A Dream of a Thousand Cats

Juxtaposition is everything.




First, watch this little video. (Carmen made me watch it, much as I dislike animals).

Then, read this little comic book story. Or should I call it a graphic novel? Or, "Sequential Art" (apparently the newest academic term for comic books). It is Neil Gaiman's now classic tale "A Dream of a Thousand Cats" from The Sandman series. Peculiarly addictive, by the way.

Adds a little something to the appreciation of "she's" motivation, don't you think?

Favorite quote:

Little one, I would like to see anyone -- prophet, king or god -- persuade a thousand cats to do anything at the same time.

I think I'll go play with Mosby Cat now. Ta.

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Oh - it was about being WEIRD

OK. I have said often enough that the Tea Party is about nothing, in the Latin sense of Nihil. But after reading this amusing little article in the Washington Post I now realize it was about something: the state of social disintegration on the planet Trzzlinioch in the Alpha Centauri sector.

Wesbury [a Tea Party 'leader'] suggested that Republicans should show some “adult kind of behavior.”

This was a curious request coming from a group that included two men wearing tricorn hats and colonial costumes. Temple had a feather in his hat, carried a 5-foot musket and, without explanation, switched to a Scottish accent during the news conference. Next to him was a man dressed up as George Washington who read a 215-year-old passage.

read the article - it shows that the entire Republican congressional leadership has stepped out of the pentagram.

I've always suspected this

And now David Brooks draws our attention to a recent study:

Classic research has suggested that the more people doubt their own beliefs the more, paradoxically, they are inclined to proselytize in favor of them. David Gal and Derek Rucker published a study in Psychological Science in which they presented some research subjects with evidence that undermined their core convictions. The subjects who were forced to confront the counterevidence went on to more forcefully advocate their original beliefs, thus confirming the earlier findings.

This I already knew, or at least suspected, based on my experience with two close friends.

one was struggling to not believe he was gay, the other that his political beliefs made no sense by his own values.

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Schadenfreude for the day

I love that word, schadenfreude. Sounds foreign enough to give it a false air of erudition while describing one of the most common of human emotions: malicious joy at some one's bad fortune. Here are two good examples from Peggy Noonan in The Washington Post (she calls it karma) in a rather sweet column today.

Illinois first lady Patricia Blagojevich has been fired from her $100,000 job as a fundraiser for the homeless.

And former French President Jacques Chirac was taken to the hospital after being bitten by his pet Maltese poodle. The pup was being treated for depression, apparently unsuccessfully.

Mauled by a depressed poodle. How ignominious.

I shouldn't be smug. If schadenfreude is a sin I am so in trouble.

Les Misérables et le photographie

A fascinating photo found in today's Daily Dish by Andrew Sullivan. He calls it the "The First Human Ever Photographed" and points out "he is getting his shoes cleaned in Paris - sitting still for ten minutes while the Daguerreotype captured him."

Except that there are TWO humans in this photo. The middle class gentleman who counts as the 'first human' and the little boy shining his shoes who evidently doesn't. The year was 1838.

Eh bien, plus ça change ....

though a Paris street corner is still a good spot to kill ten minutes

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