Now Greta Christina promotes felines. All I can say is…this is what cats will see if they step outside.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Now Greta Christina promotes felines. All I can say is…this is what cats will see if they step outside.
This cat thing is causing deep rifts in the atheist community. Can’t we all get along?
What would heal the cat-rift is if the owl would just eat ceiling cat.
Glen Davidson
Sorry, PZ. I’m with Greta on this one.
I’m not particularly fond of cats, but they mean a lot to those who love them, so I wasn’t particularly enthused by the implications of this video. I know the realities of predators and prey, but….
Poor, poor PZ. So effective at fighting religion, but so clueless when fighting the Feline Revolution. Stop fighting, PZ, it’ll only be more work for you, and will ultimately end in futility.
Shit. An Eagle Owl is a Great Horned Owl on steroids and amphetamines. Bigger, badder, an apex predator in Northern Europe, they’ve been known to kill swans and young eagles for chrissakes. And yes, both the Eagle and Great Horned kill cats on occasion.
My two beloved abysinnian’s are both pampered, worshipped house cats. I love cats. But I regularly shoot the neighbor’s “barn cats” when they come onto my property to kill my bluebirds, tree swallows, (raiding the nest boxes), and baby chickens and ducks. Sigh………………….Wish I had a resident Eagle Owl.
Ah yes… The rural manners. I understand the necessity of culling dangers to the ecosystem like outdoor cats, but sometimes the people that do said killing display an untoward level of pride and affection for death in the retelling. I think it’s kinda disgusting.
Actually, hansmann’s post wasn’t too bad in that way (compared to the shit I have to hear sometimes IRL), but the place he chose to say his piece seems a bit trollish. Not that I don’t troll from time to time, so pot2kettle,
Honestly, you’d think someone with satan in their handle wouldn’t mince words and digress so much. BTW, I fucking love birds. Cool video. I’m out.
I wouldn’t be so sure that some cats wouldn’t be able to take down that owl.
I had a cat who brought home so many critters her size or bigger that I could have started a taxidermy business. Except for those missing heads. I never understood that.
And she did it with no front claws.
She wasn’t even one of the monster size kitties but an ordinary domestic shorthair.
I’m back. I knew a hella adorable cat once that went missing with owls as the prime suspect. But, y’know, that’s the price outdoor cats pay for freedom. They get to thrill-kill like the little demons they are, but may get turned into owl pellets. Or coyote poop or road pizza. Nature is as ugly as it is lovely.
Relax a bit PZ. I know it is in fun but raptors do get cats at times. About a month ago, saw a single set of cat tracks in thin snow behind my garage. They went out about 2 feet past a wall and then with a mess in the snow stopped. Smooth flat sections of snow highly suggest an owl or hawk. Certainly it was the end of that cat.
Speaking of cats: Okay, seriously, why am I the only one who ends up with too-smart pets? Everyone else tricks their animals into doing all kinds of crap using treats. I bought some treats for my cats, all they do is take them, eat them, and run away. The whole “sit in my lap, get a treat” gambit is a total failure.
Cats are thermophiles. Turn down your central heating thermostat and make sure the warmest place in the house is your lap. Below 80F my cats will knock stuff flying to get on my lap unless the wood fire is lit.
*comes in wearing a mask and being very stealthy*
*distributes pamphlets explaining TZT’s firm pro-feline stance and denouncing all anti-kitty activities*
*sneaks back out*
Pierre Berton, a Canadian historian, had one cat that disappeared in summer. It returned home the next winter, with terrible scars on its sides. He guessed that it had been picked up by an owl but dropped on the other side of the local river and had escaped. It returned after the river froze over.
This is what will happen (turn off the irritating soundtrack):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAme0MhWOMk
And then, PZ, they will come for you. And all the cephalopods in the world won’t be able to protect you.
I used to know a guy with a Golden Eagle, Aquila chrysaetos, called Maximilian, and he had to take it over fifty miles to fly. Otherwise, it would often take a domestic cat.
Why U no like cat? Iz ok, cat no like U either.
Why I am no fan of domestic cats:
http://is.gd/IccolJ
Damn, that’s one big-ass owl.
Well that was just mean, you poopyhead ailurophobe.
I get a pop-up window that refers me to the site of a Robert Lanza, M.D. who claims that death isn’t the end.
http://www.robertlanzabiocentrism.com/does-death-exist/
He speaks about a person he knew that died, “Christine had recently lost 100 pounds, and Ed had bought her a surprise pair of diamond earrings. It’s going to be hard to wait, but I know Christine is going to look fabulous in them the next time I see her.”
I guess you get a little bit of everything without even asking.
Like many introduced species, domestic and feral cats place numerous additional pressures upon natural ecosystems that are often already under pressure.
http://is.gd/zUpZyh
Of course like many modern problems, this is primarily the result of the stupidity, ignorance and selfishness of humans.
ailurophobe=’Morbid fear of cats’. According to the OED.
Who, here, has a ‘morbid’ fear of cats?
Why is nobody thinking of the mice?
Glen D. @2:
Once the owl got back up to its maximum altitude with its prey, wouldn’t the captured cat be a ‘ceiling’ cat?
Watching the vid, does the guy who made it have special wellies that make muddy footprints regardless of the number of steps on wet grass he’s taken?
Shakespeare’s birds
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Acclimatization_Society
I loves me my kittehs, but that was an awesome vid.
Ace of Sevens
17 March 2012 at 11:16 pm
‘This cat thing is causing deep rifts in the atheist community. Can’t we all get along?’
The problem is that many / most pet carnivores that are free to roam. There are the problems of:
a) Predation of native species, some of which will have no evolutionary defence from such predators. Sometimes predation extends as far as extinction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephens_Island_Wren
Invasive species
http://is.gd/SRSCkx
b) Feral populations becoming established.
c) Hybridisation with related species.
With respect, religion or lack of one is quite irrelevant, human attitudes and behaviour are the problem. This is what’s has happened so many times and it’s happening now and will continue to happen for the foreseeable future and it’s very bad.
