To predict quakes, listen to the animals, China survivors say PhysOrg
Carter: 10 minutes to change the world Guardian. The most interesting bit was the response to a question at the end.
The Wars We Choose to Ignore David Carr, New York Times
US Official: Cluster Bomb Ban Could Hurt ‘Cooperation’ and ‘Humanitarian Work’ Common Dreams (hat tip Some Assembly Required)
Downturn takes gloss off weddings Associated Press (hat tip Michael Panzner)
The US imported too loose a monetary policy from the world, and now exports too loose a monetary policy to the world Brad Setser. The comments are good too.
Ben Stein Watch: May 25, 2008 Felix Salmon
Antidote du jour. Urban legend watch. I received a raft of photos of painted cats (if I were a cat, I’d be embarrassed to be stuck with some of these looks; the three below are among the least bad). The message:
The book these came from said some of the paint jobs cost $15,000 and had to be repeated every 3 months as the cat’s hair grows out. Must be nice to have $60,000 a year just to keep your cat painted!
Now I imagine the cats have to be under total anaesthesia (which is risky), but even so, the top price seems exaggerated by a factor of ten. And why not get a pre-painted cat, like a tabby or a calico, or of you want something a bit more special, a Bengal, Mau, or Abyssinian? Any data points appreciated.
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http://www.snopes.com/photos/arts/paintedcats.asp
“Burton Silver and Heather Busch, authors of the 1994 coffee table book Why Cats Paint: A Theory of Feline Aesthetics, managed to pull off the double feat of creating a sly and hilarious send-up of both art books and cat books. /…/ As Carroll predicted, a good many people did take Why Cats Paint at face value and failed to realize it was a spoof. The phenomenon was repeated with the 2002 release of Why Paint Cats: The Ethics of Feline Aesthetics — whereas the focus of the former book was cats as painters, the subject of the latter was cats as canvases, a topic that led some readers (who again mistakenly took the book literally instead of humorously) to be concerned about the propriety and potentially harmful effects of artists’ painting designs directly onto cats’ fur /…/ “
carr exemplifies the typical american media coverage of the iraq war. they slam the administration as criminal and the GIs as dupes and suckers, and then wonder why no one pays attention.
if it really was a criminal enterprise, bush would be impeached. what it’s really about is liberal guilt: “I look at the picture every day as I walk by and think of my 20-year-old twin girls, safe at college. The feeling of gratitude is always followed by guilt. My girls are out of harm’s way, but what about that man’s daughter?” liberals feel guilt about their wealth and how it keeps them and theirs from harms way, while the lifestyle they (and us) lead forces someone (the poor and lower middle class) to fight resource wars. their ideology won’t allow them to support bush, but their guilt forces them to say, but not do, something to show that they care about the troops.
To the previous commenter:
Your gratuitous slams without any proposed solutions are typical of self-important blog commenters. Your lack of reading comprehension really does make you stand out, though.
Nowhere does Carr say the GIs are dupes. He does ask (by repeating the question) what purpose they serve by dying, but that’s certainly a reasonable question.
Nor does Carr say that the administration’s prosecution of the war is criminal.
In fact, I wonder if you bothered to read the article (beyond your small quote) at all.
It’s my understanding the cats are not truly painted, we just have clever photoshop work here.
;)
I suspected that but thanks for the confirmation (a long time ago, I put up a picture of a Rex that looked tattooed and had an earring too. Very convincing. I said I hoped it was Photoshop).
Plus this being Manhattan, the center of conspicuous consumption, one would think one would have seen such kitty enhancement services advertised locally.