A Meme Too Far

The Death Meme
By way of
Bold the ones you’ve read.
Italicize the ones you’ve started and never finished.
Underline the ones you’ve seen a movie, tv, or play version of.
Add 3 books not on the list that you’ve read at the end.
Post to your livejournal.

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. 1984, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

Politics, Cat, Politics

Politics
Thanks to for pointing out this exceptional column and writer:

One thing that happens as you get older, sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night with some small issue or happenstance nagging at you — something mysterious or perplexing that somebody said — and you can’t resolve it, and you can’t go back to sleep, and you finally just get up, between 3:30 and 5 a.m. usually, and put some coffee on, and find something to read until the morning paper comes.
From Night Thoughts, by Bob Lancaster, in the Arkansas Times.

Cat
Zoot is an odd little cat. She’s a black & white female; a domestic medium hair. She’s just over a year old, and small: under seven pounds. About a third of the calories she takes in goes to maintaining a luxurious feather boa of a tail.
Unlike Baby—the 12-year-old tortoiseshell female that and I rescued as a kitten from the parking lot of a Burgerville restaurant in West Linn, Oregon—Zoot is not an especially affectionate cat. She tolerates petting, but doesn’t solicit it; I can make her purr, sometimes, by cupping her chin in one hand and stroking her head with one finger, but she rarely jumps up in my lap.
On the other hand, if I’ve been out all day and feed the cats as soon as I come in, I have to stay in the kitchen until Zoot finishes eating, or she’ll abandon her bowl and follow me around the apartment, leaving Baby to eat two dinners. (I have yet to determine non-lethal conditions under which Baby will abandon food: her food, Zoot’s food, any food.)
Baby, though an old lady cat, will move out of my way with considerable alacrity if I walk across one of her sitting areas (which are generally away from the paths from room to room); Zoot flops herself directly across doorways, and is supremely confident that I will step over her.
The favorite toy of both cats is a wadded-up subscription card from a magazine: Zoot will chase them around the apartment until they hide under a piece of furniture; Baby will carry them from place to place in her mouth, vocalizing the whole time.
I have to say that I’m endlessly amused by the differences in their little cat personalities (or behavioral repertoires if you must); no two cats I’ve had have ever been the same.

Politics
Bruce Springsteen has an excellent Op-Ed piece in today’s New York Times:

…for the last 25 years I have always stayed one step away from partisan politics. Instead, I have been partisan about a set of ideals: economic justice, civil rights, a humane foreign policy, freedom and a decent life for all of our citizens. This year, however, for many of us the stakes have risen too high to sit this election out.
Through my work, I’ve always tried to ask hard questions. Why is it that the wealthiest nation in the world finds it so hard to keep its promise and faith with its weakest citizens? Why do we continue to find it so difficult to see beyond the veil of race? How do we conduct ourselves during difficult times without killing the things we hold dear? Why does the fulfillment of our promise as a people always seem to be just within grasp yet forever out of reach?
From Chords for Change.

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid (At Least Until November)

This morning the New York Times is reporting:

Much of the information that led the authorities to raise the terror alert at several large financial institutions in the New York City and Washington areas was three or four years old, intelligence and law enforcement officials said on Monday. They reported that they had not yet found concrete evidence that a terrorist plot or preparatory surveillance operations were still under way.

Arrgh! If Tom Ridge called me personally to say that the sun would rise tomorrow, I’d be inclined to stock up on flashlights and camp lanterns. My outrage meter has been pinned in the red for months by the administration’s willingness to politicize even the most basic functions of government.

The New Dark Ages, Part II

To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used.
Richard Dawkins, on the September 11 attacks, in Positive Atheism

In The New Dark Ages I bemoaned the decline of science literacy in the United States, and laid the blame, at least partially, at the feet of religion. I think it is a valid indictment. But I think we also have to consider the possibility that religion is adaptive. By we I mean secular-humanists and atheists who believe in a mechanical universe; by adaptive I mean conferring a reproductive advantage to believers.

This Explains A Lot