stage right in photo above.

When they were just a couple of college kids in love

Tiny pauses to contemplate the glory of being a cat down Goomp's over the weekend, where it was all free rein all the time.

We've been Down East at Goomp's for the last couple of days, food shopping, cooking -- our own version of Mummy's signature beef strogie on a bed of noodles with pea pods and Caesar salad -- and celebrating on Sunday the 66th anniversary of -- as we blogged on the 64th anniversary two years ago -- "his romantic elopement with our mother when they were just a couple of college kids in love." Susie and her Barney II, Chris, joined us for cocktails, girl talk, "boring man talk" and mixed doubles, topped off with a berries (blue and rasp) pie set in Susie's award-winning light-as-air crust:

Mr. Bill made a surprise visit (see face made by berry juice on ice cream scoop above)

As we wrote back then, Mary and Arthur "set off in a snowstorm":

They drove from Medford, MA to Manchester, NH and returned to their Tufts dormitory rooms the same evening. Their first night together as Mr. and Mrs. had to wait until the following weekend. The rest is history.

Ever the pièce de résistance adding feline energy and excitement to the well appointed table, Tiny made her appearance during the festivities, framed by Hannaford's off-the-shelf bouquet of roses, daisies, snapdragons, baby's breath and eucalyptus greens. Goomp asked how much. We checked, and it was just under $15. Fascinating to compare the pricing with our local -- and much loved -- florist's charge of over twice as much for a far simpler bouquet of six roses and greens delivered to our doorstep. As far as we're concerned, both have their place, but the supermarkets today are truly a market-forces miracle.

What we said two years back still goes:

Thanks, Goomp, for blessing us with your sentimental and enduring love for Mummy.

Goomp: You're da man!

"More cat pictures, please"

"It's the closest I've ever seen to a cat's looking like Winston Churchill," says Tuck re the Babe, foreground in the Bachrach-like sibling portrait above, with Tiny's Madame Thatcher in the background.

"More cat pictures please!" emails the totally awesome Rick Moran of Rightwing Nuthouse. We'd asked him in his comments why he doesn't approve of one of our own heroes, Senator Inhofe -- blogged here. Here's what we wrote:

Inhofe made a lot of sense at the hearings -- and in things I’ve read at his web site . . . What is your problem with him?

Here's what Rick wrote back:

Calling global warming "the greatest hoax perpetrated on the American people"  is thoughtless, irrational, and just plain wrong.

The most respected climate scientists, atmospheric physicists, environmental scientists from several disciplines on the planet -- all say that to one degree or another, the earth is warming and man is partly responsible. To refer to these people as hoaxers is not being serious and smears them unnecessarily.

As I made clear in the article, I am not convinced myself. But I respect the views and research of people who know a helluva lot more about the subject than I do -- or Inhofe for that matter.

Good points. Our reply:

In my view to say the earth is in a warming phase -- a factual statement -- and that man is partly responsible is a far cry from Gore's hysterical "the earth has a fever," we are the deadly germ and we must increase the size of government to show we care.

Therefore I found Inhofe's performance at Wednesday's hearing -- among a herd of lock-step fellow Senators pandering to Mr. Gore -- a refreshing voice in the wilderness. Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.

Your essay at The American Thinker ["Poiliticizing Science," a must read] on the subject is outstanding!

Rick's response:

It's hard to separate the legitimate science of climate change from the hysterics like Gore (and others who stand to benefit enormously by the crackdown on industry and western industrial supremacy). It's just that Inhofe's denial that anything about global warming research is true makes him look silly. Debunking the irrational is one thing. Denying the tons of research that shows there is a problem is quite another.

Nice to have a worthy debater to present both sides of the debate for a change. 'Reminds us of that Colorado sixth-grade class that had a classic debate pro and con and voted that global warming is not caused by humans. Reading through the story -- linked by Drudge -- we were wicked impressed with the teacher's pedagogical methods until we learned at the end of the article that paleontology teacher Ken Poppe doesn't “believe in Darwinism either, but I can argue it as well as any Darwinist.” How can a paleontologist not be a Darwinist? Maybe it depends upon what your definition of Darwinism is?