Essentially, we shouldn’t be introducing novel species of any kind (it’s not only pets) that are capable of surviving or breeding into close proximity to ecosystems where they have no place.
Why don’t you biologists get off your duffs and work with big pharma to invent a bait that sterilizes cats or some other kind of birth control for the ferals? Then I won’t have to worry about the demise of flying squirrels, the local hell-hole animal control facility, or the slightly addled ladies of Alley Cat Allies. Seriously, I’ve done my part by taking in those 7 abandoned pets that statisticians say each of us should have. Let’s solve this problem, America.
How about fish flavoured semtex?
I’m reminded of Wol’s torture of the family dog Mutt in Farley Mowat’s book Owls in the Family
When the dog was deep in slumber on the front lawn, the Great Horned Owl would stalk carefully over to Mutt, stopping in mid-stride whenever the dog moved, until Wol’s talons were over the dog’s long, feathery tail. Then… with… perfect… patience… he’d… slamthetalonsonthetail and fly off to the porch fence, there to look down on the suddenly-awakened and bewildered dog with an attitude of “Why whatever is the matter, old boy?”
The only populations my cats are decimating are the local moths. They go out on a third-floor balcony, supervised.
The cat currently in my lap watched the video with me and purred the whole time.
I like how the owl lowers it’s landing gear and during the final approach, the head is so steady compared to the rest of it’s body it almost looks edited.
Lots of interesting commentary in this thread. A few response comments of my own:
– Cats are not dogs. Cats are chaos. Understand that when you get a cat, sit back and enjoy. Depending on the day of the week and time of day and phases of the moon (best guess), any one of my cats may sit with me…or not. Embrace the chaos.
– Yes, some people have outdoor cats that kill things. Some people have outdoor dogs that kill things too. We can link back and forth all we want (link and link), but I fail to see the relevance of this argument regarding having a certain type of pet that is taken care of appropriately.
– Depending on the cat, I wouldn’t necessarily bet on the owl. The smallest of my three cats would be a worthy challenge, and I not entirely certain an owl can pick up the biggest (although he would be an easy target).
– Why is there no octopus in this thread?
That was incredible!
Also, did anyone else watch the youtube-linked video of those nomad-looking guys using eagles to hunt (young) foxes and wolves? It’s so crazy how humans went so far as to train other animals to help us hunt—the rest of them never stood a chance.
I was lucky to see an eagle owl recently, on two occasions. First time, I was going down the stairs in an apartment building in the night time and looked out from a window and saw a cat-like bird sitting on a balcony railing. After seeing me, it flew away. Second time, I was walking on the street at about 6 am when I saw one flying nearby. Despite being so big and having long wings, it flew without making any noise (It was quiet, no noise from traffic). A magnificient bird.
Eagle owls have become urbanized here (in Helsinki, Finland). So far there hasn’t been real problems with them, rather they hunt the feral rabbits introduced by some irresponsible people. At least the eagle owls don’t need 200 € or so per caught rabbit in order to hunt them like the city government does.
Sweet. Now we need to figure out how to train cephalopods to do that.
We had a local tree come down in a winter storm last year. It had a bald eagle nest in it.
Inside the nest were close to 100 pet collars.
It’s not the owls you need to worry about.
It’s the hawks taking the handbag dogs:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/8505777/Hawks-hunt-down-handbag-dogs-in-central-London.html
Or the peregine falcons, which are staging a comeback, nesting on skyscrapers:
http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/animals/birds-animals/birds-of-prey/falcon_peregrine_velocity/
(I see them a few times a week. They’re awesome.)
(There’s an “r” that should have been in #39 roaming the internet. Sorry.)
I found out another interesting aspect to this invasive-species-cat-predator and native-wildlife relationship that no others seem to be aware of. When some local wildlife LITERALLY came to my door in the middle of the day, dragging her two starving cubs to my door because she couldn’t even make enough milk to feed her offspring (all her food supplies DESTROYED BY CATS). This is what alerted me to just how bad the situation had become. I then started out on a venture to try to assist all the local native wildlife. In the hopes that if I increased the populations of the few remaining predators that they would one day put “cat” on their natural menu. (FYI: That mother and her two cubs rebounded just fine with my assistance and went on to produce many healthy offspring.)
During this venture I found some surprising things.
Any time that a cat would enter the wildlife feeding area, all the wildlife would scatter. After 5 years of witnessing this I was truly disappointed. These were, after all, the native-wildlife army I was trying to raise to deal with the invasive-cat problem ecologically.
When I was advised by local law-enforcement to deal with the problem by shooting cats, then I thought maybe I could at least put that cat-meat from these useless and destructive waste-of-flesh cats to use and feed the wildlife their bodies. These cats had denied all the native-wildlife a food source all these years, perhaps in death they might be able to put back what they had taken. But no. Even when offered DEAD CATS the local wildlife would run from the wildlife feeding area.
Longer story short:
Due to the bold patterns bred into these INVASIVE-SPECIES cats, the NATIVE wildlife perceives them as having a hidden toxic or olfactory defense mechanism. A universal symbol throughout nature. That if an unknown animal is sporting bold patterns then that animal must be dangerous or deadly — to avoid it at all costs.
This is why you will read reports online of how someone’s docile “Mr. Fluffy” scared that “nasty” coyote out of their yard. The cat’s non-existent bravado had NOTHING to do with it. It was the cat’s coloring pattern alone that scared that larger predator.
Conclusion: Native wildlife will only pick off the bland or no-pattern cats. And even then, only if starving to death as a last resort, taking the risk of overriding millennia of natural instinct to try to survive. So even if coyotes or other larger predator will take a cat or two, they’ll leave all the bold-patterned ones alone. And the land will eventually be inundated with bold-patterned cats only. Back to square one.
NATURE IS NOT GOING TO SOLVE THIS HUMAN-MADE DISASTER FOR YOU.
