Reader MakingBelieve sent a photo and some commentary. It’s just WRONG to combine cats and woo!
I was visiting Ottawa, ON when a car pulled in along side me with this placard on the side. The cat picture caught my eye but I was not impressed with what this woman was using it for.
I checked out her website and there’s a whole world of silliness on offer. I hate to see people fleeced for cash they might not be able to afford just because they lost or are losing a beloved pet.
Oh, what nonsense. Animals communicate just fine, thankyouverymuch. If you can’t tell when a cat is hungry, wants to play, needs to use the litterbox, just woke from a nightmare and needs some reassurance, and so on…well, it’s you who’s lacking in the communication skills department.
b&
I know the shadow that looms when I open a can of tuna. He may or may not actually be hungry though.
A long time ago the Wittenberg Door, a satire-of-christianity magazine, ran a contest. The goal was to go into a christian bookstore and, spending no more than two dollars, come out with the goofiest possible thing. I remember that the winning entry was a “critter cross,” a cross-shaped paper to hang on one’s front door. The text on the paper read something like “in case of rapture, no one will be left in this house. Please take care of my pets.”
A fool and his money…
Proof, if any were needed, of the inherent thoughtless sadism of the low-grade god-squaddy.
Exactly. Not only are they expected to kill their kids if their God tells them to to prove their love, they are expected to abandon their pets to die via starvation while they go to eternal happiness. I certainly couldn’t be happy in such a situation.
My earthquake / hurricane / whatever emergency knapsack has enough cans of cat food to last Baihu as long as the Coast Guard emergency rations for me they’re packed next to. If I can do that much planning for him, why can’t Jesus provide for luxury kennel accommodations for all the pets in Heaven? I mean, he’s had two millennia to prepare for the Rupture, no?
And if Heaven has a no-pets-allowed policy…who the hell would want to live in that kind of an overcrowded low-rent fucked up shithole in the first place?
b&
As always in such situations, you’ve proven the superior morality of those who are humanist over those with an eschatological viewpoint.
And I won’t go anywhere without my pet. I’ve heard stories of people being told to abandon their pets during Katrina with officials threatening to shoot a dog that was swimming after the boat. Screw that, I’m staying and if you try to shoot my dog, you’ll have to shoot me too!
Absolutely! If Baihu can’t be accommodated, neither can I.
b&
Although I wouldn’t put it your words (a bit crude), I have always said that a pet-free Heaven would be no Heaven for me. A very Catholic friend told me that everything would be so beautiful and joyful people won’t miss their dogs and cats. Sorry, don’t buy it.
So missing the point, the Christians…would they be happy in Heaven without their children? Only if Heaven is some sort of heroin trip. It’s not about my happiness; it’s about his. If Baihu wouldn’t be welcome in Heaven, neither would I.
…and they have the nerve to claim they’ve got ultimate and unquestionable moral standards….
b&
Well, *my* Heaven would have no kids (my (grand)kids are OK**, but everybody else’s kids are abominable), NO dogs crapping all over the place, and definitely no Health&Safety committees.
This means that my heaven is incompatible with most other peoples’ heaven.
cr
(** Of course, I don’t wanna see my grandkids in heaven either, I want them to grow up and have happy long lives before they cark it).
Does this mean that apocalyptic Christians should HOPE that there’s sinners, “left behind” that will take care of their pets? Hey, folks- they’re SINNERS! What makes you think they’ll care about a bunch of damned animals?
It’s interesting that I’ve never heard any description as to exactly WHAT happens with pets, of the sinners or the saintly, after Jesus returns and sets everything straight- do the ones that accept him go to Heaven, too?
Excellent point!
Hey pet-loving Christans, be afraid: After you go, the sinners will EAT your pets!
cr
Lol. Of course, laughing at such a joke displays my Dark Side, thus proving the Evil Within!
Sorry, but I thought the point of the Rapture was to make god happy by providing him with swarms of worshippers. Not to make you happy.
Or do we have more theistic misrepresentation?