Update: Whether or not you believe in Darwinism, the animals will continue to board Modulator's 131st Friday Ark and enchant ailurophiles at Carnival of the Cats #156 at Pet's Garden Blog.

"Not to represent patients in a stigmatized way"

"Fans agree Germany's polar-bear cub too cute to kill." It's a start, but common sense and common decency are no guarantee. "With animal-rights activists like this, what animal needs predators?" asks Captain Ed rhetorically re the "save the village by destroying it" animal "rights" protector who demanded zoo-born cutie-pie Knut (above ARCHIV ZOO BERLIN / AP), rejected by its mother, be euthanized, saying "The zoo should kill the baby bear. Otherwise it is condemning the bear to a dysfunctional life, and that too is a breach of the law.” Our own prescription, akin to Laurence Simon's prescription for the makers of that pet food that horrifically killed some of our fellow Americans' best friends: Feed chunks of the dysfunctional animal-rights activists -- in gravy -- to the bears.

Reading Cathy Seipp's LA Times obituary today -- Cathy is dead. Long live Cathy! Our heart is breaking, but now she has slipped the surly bonds -- we were quite taken with the revelation of the love of her secret heart:

Instead of flowers, Seipp had requested that people make donations to the Humane Society, http://www.hsus.org.

We're totally with Cathy in spirit, our own last will and testament specifying a major gift to MSPCA Angell Memorial, Boston's awesome state-of-the-art veterinarian institution, responsible for staying the execution of our own Sweet Tiny Pea last year. Ever since Katrina's heartbreaking effects on the animals in the area of the storm's greatest devastation down yonder, we've been a big fan of the Humane Society as well, and we clicked on over to make a donation in Cathy's name. If you're so inclined, we encourage you to do the same, for her and for the animals. [Click on Kindred Spirits to donate in her name] Cathy's other favored charity brings up a most important point about today's puritanistically politically correct ways of giving or denying support to the suffering. Cathy's daughter Maia explains:

In addition to the Humane Society, I also want to acknowledge the Lung Cancer Alliance . . . I got an email from them explaining that one of their goals is not to represent patients in a stigmatized way. Not all lung cancer patients were smokers. My mother was frustrated on her blog that there is more funding for the more popular diseases of breast cancer, AIDS etc which have more hope than lung cancer which is a harder way to go.

Before we continue, let us say one more time that we recognize that orchestrated attempts to silence opposing voices are the essence of human nature. Dr. Sanity drums it into our dear little ear daily. If there's something politically incorrect you can pin on a sufferer, your feeling-good-about-yourself points rise exponentially. Every totalitarian regime throughout history, from antiquity to the present, exhibits the same behavior. It's sandbox dynamics writ large. "Climate Change" proseletyzers who stigmatize skeptical scientists as "deniers" are only the latest totally un-self-aware example of the genre. The witch burners of Salem are always with us. 'Guess we'll head over to the Lung Cancer Alliance -- as opposed the preachy American Lung Cancer Society -- to put our money where our breathing apparatus is.

"My time is almost expired completely"

Like Barbara Boxer within her Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on climate change this afternoon, Baby makes the rules.

Two of our heroes in one day are fighting the good fight:

1. Senator James Inhofe -- blogged here --  is not letting Barbara Boxer and Al [Big Sigh] Gore get away with grandstanding at today's "global-warming" hearings, as the Lord of Longwindedness tries to use up all of Inhofe's airtime by blowing hot air. 'Will watch the whole thing in reruns during the wee hours for the thrill of it all. Meanwhile, here's what  the Committee Chair had to say, to much snickering from the peanut gallery:

Elections have consequences, so I make the rules.

Touché. Inhofe parries:

When people don't want to talk about science in a debate format, they just say it's settled . . . My time is almost expired completely. Are you [Gaseous Gore] aware of that?

Here's the follow-up to our teaser post a couple of days back about Tuck's bolster project. He figured out how to do it through a combination of checking things out online, consulting with his upholstery man (the one who made the gorgeous cushion underneath the bolsters above) and a huge bunch of common sense. The biggest nut to crack was how to get a thread through the center of the foam cylinders to pull the buttons front and aft together. The solution was to slash through the fome with a serrated knife from our own kithcen. Ain't they beautiful?

