Stray cat: A love story

September 20, 2012 • 3:42 am

Reader Rik Gern sent me the following story and photo. Readers might be able to help here (see bottom):

*****

I’ve never been terribly fond of cats, not because I’m a cold and heartless person, but  more likely due to a few traumatic experiences with them.

As a small child I explored a dog house that I thought was empty, but turned out to be occupied by a mother cat nursing her kittens. Naturally, she did what she could to defend her offspring from the “invader”-me-and I was left shredded, bloody and screaming, and with nightmares to last thru my childhood.

It also didn’t help that my grandmother’s Siamese cats once spontaneously decided to use my exposed calves as scratching posts and chased me around her house in pursuit of their demented sense of recreation! I was terrified of cats until my twenties, when I met a good friend whose love of cats and gentle interaction with them convinced me that they weren’t evil, and I stopped fearing them, even if I didn’t particularly like them.

Flash forward a quarter century to about five years ago when I moved into my current residence. A sickly, mangy cat would occasionally show up in the yard looking like something from Steven King’s “Pet Cemetary”. I mean, this animal was nasty! She had open sores and cuts all over, a filmy pus over one eye, huge chunks of fur missing, and what fur there was was so threadbare you could see her bony frame.

She looked so sickly that every time I saw her I literally thought she was fixin’ to crawl off and die somewhere. Strange thing is, though, that she didn’t crawl off and die; she kept coming back. Finally, last summer, when the region was in a terrible drought and a friend’s cat had died from exposure, the sight of such a sickly, suffering animal got to me and I broke down and bought some cat food and started leaving food and water out for the poor thing.

At first she’d wait practically forever ’till the coast was clear to come and furtively sip some water and eat the dry food. I’d watch her with disgusted fascination, but any attempt at getting anywhere close would be met with a frenzied display of hisses, teeth and claws, so I kept my distance.

The Cat at Issue

Meanwhile, I started paying more attention to the pictures your readers were sending in of their cats, and noticed that they really are interesting looking animals. I also noticed how happy and well treated they looked, then I’d look at the scraggly kitty in my yard and wonder why life had dealt her such a lousy hand, so I started adding treats to the dry food–bits of chicken, fish, and egg yolk.

After a while, her fur started filling out, and one day, to my absolute astonishment, the mangy little animal approached me and rubbed against my leg as I was filling her bowl. I was both repulsed and intrigued, and I’m not really sure why, but I reached down and stroked her back. I’m tellin’ you, it was gross—all bony, scabby and scarred, but it was also the beginning of a nice little friendship!

It’s been over a year since I started feeding the kitty, and now her fur has pretty much filled out, the sores are gone, and she no longer staggers around looking like hamburger helper. She’s actually become very affectionate! I’ll get up in the morning to find her sleeping on the fence (one of her favorite spots) and we’ll start out the day with some petting and conversation before she gets her breakfast.

For a while I presumptuously thought the relationship was a one-way street, and that I was engaging in some kind of charity, but I realized I’d gotten hooked on my new buddy when she took off for a kitty walkabout for a few days and I found myself searching her usual haunts and moping about like a jilted lover! Anyway, she’s no prize winner, that’s for sure, but she’s turned out to be a sweet, affectionate little animal who has brightened my life in a way that I never would have expected.

I’d tell you her name, but I don’t know if she has one. Here’s her picture though; hope you like it.

*****

It’s a lovely tale, and I’ve urged Rik to get her to the vet, but he says she’s very shy and would probably run if he tried to grab her.  There must be a way to get medical care to this animal, even if she remains partly wild. Maybe readers can weigh in with some suggestions?

Sam does it again

September 19, 2012 • 5:11 pm

A lot of people malign Sam Harris, usually over torture and Iran, but also about his perceived “Islamophobia” (I swear, that word is misused as often as is “misogyny”).  Yet he’s right on the money in asserting that Islam really is different from—and more malign—than other faiths. It almost amuses me to see the gyrations of atheists and liberals who pretend that this isn’t true.