There’s very good reason that the phrase “hunted to extinction” is so well known across all cultures, across all lands. It is THE ONLY METHOD THAT IS FASTER THAN A SPECIES CAN OUT-BREED AND OUT-ADAPT TO. Especially a species as prolific as these man-made cats which can breed 3X’s faster than any naturally-occurring cat species. A painful fact of past human-behavior that we must now rely on to fix this worldwide ecological disaster. I too was surprised to come to this realization, that these human-caused disasters in the past are now providing a valid method upon which we need to rely to solve this 100% man-made problem. This is ONLY going to be solved by a human-eye aiming a gun to pick off the correct species as rapidly as is humanly possible.
Something just dawned on me, and I thought I’d better type it somewhere before I forget or forget to mention it to anyone. I now wonder if this principle wouldn’t work to repel any larger predators from attacking humans. Bold black & white or black & yellow striped hiking-wear when traveling in bear or cougar country. Something that’s worth investigating. (I wonder if there is any database of photos of mauled hikers to see if they were all wearing solid-colors.) Saving human lives from animal attacks just might be a fashion option. Using this universal symbol throughout nature to your benefit. I know that even when feeding my wildlife-army throngs in the past (up to 60 assorted predators in my yard some nights), that they would react differently by what shirt or pants I might wear. Being cautious to not have a dark short-sleeved shirt showing lighter arms against it, this would alarm them, the lighter arms looking like warning-stripes. They liked my wearing muted camo or solid colored clothing best of all and were even calm and trusting enough to eat from my hands then.
ailurophobe=”a person who hates or fears cats”. According to Merriam Webster.
Oh, aren’t you clever. There was a news report in Santa Cruz some years back about a family pet who managed to drag itself to the front door before it died after person(s) unknown shoved a lit firecracker up the animal’s rectum.
Human beings created a problem by abandoning pets, and letting unneutered cats roam and breed. Punishing the animals solves nothing (though apparently it allows sociopaths to feel smug and justified about expressing their cruelty).
amoeba and woodsmanone, juliadefarge @ #29 has the right idea for solving the feral cat problem. You two can fuck right off.
Thank you so much for posting this. My 8-year old grandson played this several times, and then went through over a dozen of the posts it links to and watched all of them as well, the slo-mo ones repeatedly.
He must have said AWESOME and WOW at least 20 times.
This is how we get kids interested in science. This is what turns on their little brains to how cool actual reality is.
We only need to keep hitting that WOW button.
Poor poor demented Stacy,
Destroying cats is NOT a fear of cats nor even hating cats.
Why do mentally-unbalanced and psychotic cat-advocates always presume that if someone is removing a highly destructive, deadly disease spreading, human-engineered invasive-species from the native habitat to restore it back into natural balance that they must hate that organism? Does someone who destroys Zebra Mussels, Kudzu, Burmese Pythons, African Cichlids, or any of the other myriad destructive invasive-species have some personal problem with that species? (Many of which are escaped PETS that don’t even spread any harmful diseases, unlike cats.) Your ignorance and blatant biases are revealed in your declaring that people who destroy cats must somehow hate or fear cats. Nothing could be further from the truth.
It is people who spread a destructive invasive-species that tortures-to-death all other wildlife that have zero respect for life. They don’t even care about their cats dying a slow torturous death from exposure, animal attacks, diseases, starvation, dehydration, becoming road-kill, environmental poisons. etc., the way that ALL stray cats suffer to death. They don’t even respect their fellow human being. This speaks more than volumes about your disgusting character. People like you should be locked up in prison for life for your cruelty to animals. If you let cats roam free you are violating every animal-abandonment, animal-neglect, animal-endangerment, and invasive-species law in existence.
If people DO hate cats today, have LEARNED to hate cats today, you have nobody but yourself and everyone just like you to blame. YOU are the reason people are now realizing that all excess cats must be destroyed on-site and on-sight. You’ve done so much to make people care about cats, haven’t you.
THIS IS YOUR FAULT and THE FAULT OF EVERYONE JUST LIKE YOU. You have NOBODY but yourselves to blame.
You can take that all the way to the next shot-dead cat’s grave.
Hmm, this thread is beginning to concern me.
As far as “Ally Cat ALL-LIES” goes, the ONLY animals that are benefiting from TNR are the veterinarians, pet-food-company CEOs, and drug-company CEOs. ALL OTHER ANIMALS, INCLUDING THE CATS, SUFFER TO DEATH. TNR practitioners are just unwitting puppets and pawns for these corporations that are making a fortune off of your own stupidity.
Who do you think is paying HUGE cash donations to Ally-Cat-ALL-LIES and HSUS and every TNR program? Follow the money, therein lies your answer. There’s HUGE money to be made by keeping any suffering cat-mouth alive until it finally and excruciatingly suffers to death. As well as fishing over-fished oceans to make cat-food for those TNR-practicing pawns and puppets that actually feed their TNR’ed cats.
Here’s how TNR-MATH works (and how they are able to so easily con and deceive you):
“In NYC there are currently 465 registered TNR colonies. When TNR began in these colonies, 6047 cats were present – today, there are 4523 cats present, a decline of approximately 25 percent.” (Quoted from an Alley Cnt Allies member who was SO proud of this.)
Of those 6,047 cats they’ve only REDUCED the total by 1,524 cats, about 127 PER YEAR. That’s only 0.08% of the 1,806,310 feral-cats within the city’s limits. (data taken direct from TNR-advocates’ own resources)
Apparently, if you TNR 4 cats and 3 die from being flattened by cars this is a 75% decline of feral-cats statewide.
Guess how many have been born in NYC IN JUST THE LAST 6 MONTHS (hoping like hell that they’re not breeding every 4 months). Let’s do the math…
(1/2 total = females) 903,155 X 5 (avg. number in a litter) = 4,515,775 NEW CATS. Which lowers the number of them that have been reduced by TNR idiots to only 0.024%. THEY ARE GOING BACKWARD.
Guess how many will be born in another 6 months? (4,515,775 / 2) X 5 = 11,289,438.