I thought the Rupture is the harvest festival…?
Actually…that may well be the case even within Christian theology. They’ve clearly already gone mad, and are hoping to be the first ones the Great Old One chooses to eat upon his return f’taghn….
b&
This is a cottage industry:
http://www.aftertherapturepetcare.com
http://postrapturepetcare.com
But some are hoaxes (big surprise, eh?):
http://www.npr.org/2011/05/21/136475372/after-the-rapture-who-will-walk-your-dog
I love this bit from the FAQs on the first link: “When all the Christians on the planet disappear, there will certainly be massive confusion. However, the majority of people will still be on earth …”
So some are hoaxes? There’s a surprise, as you say.
“I hate to see people fleeced for cash they might not be able to afford just because they lost or are losing a beloved pet.”
I have difficulty summoning much sympathy for those who would be taken in by this fraud.
People with shoe-size (or room temperature) IQs. That’s British shoe sizes, or centigrade temperatures I’m not sure how the American shoe size system goes, but the continental one that would give figures in the 30s and 40s is too high.
A US man’s shoe is typically between 9 and 14 inches. Hopefully no IQs that low.
US shoe sizes are nominally bases on the heel-to-toe measurement? I’d always suspected that there was some such relationship, but never followed up on it, just treating shoe sizes as being an arbitrary phrase, which always needed confirmation by trying the shoes in question. In any case, nobody has two feet the same size.
With about 1/3 size difference between left and right foot, I normally find the Euro size 43 to be a better match than either 8_1/2 or 9 (UK), so I use the Euro sizing.
Nominally, yes, but brands vary quite a bit. I wear anything from 9.5 to 11. Sort of like trouser sizes are nominally based on the circumference of your waist, but here in the US at least, we have “vanity sizing”. A nominal 34-inch waisted pair of trousers will actually measure 36 inches or so.
I don’t know where the Euro sizes come from; charts that include them don’t have a UOM.
Branding, vanity sizing, the whole chain of colour inaccuracies from lighting through cameras, eyes (any tetrachromats in the readership? There’s a challenge.) monitors and printers. Cloths shopping isn’t something that logically works “online”. Well, not unless someone wants to actually become an expert on the sciences of clothing metrology. (Personally, I consider 30 seconds is far too long to spend on clothes shopping in any normal year. Though I did spend nearly half an hour on ordering my MTM kilt.)
It appears that tetrachromaticity tests need to be done in real life, not online. I’ll file that one under “things to do in Newcastle (Tyneside, not Co.Down. Or NSW, or the original wales, or the several Canadian ones or the swarm of American ones (do any of them have an old castle?))
“Cloths shopping isn’t something that logically works “online”. Well, not unless someone wants to actually become an expert on the sciences of clothing metrology.”
Which I’ve had to do. I’ve been using an online custom clothing manufacturer to make shirts for me, so I’ve had to become familiar with shoulder width measurements, chest measurements, biceps measurements, neck width, etc. I’m very frustrated when off-the-rack retailers don’t provide me with that information. I can often get it by emailing them for it, but sometimes it’s just a gamble. I buy most of my clothes online.
I had to go through that when I was getting my drysuit made. But I seriously considered stopping off at the workshop to get measured up while passing them. When you’re spending the thick end of 800 quid, and not in a huge hurry, getting the measurements done by a person who has done it 30 times before (today) is probably worth the effort.
“I had to go through that when I was getting my drysuit made. ”
Scuba diver? I decided that cold water diving didn’t offer me much. Outside of coral reefs, there isn’t that much to see. Caribbean all the way, baby.
When coming up with measurements, I started by measuring stuff that fit, or almost fit, and then made it slightly bigger or smaller as necessary.
Warm water diving is entertaining. But fr doing anything locally outside highest summer, or below about 15m, a drysuit approaches essential. I’ve done the “break the ice, tie the lifeline to the car bumper, and dive in” thing before. Followed by the “do decompression with almost uncontrollable shivers” followed by throwing up profusely once I’d broken through the re-formed ice on the entry hole.