Over on his website Sam has a beautifully written piece, “On the freedom to offend an imaginary god,” that is aimed perfectly at those who claim that all religions are the same: equally benign or equally malevolent.  A quote, or rather sizable chunk of Sam’s piece:

Consider Mormonism: Many of my fellow liberals would consider it morally indecent to count Romney’s faith against him. In their view, Mormonism must be just like every other religion. The truth, however, is that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has more than its fair share of quirks. For instance, its doctrine was explicitly racist until 1978, at which point God apparently changed his mind about black people (a few years after Archie Bunker did) and recommended that they be granted the full range of sacraments and religious responsibilities. By this time, Romney had been an adult and an exceptionally energetic member of his church for more than a decade.

Unlike the founders of most religions, about whom very little is known, Mormonism is the product of the plagiarisms and confabulations of an obvious con man, Joseph Smith, whose adventures among the credulous were consummated (in every sense) in the full, unsentimental glare of history. Given how much we know about Smith, it is harder to be a Mormon than it is to be a Christian. A firmer embrace of the preposterous is required—and the fact that Romney can manage it says something about him, just as it would if he were a Scientologist proposing to park his E-meter in the Oval Office. The spectrum between rational belief and self-serving delusion has some obvious increments: It is one thing to believe that Jesus existed and was probably a remarkable human being. It is another to accept, as most Christians do, that he was physically resurrected and will return to earth to judge the living and the dead. It is yet another leap of faith too far to imagine, as all good Mormons must, that he will work his cosmic magic from the hallowed ground of Jackson County, Missouri.

That final, provincial detail matters. It makes Mormonism objectively less plausible than run-of-the-mill Christianity—as does the related claim that Jesus visited the “Nephites” in America at some point after his resurrection. The moment one adds seer stones, sacred underpants, the planet Kolob, and a secret handshake required to win admittance into the highest heaven, Mormonism stands revealed for what it is: the religious equivalent of rhythmic gymnastics.

The point, however, is that I can say all these things about Mormonism, and disparage Joseph Smith to my heart’s content, without fearing that I will be murdered for it. Secular liberals ignore this distinction at every opportunity and to everyone’s peril. Take a moment to reflect upon the existence of the musical The Book of Mormon. Now imagine the security precautions that would be required to stage a similar production about Islam. The project is unimaginable—not only in Beirut, Baghdad, or Jerusalem, but in New York City.

The freedom to think out loud on certain topics, without fear of being hounded into hiding or killed, has already been lost. And the only forces on earth that can recover it are strong, secular governments that will face down charges of blasphemy with scorn. No apologies necessary. Muslims must learn that if they make belligerent and fanatical claims upon the tolerance of free societies, they will meet the limits of that tolerance. And Governor Romney, though he is wrong about almost everything under the sun (including, very likely, the sun), is surely right to believe that it is time our government delivered this message without blinking.

I wish I could write like that. I love the dry humor of the seer stones and underpants, and the bracing truth of  “Take a moment to reflect upon the existence of the musical The Book of Mormon. Now imagine the security precautions that would be required to stage a similar production about Islam. The project is unimaginable—not only in Beirut, Baghdad, or Jerusalem, but in New York City.”

If you can imagine that, then your rational faculties need checking.  While I can’t match Sam’s prose, I take pleasure in sharing his views, and in seeing them so well expressed.

OMG: Jesus was married!

September 19, 2012 • 1:46 pm

Well, the debate continues over whether a historical Jesus really existed, but in the meantime a fourth-century fragment of papyrus manuscript, written in Coptic (below), has appeared suggesting that God Incarnate might have had a wife.  I saw this on the evening news, but there’s a fuller description at Live Science and Yahoo News. Live Science reported yesterday:

A Harvard historian has identified a faded, fourth-century scrap of papyrus she calls “The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife.” One line of the torn fragment of text purportedly reads: “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife …'” The following line states, “she will be able to be my disciple.”