Remember. the first 903,155 females are still breeding. For another 4,515,775. Add in the pre-existing 1,806,310, bringing the grand total in just ONE YEAR to 17,611,523 CATS. Which means that TNR groups have only reduced the cat-population by 0.008% of them. That’s not even 1/100th of 1%.
Alley-Cat-ALL-LIES can’t even reduce cats in their own city, yet they promote it as a worldwide solution. Then even bigger fools fall for it and promote it.
[Note: this recursive calculation population-growth problem actually requires advanced calculus with many more variables and will result in differing numbers; some higher, some lower, depending on how many years you do the population-growth projection when using both methods; but the results are just as astoundingly large no matter which method you use. I only include the dumbed-down version here so those of you with at least half a brain can comprehend and do the math yourself. Besides, it doesn’t matter how many feral-cats are roaming free. If even ONE invasive-species cat is roaming free and has destroyed even ONE native animal, then that invasive-species cat must be destroyed. These numbers are only important to alert all others to how many cats must be destroyed and if they’ll ever have the financial resources to do so by using their preferred method. In most cases, every municipality must allocate anywhere from 1/10th to 1/2 $BILLION PER YEAR if employing TNR costs just to catch-up to their breeding rates — sustaining that expense YEARLY into perpetuity. Whereas shooting them results in costs substantially lower, in the range of $2,000 to $75,000 for 1 year. Which ends up being a ONE-TIME-EXPENSE. Something that is attainable by the tax-base in most every area.]
Yanno, in my opinion one of the best ways to deal with an invasive or overpopulated species is to develop a taste for ’em.
It’s how I’m doing my part to deal with the Northern Pikeminnow in these parts. Delightful salted and smoked.
The Laughing Coyote,
Good plan. When catching invasive-species African Cichlids in the Everglades I couldn’t believe what a wonderful dinner-plate they were. The best eating-fish I’ve ever had the pleasure to dine on. They regularly came in at over 2 lbs. worth too. Though you feel a little odd gutting and scaling one of the most beautiful and colorful $180 aquarium-fish you’ve ever seen. Sure were tasty though! I’d never pass up one for a dinner after knowing how good they are.
Unfortunately there’s just far too much risk to contracting any of the many deadly diseases that these invasive-species cats are now spreading across the globe. They really need to be buried or incinerated after shooting them. Even wear gloves to protect yourself as well (as I did) then burn those too after all cats are gone.
These are just the diseases they’ve been spreading to humans, not counting the ones they spread to all wildlife. THERE ARE NO VACCINES against many of these, and are in-fact listed as bio-terrorism agents. They include: Campylobacter Infection, Cat Scratch Disease, Coxiella burnetti Infection (Q fever), Cryptosporidium Infection, Dipylidium Infection (tapeworm), Hookworm Infection, Leptospira Infection, Giardia, Plague, Rabies, Ringworm, Salmonella Infection, Toxocara Infection, Toxoplasma. [Centers for Disease Control, July 2010] Sarcosporidiosis, Flea-borne Typhus, and Tularemia can now also be added to that list.
Cat-Transmitted PLAGUE:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8059908
http://www.pagosasun.com/archives/2011/07July/072811/webplague.html
Tularemia (rabbit-fever, transmissible to humans):
http://www.news-gazette.com/news/health/miscellaneous/2011-09-14/cats-savoy-test-positive-rabbit-fever.html
http://www.westyellowstonenews.com/news/article_02fceec6-f695-11e0-b752-001cc4c002e0.html
Flea-borne Typhus:
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/county-317133-animals-cases.html
The most insidious one of all, cats’ Toxoplasma gondii parasite they spread through their feces into all other animals. This is how it gets into meats and humans get it from meats, cats roaming around stockyards and farms. This is why cats are ROUTINELY destroyed around gestating livestock or important wildlife by shooting or drowning them. So those animals won’t suffer from the same things that can happen to the unborn fetus of any pregnant woman. (Miscarriages, still-births, hydrocephaly, and microcephaly.) It can kill you at any time during your life once you’ve been infected. It becomes a permanent lifetime parasite in your mind, killing you when your immune system becomes compromised. It can last over a year in any soils or waters and not even washing your hands or garden vegetables in bleach will destroy the oocysts. Contrary to popular cat-lovers’ self-deceptive myths, a cat can also become reinfected many times during its life and spread new oocysts each time. It’s now linked to the cause of autism, schizophrenia, and brain cancers. This parasite is now also killing off rare and endangered marine-mammals along all coastal areas from cats’ T. gondii oocysts in run-off from the land, the oocysts even surviving in saltwater.
Its strange life cycle is meant to infect rodents. Any rodents infected with it lose their fear of cats and are actually attracted to cat urine.
scitizen.com/neuroscience/parasite-hijacks-the-mind-of-its-host_a-23-509.html
Cats attract rodents to your home with their whole slew of diseases. If you want rodents in your home keep cats outside of it to attract diseased rodents to your area.
The time has come to destroy them all whenever spotted away from supervised confinement. There’s no other solution. We have nobody but cat-lovers to thank for this ecological disaster.
I call bullshit on this one.
Rings just a tad false when followed by so much hyperbole. I’m more of a dog person myself anyways, never owned a cat, but I’ve known a few good ones in my time.
As for invasive fish, well, Northern Pikeminnow are a mite bony. Nothing wrong with that meat though. And I just can’t feel right about killin something without at least trying to eat it.
I don’t think I’ll be hunting any domestic cats anytime soon though myself.
Toxoplasma gondii effects on human minds hijacked by this cats’ parasite:
“How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy”
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/03/how-your-cat-is-making-you-crazy/8873/
“Toxoplasmosis and psychology: A game of cat and mouse”
http://www.economist.com/node/16271339
“Crazy Cat Love: Caused By Parasitic Infection?”
healthland.time.com/2011/08/18/crazy-cat-love-caused-by-parasitic-infection/
“Research Links Parasite In Cats To Mental Illnesses” (schizophrenia)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127955946
“Is the parasite Toxoplasma gondii linked to brain cancer?”
blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/07/26/is-the-parasite-toxoplasma-gondii-linked-to-brain-cancer/
If you would have done just a tad bit of Googling you wouldn’t have had so much egg on your face about now.