2. "Czech Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus said on Wednesday that fighting global warming has turned into a 'religion' that replaced the ideology of communism and threatens to clip basic freedoms" -- check out our own take on the divine Mr. Klaus here:

The right-wing president, a free-market champion, wrote to the U.S. Congress that adopting tough environmental policies to fight climate change would have destructive impact on national economies.

'Communism has been replaced by the threat of an ambitious environmentalism,' Klaus wrote in response to questions from the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Energy and Commerce.

The most beautiful boy in the world. Baby Cakes, being a pussycat, doesn't pose, of course, but sometimes our digital cam lucks out and catches him in the perfect moment as above in the countdown to supper.

Meanwhile, the hearing continues. Bernie Sanders [Socialist, VT] opines that Fellow Traveler Albert has given the new generation "the hope that it can become the new Greatest Generation," able to overcome dependency upon fossil fuel. Can you say inspiring? Tom Brokaw's Greatest Generation -- the armed forces and their homefire burners stateside during WW II who defeated the fascist enemy overseas -- gives way to Bernie Sanders's and Al Gore's Greatest Generation, who will exchange "carbon credits" to neutralize their "carbon footprint." It doesn't get any sweeter than VP Gore's response:

I think this generation is becoming involved in this as a moral issue.

What hath God wrought?

A blogospheric Irish wake for a beloved free spirit

"Here's Cathy Seipp! Our great pal is leaving us soon, but while she fights (and oh god, I've never seen someone fight like her), there's nothing much to do on a site like this except to show some of her excellent babe-tastic photographs. Like this one [above left], interviewing Bill Blass" in her salad days, blogs Matt Welch in his contribution to a blogospheric Irish wake of a tribute this day to a beloved free spirit -- a shining light of the Pajamas Media crowd, the proprietress of Cathy's World -- who is passing over to the other side in her final bout with lung cancer. Never having known Cathy but having been brought to tears by the heartfelt tributes of those who knew and loved her, we were reminded of our own blogging of the life and death of another shining star we'd never met, Berry Berenson Perkins [above right], as part of the 2,996 Project last 9/11.

We were all set to blog about Viscount Monckton's challenge to Al Gore's "argument" in his film "An Inconvenient Truth," a "foofaraw of pseudo-science, exaggerations, and errors, now being peddled to innocent schoolchildren worldwide," when we learned of the imminent death of one of the blogophere's brightest lights, Cathy Seipp, a fellow Pajamas Media blogger. We'd checked out the definition of foofaraw -- a great fuss or disturbance about something very insignificant -- and were simmering with righteous indignation at the foofarawic resonance of all things Democratic, from Nancy Pelosi on down [up?] when Cathy's impending death caught us up short. We spent most of our blogging time the rest of the day checking out the tributes, which were like a river at flood tide.

"Journalist and blogger Cathy Seipp has been sick for a while but you wouldn't know it," writes Tony Pierce re the unexpectedly sudden demise of a woman being mourned and celebrated by the blogosphere this day. Cathy and her daughter Maia, left, and Berry Berenson Perkins, right.

"In between writing and blogging and being interviewed and hosting backyard parties attended by the likes of Ann Coulter to holding a roast for herself that asked (and received) no holds barred," writes Tony Pierce in "The Saddest Story We've Heard All Day":

Seipp just hasn't had time to get sick enough to be of any seriously serious concern, so friends simply cherished each encounter as if it was its last, and now it appears things have turned very bad.

As the English clergyman and metaphysical poet George Herbert said way back when, "Living is the best revenge." She outlived the doctors' dire predictions by years.

A person who lives by amusing the rich

"Are bloggers parasites"? teases Swaraaj Chauhan of The Moderate Voice [via Pajamas Media], citing "In praise of the parasitic blogger," a post by Nicholas Carr of roughtype in support of the argument that we who blog are indeed parasites. We checked out Carr's post and realized he's got the right argument -- big time, a must read -- re how bloggers ingest and recycle MSM droppings, but the wrong word. Carr appears to use parasite and scavenger interchangeably, and that's where he goes wrong. First a couple of definitions [via answers.com], and then on to a comparison -- with thanks to Glenn Reynolds, who answered the question even before there was a blogosphere way back when in his scholarly legal essay “Is democracy like sex?” Definitions first:

Parasite [Latin parasītus, a person who lives by amusing the rich, from Greek parasītos, person who eats at someone else's table, parasite : para-, beside; see para–1 + sītos, grain, food.]:

1. Biology. An organism that grows, feeds, and is sheltered on or in a different organism while contributing nothing to the survival of its host.