The finding was announced to the public today (Sept. 18) by Karen King, a historian of early Christianity, author of several books about new Gospel discoveries and the Hollis professor of divinity at Harvard Divinity School. King first examined the privately owned fragment in 2011, and has since been studying it with the help of a small group of scholars.

According to the New York Times, King and her collaborators have concluded that the business card-size fragment is not a forgery, and she is presenting the discovery today at a meeting of International Congress of Coptic Studies in Rome.

. . .King has cautioned that the new discovery should not be taken as proof that Jesus was actually married. The text appears to have been written centuries after he lived, and all other early Christian literature is silent on the question of his marital status. [JAC: Yeah, assuming he existed!]

But the scrap of papyrus — the first known statement from antiquity that refers to Jesus speaking of a wife — provides evidence that there was an active discussion among early Christians about whether Jesus was celibate or married, and which path his followers should choose, King told the Times.

. . . The text beyond “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife …'” is cut off.

Pity!  Perhaps the next words would have been “. . . is unable to bear children because, being haploid, I am unable to produce sperm.”

Or fill in the blank yourself!

Reuters/REUTERS – A previously unknown scrap of ancient papyrus written in ancient Egyptian Coptic is pictured in this undated handout photo obtained by Reuters September 18, 2012. The papyrus has four words written in Coptic that provide the first unequivocal evidence that within 150 years of his death, some followers of Jesus, believed him to have been married. REUTERS/Karen L. King/Harvard University

What you missed (but it’s not too late!)

September 19, 2012 • 11:24 am

During the secularist/humanist/atheist fundraising drive for Doctors Without Borders (DWB), I offered an autographed copy of WEIT—with a gratis hand-drawn cat produced to your specification—to any reader who donated $100 to the organization and could provide evidence of donation.

Seven readers took me up on it, and that—along with my own contribution and the more than $500 that the two autographed eBay books garnered—brought the donations of our readers to over $1300. I’m quite proud of that.  But really, it’s only a drop in the bucket for that organization, so I think that henceforth I’ll adopt Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) as the Official Charity of WEIT™.  It’s completely secular and does a hell of a lot of good.

I’ve gotten a lot of nice thank yous for the autographed books, but am putting this one up because it’s too cute to resist.

The backstory is this: one reader, Tim, sent this request:

I have enjoyed your “blog” for some time and would like to take you up on your generous offer of an autographed copy of WEIT in exchange for a donation to DWB. I actually have a hard copy, which I very much enjoyed, but my kids would love to have a feline artwork of yours if possible! My kids love animals and I frequently share the pictures and videos of animals that you post with them. I will also add that we have 5 cats (Buddy, Dozer, Freddy, Boo Boo and Baxley) that are very spoiled and well-loved. If you would be so kind as to address the autograph to Anya and Leif it would be greatly appreciated!

I asked if he wanted his cat drawn in any particular way.  He responded and sent a photo, too:

Anya says she likes when Dozer stands on his back legs and reaches up her leg to get some fusses, could you do something like that?

I added a picture of 4 of our 5 cats. From left to right, Freddy, Boo Boo, Dozer and Buddy.

I asked Tim what “fusses” were. He responded:

Fusses are scratching and petting about the head and ears. I picked it up from my English brother-in-law.

So I autographed the book, added a drawing of Dozer getting fusses, and later received this lovely photo and reply.

Jerry, we received the book and the kids loved it! Your rendering of Dozer is great!

Thanks again for your thoughtful effort, Tim

Leif (holding Dozer) and Anya with the book. I love this photo!

Here’s an enlargement from the photo, showing Dozer getting his “fusses.” YOU TOO can have something like this (see below):

Dozer looked very large here, so I inquired about his poundage and the source of his name.  The response:

Dozer is pretty big: 17 lbs, mostly in the head. He has surprisingly short legs. When we got him as a rescue cat he was 2 years old and had not been neutered so he had a very thick tom cat head and neck, thus he was named after a bulldozer. He has shrunk a bit since being fixed. The perspective of the picture makes him look a bit bigger.