I’ve opted for the drysuit. Besides, I have to wear them every time I go to work. I’ve just got more used to them.
Never mind the money…you die a nasty death if the suit’s not right, no? I’d want a professional getting it right….
b&
Dealing with a flooded drysuit is a routine part of dive training. I’ve known people who it has happened to – ripped on a rock flake a couple of hours from surface.
You use your buoyancy compensator for buoyancy compensation, and your drysuit for keeping you dry. If you get a free-flow in your inflator (either one), you just unplug it. Re-plug it if you need more air in your suit (or BC). but by that point you may well have aborted the dive already.
Somehow, hiking through the desert in 113°F / 45°C weather sounds much more attractive and less complicated in comparison….
b&
“I have to wear them every time I go to work.”
What work do you do that requires a dry suit?
He inspects gravel.
b&
Flying over the North Sea (or the Black Sea, or any sea with a surface temperature below 18degC). Unless, of course, it’s for certain Oriental oil companies who don’t believe in providing them unless there is actual icing.
(Strictly, they’re not diving dry suits – no inflation or dump valves – but they’re a pretty close approximation. Anyone handy at repairing their own equipment would be able to make the conversion, given about £70-worth of valves. But you wouldn’t actually save much cash over getting an off-the-shelf suit from a diving manufacturer.)
“He inspects gravel. ”
I knew someone would say that.
That would be because displays only have three primary colors. I think there’re some TVs with a fourth primary, but I’m sure they don’t offer direct access to it…they would instead take the usual red, green, and blue inputs but pretend that the RGB colors are much more saturated than they really are and do various kinds of math to…well, it gets complicated. If you care, this is a good introduction:
http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/pointers_gamut.htm
(Incidentally, I’d take the irregular shape of the Pointer’s Gamut with a really big rock of salt. It comes from sampling of real-world objects, if I remember right, and not a simulation of reflected spectra.)
Cheers,
b&
I learned the maths from the “PNG book” for a project years ago – and have probably forgotten it now, not having exercised it since the 1990s. As I recall, it was matrix multiplication upon matrix multiplication upon matrix multiplication – one for each change of device in the chain. but at least PNG was designed with the possibility of additional channels (4th-colour, or transparency, or whatever else you wanted to use it for) and you could go up to 32-bit colour words if desired. I think you might even be able to go up to 48-biut these days.
There’s an astronomy format – FITS – that can handle as many channels of image data as you want, IIRC. so you can combine gamma-ray, X-ray, visible, radio, CMB … into one image, if you feel the need.
No need to re-invent those particular wheels.
Actually, it’s more a matter of the physics of the display rather than file format that would make it impossible to test for tetrachromacy on a typical device. Multiple channels / layers / etc. are the staple of photo editing, though everything assumes (to one degree or another) the ICC 1931 2° Standard Observer or one of the variations on that theme. Roy Berns at the Rochester Institute of Technology and his colleagues and students have done some fantastic and groundbreaking work on multispectral imaging, including techniques using standard digital cameras and standard color gelatin filters.
But…nearly all displays only use single red, green, and blue filters / lights / whatever. So they only produce colors that are combinations of those three spectra. To be able to test to see if you’re a tetrachromat, you’d need at least one more primary color. You’d then come up with some mixture of the four colors that looks the same as a mixture of three colors to trichromats.
…for example, imagine you’ve got a yellow laser. It’s a single wavelength. Look at it through a spectrograph and it’s just a single line / dot; plot it with a spectroscope and it’s a single peak. Now, grab a red laser and a green laser. Same deal, save their single wavelengths are at different parts of the spectrum. Shine the red and green at the same spot and vary the proportional intensities of the two and you’ll see a color somewhere on the spectrum between the two, somewhere between green – yellow – orange – red, depending on how much of each red and green laser you have. There will be some proportion of red and green that very closely, if not perfectly, matches the color of the yellow laser. Visually, you won’t be able to distinguish between the two. Look at the results through a spectroscope and the difference will be obvious; one is a single line in the yellow but the other is a pair of lines in the red and green.
