do cats count coup?

Posted on Monday, 2005 September 12 by Anton

Fluffie (age 12 years) continues to snub Pillow (age 5 months).

Last evening Pillow sneaked up behind where Fluffie was sitting, reached out and tapped her on the head. Fluffie merely got up and walked away.

Posted in pets | 1 Comment

the case of the missing keyword

Posted on Saturday, 2005 September 10 by Anton

The referral log usually has a few surprises. This week, my mathematical doodles were found three times by searches for words that do not appear on the page:

intimate
crystal candy
best girl friend

thanks to a previous post.

Posted in me!me!me! | Leave a comment

one lobe of the brain is dedicated to old advertising

Posted on Thursday, 2005 September 08 by Anton

Watching Pillow on patrol, guarding the hearth against MLO (mouse-like objects), stirs a tickle in my mind: About thirty years ago was there a long-running ad campaign, for some luxury good, that featured a black panther? Or have I imagined it, mutating the Blackglama “what becomes a legend most” campaign in which black fur was itself the product?

(Do I still have any issues of Scientific American from that period?)

Posted in humanities, pets | Leave a comment

the definite article

Posted on Wednesday, 2005 September 07 by Anton

You don’t need me to tell you that the case of Maher Arar (cited by Charlie Stross) has gloomy implications. So instead I’ll remark that I’m pleased to see in the article the phrase “a Qaeda member.” If any American paper were so pedantic as to agree with me that the definite article in Al Qaeda ought to be dropped in such phrases just because we’d do so with an English phrase like The Brotherhood, I guess the New York Times would be it.

I’ve also coined the mongrel noun Qaedista but never had occasion to use it.

Posted in language | 1 Comment

twin beacons

Posted on Wednesday, 2005 September 07 by Anton

There’s something comically cartoonish about a black kitten in dim light: a silhouette in which the only visible features are the roundly staring eyes.

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QotD

Posted on Wednesday, 2005 September 07 by Anton

There’s a myth that if we legalise a substance it would somehow take the illegality out of it.

Keith Hellawell, UK drug czar (quoted in the .sig of Todd Larason)

Posted in drugwar | Leave a comment

they could call it S.C.O.R.E.

Posted on Tuesday, 2005 September 06 by Anton

We might all be spared a bit of embarrassment if sex-ed courses included a segment on protocol.

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