Seventeen pounds! That’s a lot of tabby.

Anyway, I’ve decided to extend my offer for one week, until next Wednesday (after that I’ll be heading to Europe).  Any reader who donates $100 or more to Doctors Without Borders—and sends me a receipt or proof of donation—will receive a similar copy of WEIT, autographed to your specifications and with a hand-drawn cat (I’ve drawn some of the readers’ own cats).  No dogs, please! My supply of books is getting low, so move fast. Email me your request and proof of donation.

You can donate to DWB directly here.

230-million-year-old arthropods in amber

September 19, 2012 • 8:38 am

I won’t discuss this new observation in detail, since the detail is mostly of interest to specialists, but it’s still a cool observation. A new paper in Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA by Alexander Schmidt et al. (reference at bottom) describes specimens of two groups of arthropods—flies and mites—from Italian amber (fossilized resin) that is 230 million years old.

That pushes the amber-preserved individuals of these groups back a full 100 million years, and makes these the earliest fossils of the mite superfamily Eriophyoidea, a highly specialized group of plant parasites. Most eriophyoid species feed on angiosperms (flowering plants), producing galls, while about 5% of the species feed on gymnosperms (conifers, cycads, etc.); the latter mites are considered to be ancestral because the most primitive group of these mites still live on gymnosperms, and gymnosperms precede angiosperms in the fossil record (the latter originated from gymnosperm-like ancestors only about 130 myr ago).

Here are some galls of Eriophyes tiliae on lime (see more galls here); weird, eh?

And here’s the beast who makes them; note how bizarre and specialized it is:

The amber came from gymnosperms in a family of extinct conifers (Cheirolepidaceae); here’s one of their fossils (all captions in photos and drawings are from the original paper):

Cheirolepidiaceous shoots associated with amber. Museo delle Regole, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, MRCA 7170.

The authors examined 70,000 (!) ancient amber droplets for arthopod inclusions, and found only three. I’ll show them all.  The first is a midge, which is a fly (Diptera); it is disarticulated and small (1.5-2 mm).  The specimen, though not whole, is very detailed.

(G and H) Disarticulated nematoceran fly, showing details of antenna and apical tarsomere. Museum of Geology and Paleontology, University of Padova, Italy, MGP 31345. Scale bars: B, 2 cm; C–F, 1 mm; G and H, 200 μm.

And here are the two mite specimens, preserved whole. Note that the scale bar is 10 microns, or 0.01 mm. These things are small!

Eriophyoidmite in the Italian Triassic amber: Triasacarus fedelei gen. et sp. nov., Holotype, MGP 31343. (A and C) Habitus in ventral view [reconstruction and photomicrograph, respectively; photo is a stacked image using differential interference contrast (DIC) illumination]. (B) Dorsal structures of anterior region, as viewed ventrally. (D) Gnathosoma, arrow pointing to infracapitular ledge [bright field (BF) illumination; f.p (focal plane) 2,347]. (E) Detail of F; arrows pointing to empodial featherclaws (BF, f.p. 2,324). (F) First and second leg pairs, with tip of proboscis in focus (arrow) and empodial featherclaw of first left leg indicated with arrow (BF, f.p. 2,324). (G) First and second leg pairs, with some solenidia denoted, tibial one by phi, tarsal ones by omega (DIC, f.p. 2,160). Scale bars: 10 μm.

Eriophyoid mite in the Italian Triassic amber: Ampezzoa triassica gen. et sp. nov., Holotype, MGP 31344. (A and B) Habitus, dorsal view. (A) Digitally stacked photomicrographic composite. (B) Rendering of complete specimen, as preserved. (C) Anterior portion of body, including gnathosoma. White arrows indicate infracapitular guides; black arrow points to second left leg (f.p. 2,904). (D) Portion of prodorsal and coxisternal region; arrows point to shadowy images of right legs I and II below prodorsal shield (f.p. 2,692). (E) Posterior apex of body; arrows point to caudal setae h2 (f.p. 2,932). All photos in DIC illumination. Scale bars: 10 μm.