The T.gondii host [Stacy]
18 March 2012 at 9:35 pm
Your unhinged comment must surely be the consequence of a T. gondii infestation. [thanks woodsmanone].
It would only then seem to make much sense. We’ll have to await for the science to unravel the extent of T. gondii and other parasites abilities at mind-control.
BTW my “How about fish flavoured semtex?” comment was a joke, but one that only works for the intelligent and knowledgeable – the natural readership of this blog. For several obvious reasons flavoured Plastic Explosives is a bad idea: it certainly wouldn’t explode, but IIRC direct contact with PE may result in ‘bang head’ – very nasty headaches, I don’t know of the toxicity of ingested PE. Also, scattering of untargeted dangerous baits is a type of pollution and would have indiscriminate effects. Affecting indigenous species as well as invasive ones and it would be obvious that I am strongly in favour of wildlife protection and reintroductions of lost species.
T. gondii=Cat-shit crazy!
“Feral” cat colonies maintained by humans is an abomination. Seriously, you can’t hold a conversation at any level of sanity with these folks. Some of the huge cat colonies in California have resulted in the localized eradication, and suspected extinction, of some lizard species, a gecko and a swift, I think. Cats are supreme predators. They kill for joy. That’s okay, but not when you’re stocking a predator at much greater than carrying capacity.
When I was a young man, ground-nesting birds that were common on our little farm in East Central Minnesota included bitterns, black terns, meadowlarks, bobolinks, whipporwills, and what we called puddle ducks; blue and green-winged teal and pintails. They were abundant. Cutting hay we’d have to constantly be on the watch to avoid running a mower over a nesting female on her eggs. Nowadays; no bobolinks, no meadowlarks, (I’ve seen two in five years), absolutely no bitters, whipporwills, or black terns. Puddle ducks largely vanished because the flyway moved West, but the other birds are largely gone because of cats, period.
amoeba (though I’m a stentor, diatom, and vorticella fan myself … although … I was quite fascinated for many hours watching a fluidic emerald-green heart-leaf-shaped euglena with a ruby-crystal eye-spot for many hours one night as it twisted and bent through its algal forest, sorry, I digress …),
I’ve long suspected that this is why they defend the lives of these invasive-species animals so vehemently. Their cats’ parasite in their minds only allows them to understand what is beneficial to the proliferation of the parasite. This also explains why cat-hoarders cannot smell the stench of cat-urine and cat-feces in their homes. In the same way that T. gondii re-wires a rodent’s mind to actually be attracted to cat-urine. But the cat-hoarder’s home has to eventually be demolished because the uncleanable stench is so bad that it effects everyone living in the whole neighborhood, a city-block in diameter. This goes far and beyond anyone just getting used to a familiar smell in one’s home. I now suspect that the quickest way to tell if your brain has been hijacked by this cats’ parasite is to smell cat-urine. If you don’t detect cat-urine as the reeking stench that it is, consider your brain having been T. gondii parasitized.
The Toxoplasma gondii parasites in cat-lovers brains won’t let them think nor reason beyond wanting to ensure the proliferation of more T. gondii parasites. Even if they have to harm or murder humans that stand in their way. (Death-threats are common from cat-lovers. I collect them. The FBI wants my list of names and threats, but I could care less.) They are being controlled against all common-sense and reason by the cats’ parasites that have taken over their minds.
Get tested for T. gondii if you are defending these invasive-species cats’ lives. You can no longer think nor reason like a human anymore, ignoring all logic and common-sense. Your thoughts demoted to that of parasitic protozoan awareness, where only its base biochemical survival matters, without concern nor regard for anything else in its environment. (Sounds just like every cat-lover, doesn’t it.) Though either way, even if you are not infected by this cat-parasite and still feel that it’s better to harm a human than a cat, seek professional help before you act on these blatantly clear psychopathic and sociopathic thoughts and values of yours.
You know what the most destructive invasive species is? Humans. Someone ought to do something.
A. R
18 March 2012 at 1:41 pm
I think that if cephalapods were terrestrial or capable of flight, many extant species on Earth would never have evolved. If humans did evolve under those circumstances, death could be hiding anywhere.
TED talk – David Gallo shows underwater astonishments
You need to watch from 1.53.
http://is.gd/SNhaGQ
I believe this is derived from Roger Hanlon’s work http://is.gd/nEYZox
Oops spelling error: cephalopods
Ace of Sevens,
Homo sapiens is NOT an invasive species ANYWHERE, you freakishly stupid MORON. Since humans have the genetic code to give them the capability to travel/migrate to ANY part of the globe, this means they are native to any area they can travel to on their own. Just like birds that have this capability and can travel to different continents and islands. Those that have the flight-range required to do so are NATIVE to those areas that they are capable of traveling to ON THEIR OWN.
(And for the love of all that’s good in the world, PLEASE don’t display your further ignorance and stupidity by trying to claim that Europeans, Native Americans, and Asians are different “species”. That’s usually your next huge omelet-on-the-face move that you astoundingly ignorant fools make.)
Whereas, an animal genetically engineered through selective breeding, such as CATS, are NOT AN INDIGENOUS SPECIES ANYWHERE. They are no more natural to any native environment than some genetically engineered insect that was invented in some lab, that once released out into nature will destroy all native wildlife, JUST AS CATS DO.
If you phenomenally stupid cretins are going to use ecology, biology, speciation, and genetics in your arguments, the very LEAST that you could do is have a base comprehension of what you are talking about. Don’t you think?
No. And that’s the problem with terminally ignorant MORONS like you, you CAN’T think.
There’s just no legal cure for “stupid”.
If cats are not indigenous anywhere, then are you a theist that thinks they were just created out of nowhere, or are you merely restricting your ramblings to felis domesticus rather than the large cats?