2. a. One who habitually takes advantage of the generosity of others without making any useful return. b. One who lives off and flatters the rich; a sycophant.

3. A professional dinner guest, especially in ancient Greece.

Parasites, who may have been charming dinner guests in antiquity, nevertheless deplete the living, while organisms that scavenge, recycling the energy of dead things, "extract useful materials from garbage or waste," which is really what we bloggers do and what Nicholas Carr of roughtype is talking about when he says "Blogging is, at its essence, a critical form, a means of recycling other writings to ensure that every molecule of sense, whether real or imagined, is distilled and consumed":

I've been reading Steven Johnson's The Ghost Map, about the great London cholera epidemic of 1854. The book opens with a richly scatalogical survey of the city's teeming underclass economy, which was built almost entirely on scavenging. The poor were parasites [See definitions above] who sustained themselves by collecting the leavings of other Londoners - rags, bones, bits of coal and wood, feces - and, with remarkable enterprise, transforming them into cash. There was even, Johnson tells us, a booming market in dog shit -- lovingly known as "pure" -- which tanners purchased to rub on their leathers to neutralize the lime they used to remove hair from hides.

"We're naturally inclined to consider these scavengers tragic figures, and to fulminate against a system that allowed so many thousands to eke out a living by foraging through human waste," writes Johnson. "But such social outrage should be accompanied by a measure of wonder and respect: . . . this itinerant underclass managed to conjure up an entire system for processing and sorting the waste generated by two million people . . . Far from being unproductive vagabonds . . . these people were actually performing an essential function for their community."

Taking Carr's argument one step further, we would add that bloggers are not only scavengers of dead and cast-off things but equally importantly we are parasite slayers, our activities analogous to the evolutionary function of sex itself in the Glenn Reynolds sense, as explained in his seminal essay twelve years back, "Is democracy like sex," blogged here:

I have chosen as an analogy or metaphor another widely criticized and misunderstood institution -- sex. In short, some discoveries resulting from the application of complexity theory to the question of evolutionary fitness among biological systems have important implications for our discussion of the fitness of the body politic. Both kinds of systems face a similar problem -- maintaining a balance between adaptability and stability on the one hand, while resisting parasitism on the other. In essence, democracy can be viewed as serving the same function in political systems that sex serves for biological systems -- enhancing resistance to parasites.

Relatedly, as we wrote awhile back in one of our all-time favorite posts, "Bloggers are 'cracking, popping, drilling and peeling their victims open'":

Leftists have become soft and flabby in their thinking over the last 20, 30 or more years because their fellow travelers in the mainstream media -- supposed to be keeping them honest -- have been giving them a free ride, even as thinkers of the right, not enjoying such reflexive support, have been honing our debating and intellectual survival skills. That leaves the left soft and lazy and the right battle ready.  Enter the bloggers, stage right. As paleontologist Dr. Vermeij might say, "It isn't going to be pretty." Googling the good doctor, we were thrilled to see his field studies of animal evolution had led him to very much the same place Thomas Sowell has come to in his studies of economics.

"From humans to hermit crabs to deep water plankton, all living things compete for locally limiting resources," wrote Dr. Vermeij:

This universal truth unites three bodies of thought -- economics, evolution and history -- that have developed largely in mutual isolation.  Here, Geerat Vermeij undertakes a groundbreaking and provocative exploration of the facts and theories of biology, economics and geology to show how processes common to all economic systems -- competition, cooperation, adaptation and feedback -- govern evolution as surely as they do the human economy, and how historical patterns in both human and nonhuman evolution follow from this principle.

As we commented back then:

The leftist utopian dream was doomed from the start because it denied the economic logic of nature and human nature. The long-repressed voices of opposition in a free society, now ringing loud and clear through talk radio, cable TV and -- of course -- the blogosphere, will force the left to rethink its arguments or go extinct.

Let us pray. And don't get us started on mycorrhizal associations.