What’s the significance? Well, it supports the phylogenetic (“family tree”) evidence that eriophyoid mites did indeed evolve feeding on gymnosperms, for these samples date 100 million years before angiosperms even existed. So it’s a nice confirmation of what we suspected from other data.  It also supports the age of the mite group, since there was some doubt about when it originated.  Other findings are of interest mainly to arthropod systematists, but the quality of these ancient specimens is so nice that I thought I’d present them.

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Schmidt, A. R, S. Jancke, E. E. Lindquist, E. Ragazzi, G. Roghi, P. C. Nascimbene, K. Schmidt, T. Wappler, and D. A. Grimaldi. 2012. Arthropods in amber from the Triassic Period. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 109: 14796-14801.

Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ The Onion ‘n’ Kenan Malik

September 19, 2012 • 4:23 am

Last week The Onion published a satirical cartoon that was critical of Islam “No one murdered because of this image.”  It’s NSFW, so click the link to see it. It shows major figures of four religions (Moses, Jesus, Ganesha, and the Buddha) engaged in rather salacious activities. There was no Mohamed, of course—that would have led to murder.

Today the Jesus and Mo artist, referring to The Onion cartoon, gets in his own licks against The Religion of Peace:

At least Mo has the sense to use a Mac.

The J&M artist also recommends a nice essay from Pandaemonium on the offendability of Muslims, “Here we go again,” by Kenan Malik. The piece reprints two earlier but related Malik essays on Rushdie’s fatwa and the Danish cartoon affair.

Malik sees a “political” cause for the Middle Eastern riots, but one based not on Western oppression but internecine strife among Muslims. And I think Malik unduly neglects religion, which is, after all, being used as a lever to incite the masses:

What is clear, however, is that the violence is being driven less by religious fury than by political calculation. In Libya, Egypt and elsewhere, the crisis is being fostered by hardline Islamists in an attempt to seize the political initiative in a period of transition and turmoil. The film is almost incidental to this process. The real struggle is not between Muslims and non-Muslims, but between different shades of Islamists, between hardline factions and more mainstream ones. The insurrections that transformed much the Arab world over the past year have created a new terrain for the battle between Muslim factions for political supremacy.

Malik also said something interesting about Rusdie’s fatwa in his reprinted essay:

The fatwa helped transform the very geography of Islam. Under traditional Islamic law, no fatwa could be valid outside those areas in which sharia law applied. Muslims may have emigrated to Britain or converted in India, but a fatwa could have no validity there because these states were not under Islamic authority. With his four-paragraph pronouncement, the Ayatollah had transcended the traditional frontiers of Islam and placed the whole world under his jurisdiction. At the same time he helped relocate the confrontation between the Islam and the West, which until then had been played out largely to the Middle East and South Asia, into the heart of Western Europe.  For the West, Islam was now a domestic issue.

h/t: Michael

Guest post: a teser on Mars

September 19, 2012 • 3:42 am

Alert reader Sigmund spotted a puzzling new finding by an older Mars rover, and I asked him to report it to the readers. His guest post follows:

__________

Opportunity discovers puzzling concentration of spheres on Martian surface.

by Sigmund

While recent focus on Mars-related robotics has focused on the Curiosity rover, it is easy to forget that one of the previous generations of rovers still trundles across the Martian plains. Even now, eight and half years after its landing, the ‘Opportunity’ rover is still producing the scientific goods. In that time is has traveled over 34 kilometers, exploring various ancient impact craters, finding several meteorites along its path and making significant scientific discoveries such as the presence of the mineral gypsum. These findings strengthen the theory that Mars, in its distant past, was a much warmer and wetter place.

Just this week NASA reports a new and exciting discovery made by Opportunity. The rover, now located at the rim of the 22 kilometer diameter Endeavour crater, has photographed a puzzling geological phenomenon. The picture below is a composite of 4 photographs taken by Opportunity’s microscopic imager and shows a dense collection of spheres, each approximately 3 millimeters in diameter.