I’m not in favour of feral cats, but seriously dude, the caps lock is the internet equivalent of frothing at the mouth in this context.
Hmm, not quite at cats on fire yet. Do continue.
PZ: do you really need to egg on fanatic lunatic nutcases like woodsmanone? The “Anti-Caturday” posts were amusing for a while, but as someone who’s fond of cats the joke has worn quite thin. Promote cephalopods all you like, but there’s no need to deride any other species in doing so.
Stacy:
Right on! I don’t want to see wildlife decimated by feral cats – or dogs, or testosterone-poisoned human hunters – but expressing glee over killing cats is just plain sick.
And if anyone’s worried about becoming infected with toxoplasmosis gondii – the USDA estimates that half of the infections in the USA are from eating raw or undercooked meat – so you rare steak fans better get used to eating it well-done, or better yet – stop eating meat altogether.
Therrin
19 March 2012 at 5:13 am
Sounds like a queue for a joke, albeit not a very good one.
Q: How do you make a cat go woof?
A: ¡ɹǝʍoɹɥʇǝɯɐןɟ ɐ sǝʌןoʌuı ʇı :ʇuıɥ
BTW: to the T. g. Host [Stacy] It’s a joke!
Note: no cats were harmed during this post.
Furr-a-Bruin: Not everyone here thinks like you, not all people who dislike cats are like some of the people here, not all hunters are “testosterone-poisoned,” (many are women) remember that before you make any more stupid comments.
Furr-a-Bruin,
‘testosterone-poisoned’
I don’t know about ‘poisoning’, but individuals with T. gondii infection have been shown to demonstrate elevated levels of testosterone compared with uninfected individuals. Which would seem counter to your half-baked ‘theory’.
http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/content/33/3/757.full.pdf#page=1&view=FitH
BTW, if 50% of T. gondii infections are related to undercooked meat, what about the other 50%? I note that the source was a European study.
Might some of that be the consequence of cats depositing their noxious parasite-laden faeces in adjoining properties? This would be in accordance with the EPA study.
If all pet cats were required by law to be neutered and to be regularly wormed, then much of this problem would be entirely solved. It’s anti-social behaviour with health implications inflicted on innocent third-parties, not too different from passive smoking.
Someone said above:
woodsmanone came along to prove the point.
CAPS LOCK AND LOAD! any woman who disagrees with me is going to get called crazy!
+++++
amoeba, I don’t know if you have all the same issues that woodsmanone does, but it’s not good for you that you’ve adopted his habit of claiming that a rhetorical opponent is infected by T. gondii.
It demonstrates a failure of critical thinking on your part.
The typical animal lover responds negatively to talk of killing pet species generally.
There is, therefore, good reason to suppose that had someone been talking about killing dogs, Stacy would have responded negatively to that as well.
You could have thought about Ockham’s razor; you could have thought “horses, not zebras”; in any case you failed by choosing the more exotic explanation first.
+++++
I’d like everyone to take a good look at Stacy’s one and only comment in this thread.
It is perfectly polite by Pharyngula standards. Its peak of unkindness is that “you two can fuck right off”; not a single rotting porcupine is suggested.
I see a commenter with a typically female name, objecting to violent rhetoric.
And I see these two other commenters call Stacy “demented, mentally-unbalanced, psychotic, should be locked up in prison for life, unhinged, crazy.” All of which is unacceptable, no matter who the target.
But the attempted silencing of a woman via immediate accusations of madness is additionally a misogynistic tactic.
Not to mention accusing someone of false consciousness is pretty much the perfect troll tactic. It saves you having to actually address anythign anyone says since you can go after their motives instead. Never mind that toxoplasmosis only affects about 11% of the population, cats are hardly the only vector and the link to psychiatric disorders is not that strong and the claim it makes people like cats more is purely speculative and based solely on evidence it makes rodents less sensitive to the smell of cat urine.
Just a note about your last clause before anyone tries to exaggerate its importance:
This might change soon. (It’ll probably be several months or a year before Flegr’s paper is published.)
Nevertheless it’s not first explanation that should be reached for when any particular individual likes cats. Generally, people like cats for the same reasons that people like other domesticated pet species: neoteny of appearance and behavior.
Our genes code for airplanes?
I decided Woodsmanone was full of shit as soon as he started trying to claim toxoplasmosis causes autism.
I have autism, you sack of shit, and every day it seems some asshole is highjacking it for his own rhetoric. Whether it’s anti-vaxxers claiming that vaccines ’cause autism’, or some raving asshole online claiming it’s caused by toxoplasmosis.
Take your ableism and shove it so far up your urethra your bladder pops, you backwoods pigfucker.
“Nearly one quarter of adults and adolescents in the United States have been infected with T. gondii.”
And almost no one notices it. The CAPSLOCK rants seem to bear little relation to reality. There aren’t that many crazy cat owners and this isn’t an episode of Star Trek.
That’s the plain ones. The fancy jeans code for rocketships! Mom jeans cause seizures, but nobody notices because they are a relaxed fit.
And don’t get me started on bellbottoms …
And foxes.
1) You have no idea how big that owl is.
2) Killing is one thing; flying away with prey is another. When golden eagles think they can figuratively get away with it (lack of competition on the ground), they occasionally kill prey much bigger than what they could literally get away with. Adult reindeer…
:-o Wow.
…In some sense, that’s awesome.
…erm.
Most people are not natural-born cold-blooded killers, you know.
Just saying.
Two words:
litterbox;
house-train.
…WTF? Why don’t you pass the list on to the FBI???
Completely and utterly non sequitur.
Egypt?
You know, domestic cats aren’t all that different from other members of Felis. You’re exaggerating.
X-D LOL!
Huh. That’s interesting.
…ouch. :-S
David Marjanovic: Invasive cats are a problem, and do need to be controlled. I just wanted to get that out of the way before I say I am so fucking sick and tired of people using ‘Causes Autism’ or ‘Studies have linked it to autism’ for their stupid fucking causes. I’ve bloody well had it.