Depending on the actual tetrachromat in question, the two yellows might look different to her, even though they look the same to you.
So, to test for tetrachromacy, you’d need something that induces a metameric match in trichromats but not in tetrachromats…and that means at least four primary emissive colors to mix.
Cheers,
b&
I was thinking about that very point as I pondered the exact colour designations of the rocks yesterday. you see, the last time this area was drilled, the microscope illuminator was an incandescent lamp (about 5000 degC colour temperature – assuming that the rig power was actually running within 5% of 230V) … but this time there’s a swanky new ultra efficient LED illuminator. Hmmm, going to have to think about that one. Maybe do some “blind” trials – except that it’d be a bit difficult to construct a blind trial. Or am I going to need to start carrying an ExD torch again?
Oh, man, are you opening a deep can of worms.
The short version…is that it’s awfully hard to beat an incandescent light source for the ability to differentiate between colors, with Sunlight being the only notable exception. There are artificial sources, including certain very expensive fluorescents, that are quite good. However, unless care has been taken to specifically ensure a broad spectrum without excessive spikiness, color perception will definitely suffer.
There’s a crude measure that can be of some help, the “color rendering index,” or CRI. It’s a calculation made from the spectral power distribution (SPD) of the illuminant that indicates how distinguishable a certain set of half a dozen reflective samples (of defined spectral reflectivity, but derived from actual materials) is under the illuminant. Dayling by definition has a CRI of 100. An incandescent source will usually score 99 or 98. Some very expensive fluorescent tubes score in the mid 90s. The most expensive stuff you can get at the local home improvement store might score in the low 90s. The cheap stuff might be so bad that the CRI measurement is invalid.
CRI itself can be misleading; it would be possible to design a spectrum that would perform well on the CRI calculation but that would be pretty bad for other colors. In practice, CRI tends to be a not-bad first approximation…and anything with a low CRI doesn’t deserve further consideration.
This isn’t even the tip of the iceberg. Arbitrary precision is possible, and objective measurement can be done in all sorts of ways, including on the cheap. But the Mark I Eyeball, especially coupled with illuminants of an unspecified SPD, is likely to not be the preferred instrument….
b&
Intelligence probably has very little to do with it. One can be very good at manipulating nonsense and solving nonproblems in clever and creative ways. Intelligent people who believe in weird things simply come up with better rationalizations.
The underlying problem I think has a lot to do with an excess of sentimentality coupled with the conviction that feelings so strong must be powerful for a reason. If someone has been living in a culture or operating under a mindset in which skepticism is a sign of cruelty or pessimism, normal rational brakes against excess look like too little love.
Oh, there’s also the “deepity” problem, where the idea of “connecting intuitively with your pet” can start out seeming reasonable and descend by degrees into nonsense. But if you start rejecting it, doesn’t that mean you’re not interested in understanding your animal anymore? I think there are some personality types which have trouble with gray areas, thinking instead in terms of all or nothing.
Yeah, some of my relatives would totally fall for this bs. Because said relatives are so annoying, if they paid for it, they deserve to be fleeced.
I live in Ottawa. That’s embarrassing. On another Ottawa woo note my son attends an activity in the basement of a church hall. I saw an advertisement for a neighborhood prayer walk. It seemed like they think if they pray while walking they can infuse a larger area with the goodness of their prayers.
*sigh* People will spend money on the weirdest things only because they hope to help their pet.
Oh, go on! Do you have any idea how much fun it would be to see you do some cat woo for fun here?
There should be a whole day a week dedicated to cat woo. Part Carnac, part Colbert, part Coyne- a trinity 🙂
How do cats pray? Who is the cat Jesus? Where does ninja cat stand on the cat bible?
I’d like to see how Garfield would respond to that!
The first impression of the photo is that it is the cat in the picture who is running the business and performing the woo.
Drives me crazy that people believe that nonsense, unless of course it’s the Cat running those sessions ,then I have no problem with it.lol
errgh!