According to NASA:

“This is one of the most extraordinary pictures from the whole mission,” said Opportunity’s principal investigator, Steve Squyres of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. “Kirkwood is chock full of a dense accumulation of these small spherical objects. Of course, we immediately thought of the blueberries, but this is something different. We never have seen such a dense accumulation of spherules in a rock outcrop on Mars.”

The term ‘blueberries’ refers to an earlier finding by Opportunity, the discovery, close to its landing site, of spherical nodules rich in the iron bearing mineral hematite. Unlike the solid ‘blueberry’ nodules, those found at the current site, named Kirkwood, are less uniform.

“They seem to be crunchy on the outside, and softer in the middle,” Squyres said. “They are different in concentration. They are different in structure. They are different in composition. They are different in distribution. So, we have a wonderful geological puzzle in front of us. We have multiple working hypotheses, and we have no favorite hypothesis at this time. It’s going to take a while to work this out, so the thing to do now is keep an open mind and let the rocks do the talking.”

Crunchy on the outside? Softer in the middle?

Are NASA hinting that we may have the first discovery of Martian candy?

Most curiously, the current phenomenon appears strikingly similar to a bowl of Maltesers*.

But wait…according to Wikipedia:

“Maltesers are a confectionery product manufactured by Mars, Incorporated.”

Aha!

_______

JAC note: Maltesers are sold in the UK and Canada, but aren’t found in the U.S. Here we have a variety of similar confections (all of which I love), collectively known as “malted milk balls.” One example is the Hershey product Whoppers.

Bounty raised on Rushdie

September 18, 2012 • 2:20 pm

Well, the fall is both Republican and Islam Crazy Season. As if the riots and murders in the Middle East weren’t enough, now the lousy movie “Innocence of Muslims” has led to an increase in the bounty on Salman Rushdie’s head. According to The Independent, an Iranian religious foundation has upped the reward for his murder to a cool $ 3.3 million.

Sir Salman is in New York where he is promoting the publication of a memoir chronicling his time living under a fatwa imposed by the late Ayatollah Khomeini over his novel, The Satanic Verses. The tour has been overshadowed by a declaration from religious leader Hassan Sanei, head of the semi-official 15 Khordad Foundation, that he was adding another $500,000 to the hardline group’s existing reward of $2.8m for killing the novelist.

It raised the bounty in protest at the online film The Innocence of Muslims which has sparked violent outrage in parts of the Islamic world. “Surely if the sentence of the Imam [Khomeini] had been carried out, the later insults in the form of caricatures, articles and the making of movies would not have occurred,” Ayatollah Sanei said. The British Government called for urgent action against the foundation.

Yep, if they had succeeded in killing Rushdie, it would have silenced further critics, and that’s exactly what these thugs are about. Pity that dupes like R. Joseph Hoffmann fall for it. Rushdie doesn’t even like the damn movie, but he apparently doesn’t dislike it enough:

Sir Salman has already criticised the film describing it as “a piece of crap… very poorly done and malevolent”. But he added: “To react to it with this kind of violence is just ludicrously inappropriate. People are being attacked who had nothing to do with it and that is not right.”

This apparently isn’t part of the official fatwa against Rushdie issued in 1989 for his “insults” toward Mohamed in The Satanic Verses. That was revoked by Iran 9 years later, but the 15 Khordad Foundation still has the money on the table, ergo Rushdie must live in fear and seclusion.

At least the British government is taking the right stand, though it will have no effect:

The Foreign Office said: “We call on the government of Iran to take firm and urgent action on organisations in Iran that are encouraging or offering rewards for the murder of Mr Rushdie.”

Salman Rushdie was born into a Muslim family in India.  There’s a bounty on him for having insulted Islam.  To those of you who claim that the recent riots are motivated not by faith but by politics and American oppression, I ask this question: do you really think this renewed bounty has nothing to do with religion? If you do, then you’ve left rationality behind.