People with various forms of autism are PEOPLE, not some scary-sounding disease for ranty assholes to mix in with their favorite pet boogeyman.
My mother actually has an irrational fear of cats (It’s their eyes) and I can guarantee that there was no toxoplasmosis exposure in my early childhood or her pregnancy. She can’t even be in the same room with one.
But even if my mom was a cat lover, woodsmanone would still be heaped full of dogshit.
Someone I Know has witnessed a cat successfully fending off an owl attack. She did not identify the species though. No particular reason to suppose it was an eagle owl (place was Southern Finland; time: before the eagle owls urbanized).
What I gathered from the story was that the unexpected attack behaviour was a major factor in why the cat kept his life. The owl was completely taken by surprise when that tasty looking morsel nimbly jumped around and hit him on the face.
PJ: I’ve heard (Yeah I know, Citation needed) of something similar with cougar attacks on people, that is, people who fight back usually succeed in driving the kitty off. I’ve even heard of old ladies fending them off with sticks.
Naturally, the thing to do is test it out. Find a wild cougar, and start poking hir with a stick. :p
Would this be an example of cougar on cougar violence?
(/ducks)
seriously?
1) Do you know anything–anything at all–about ‘Big Pharma’? It’s purely profit-motivated. Who’s going to make any money from cat contraceptives? Nobody, that’s who.
2) Don’t you suppose that if there was an easy and safe oral contraceptive possible for mammals we might have heard about it?
3) We biologists, on the rare occasions when we get off our duffs, are usually interested in other things than keeping feral cats alive and happy.
Here come the humor police. Do you think baby-eating jokes are funny?
I am fond of cats in general but I hate ferals and other people’s outdoor pet cats. They should be killed. I’d help. I wouldn’t experience any glee, let alone express it. I just wouldn’t mind it. Native wildlife and local functioning ecosystems are far, far more important than individual cats. Only anthropomorphism argues the other way.
A. R
Thank you for pointing out the obvious.
…and doing it again.
Describing a subset of hunters as “testosterone-poisoned” is not describing all hunters as such, or are you unaware of such a basic concept? As it happens, my father was a hunter – who made sure that the deer and elk he shot were eaten (by my parents and/or their friends who enjoy venison), and who loathed poachers and hunters who’d kill an animal just for a “trophy”. The recent news about Donald Trump’s blockhead son killing an elephant in Africa is a prime example of the kind of behavior I had in mind.
Project much?
amoeba:
The point being that eating raw/undercooked meat is roughly as big a threat in terms of T. gondii as the cats you and woodsmanone are getting all ranty about – and yet, you seem to be ignoring that fact.
ChasCPeterson
“Police”? Did I “threaten” PZ with anything? I’m not going to stop reading his blog because of a worn-out joke, despite the fact it seems to egg on screaming nutcakes like woodsmanone.
Furr-a-Bruin: Perhaps be a mite more clear in your comments then?
I love how woodsmanone has totally poisoned this well with his frothy-lipped jackassery.
He became no better than a human urinal in my eyes as soon as he tried to drag autism into it. Fuck him and everything he stands for.
That said, I do agree that feral cats need to be controlled. I would also agree that pet cats need to be controlled. I kind of wish that cat owners would stop crooning about how ‘sweet’ it is when Mittsy brings home dead animal ‘presents’ for them. A great argument for indoor cats, as if the fact that indoor cats live longer on average wasn’t enough.
Furr-a-Bruin and all others that are desperately trying to evade cats as the source of T. gondii in your brains by claiming it comes from undercooked meats.
If you people would do the LEAST bit of self-education, you wouldn’t be so outraged due to your OWN ignorance.
And just HOW do you think T. gondii gets into your meats and farm produce?
FROM CATS ROAMING AROUND STOCKYARDS AND FARMS.
This parasite can infect herbivores IN NO OTHER WAY than directly from the T. gondii oocysts that are shed by infected cats in their feces. This parasites’ oocysts can survive for over a year in any soils or waters (even salt-water, this is why run-off from the land carrying this cats’ parasite is now killing off rare marine-mammals), and not even washing your hands and dinner vegetables in bleach will destroy them. Contrary to the misinformation about just freezing any steaks to make them safe, this parasite must be frozen BELOW -10 F. to kill it. A “deep freezer” is required for this. So the standard home fridge/freezer combo where their freezers rarely go down to a cozy +10 F. will just keep the parasite alive and healthy until you eat it. Plants can also not become infected with either the asexual OR sexual phase of this parasite. Plants can ONLY transmit T. gondii oocysts (shed by cats) as an external contagion on those plants. The same way it gets into herbivores who ingest vegetation and grains THAT HAVE BEEN INFECTED WITH T. GONDII’S OOCYSTS — SHED DIRECTLY BY CATS. And contrary to cat-crazy-idiots’ oft-spewed nonsense, cats can become reinfected by T. gondii many times during their lives (not just once) and shed millions of oocysts anew each and every time.
And as for you Laughing Coyote, sh**-fer-brains, piece-of-sh**, poor-pitiful, “OOoooo, I have autism! Don’t bother correcting me! Because I’m a lame waste of flesh and I’m ALWAYS RIGHT, THEY TOLD ME SO BECAUSE I MANIPULATE EVERYONE AROUND ME INTO FEELING SORRY FOR ME!” ….
I used to take blind, MS, autistic, deaf, quadriplegic, and other similarly challenged people on lengthy 1-2 month long wilderness treks. If any one of them ever whined like you do, we’d have thrown your sorry ass into the nearest stream and told you to swim your way back to civilization 100 miles away. You’re not autistic, you’re just a sad and pathetic example for any kind of human.
Brilliant.
I spent plenty of my childhood in the wilderness on my own, I needed no help or ‘guidance’ from a walking bag of shit like you.
I suppose one thing is true though, you do seem like exactly the type of person who’d throw a small disabled child into a river.
Not that I would have ever let someone like you within ten feet of me even in my extreme youth. You’re quite frankly creepy.
Might I also add that the same asshole who’s been telling us how stupid we’d feel if we only understood the feline conspiracy to turn us all in to T. Gondii autistic zombies feels confident enough to diagnose me on the basis of a few blog posts insulting him?
Go piss up a rope, you backwoods moosefucking creeper.
What’s even more brilliant, is that you just did again exactly what I stated you do.
LOL!!!!!
Why don’t you explain it again for us? I don’t think my autistic brain can grasp it quite yet.
Jackass.
I assure all that I have never owned a cat, and I find the behaviour of woodsmanone to be absolutely egregious. There is no acceptable rationalisation of the behaviour that this individual has displayed
Woodsmanone: you are very close to feeling the smack of the banhammer. Ignorant and deranged is not a good combination.
PZ Myers, re: banning & deleting posts
If poking your own eyes out, yet again, to remain wallowing in that highly addictive bliss of self-inflicted ignorance that you wallow in all your life is the only way that you can retain that bliss — GO FOR IT!
I’m not here to win some little girl’s popularity contest. That’s for damn sure.
Woodsmanone, it’s probably not worth it to tell you this since you’re clearly on the defensive, but if you have people near you in real life, it might be a good idea to just show someone you trust all the things you’ve said in this thread. Just let someone with an objective eye look it over. And talk to them honestly about the stuff you’ve been saying here, see what they think. I’m being entirely sincere here and am not trying to insult you.
woodsmanone, you, like a lot of the crazies that show up here, are projecting like a boss. Your words
fit you far, far better than anyone else. Far better.
You read poorly, write poorly, make little sense, and have little or no social skills. But somehow you think that you need to be here telling us all about your delusions, and getting pissed off when we don’t fall down to worship your wonderfulness.
We’ve seen your kind before, and done your craziness up brown many a time.
You are wasting your time, and doing great damage to whatever point you are trying to promote. Go the heck away and nurse your fantasies.
PZ, ban him. It isn’t doing anybody any good to let him rant.
I suggest you people go educate yourselves on the term “displacement-activity” where animal behavior is concerned. A behavior that any animal exhibits when they have trapped themselves into a corner where fight or flight is no longer an option. So they preen their feathers or paw at the ground, doing familiar things to distract themselves from the reality that has just confronted them. A reality to which they have neither the tools nor knowledge nor instincts to deal with it in any other manner but by embracing their neurotic displacement-activity.
Try some more red-herrings to distract yourselves and detract from all the FACTS that have been presented to you.
Enjoy your psychoses! (you pathetic twits)
Hey, chucklefuck, I didn’t once disagree that invasive cats, both uncontrolled pets and ferals, were a huge problem.
It’s gone beyond that. I don’t take kindly to your ableist bullshit, and you’re a creepy man.
Btw, for you to insinuate that the likes of me would need some shit-eating loudmouth jackass to take him trekking through the wilderness is frankly ridiculous. The woods were the only place I ever truly felt ‘safe’ in my life.
And at least I’m not fucking terrified of cats.
“displacement-activity”
Groovy. Got anything more recent?
How do you feel about horses?
Woodsmanone, flight is still an option for you. You don’t have to keep up your displacement activity (which is preening yourself on your intellect, in case you don’t know).
Yes, I’d heard of displacement activity before, even though it isn’t in any of my particular fields of interest. Most folks here know a lot about almost everything.
I get the feeling that you have stumbled upon one or two factoids and are going to run them into the fricking ground, assuming nobody else knows anything about them.
Protip for you, Puddin’: This is a BIOLOGY blog.
Sigh.
What terrible “reality” do you think you’re confronting us with, woodsmanone?
Cassandra: The cats are all in on a conspiracy to infect us with T. Gondii and turn us into autistic zombies.
IF YOU HAVE SEEN A CAT IN THE LAST FEW DAYS, IT IS ALREADY TOO LATE FOR YOU AND YOUR UNBORN CHILDREN!
Ohshit, now I’ve gone and scared myself.
Ha-ha!
I went off to educate myself further on Toxo, and after deciding that the cool name for it was “Toxo”, the first thing I found was this:
What if I’m already an autistic zombie? :C No kitties for me?
If you’re already an autistic zombie, then it’s too late.
For all of us.
woodsmanone is either trolling or delusional.
(Interesting that I even have such ambivalence)
Ahem: Such a claim is so, so very easy to test scientifically, but it has never been?
The projection is strong, in this one.
*dons Vader cape and helmet*
*pauses dramatically*
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO–
*stops and thinks for a second*
I mean…
BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAINZ!
John Morales@102
There is some evidence of T. gondii in commercial meat products. From the abstract there is no indication of the contamination route.
Prevalence of Toxoplasma gondii in commercial meat products as monitored by polymerase chain reaction – food for thought?
http://is.gd/k7Q30F
woodsmanone isn’t worth the electons. Just ignore it / him / her.
This is a very weird response. First, I never used the word ‘threaten’; why is it in quotation marks? Second, huh? Is that what police do in your experience? Threaten people?
But what the hell, I’ll answer your question. No, you didn’t “threaten” PZ with anything. And nobody suggested that you ought to stop reading the blog. But what you did do is what the humor police do: they (you) show up on somebody’s blog to tell the blogger what’s funny and what’s not funny. OK?
Aw, I posted and shut down, then woodsmanone lit up the place.
Black Bear Terrified of Ginger Cat!
(That photo never gets old.)
Time to catch up!
Wow, you brainiacs sure got me beat!
There are only TWO WAYS that an animal can become infected by the T. gondii parasite.
1. Ingesting the parasite’s oocysts shed by a cat infected with the sexual reproductive phase of this parasite.
2. Direct body-fluid to body-fluid contact or ingesting the flesh or fluids of any animal infected with the asexual phase of this parasite.
Gee …. I guess there’s tons of ways that an HERBIVORE can contract this parasite. They could be going around chasing down and chewing on mice and birds that had contracted it from the oocysts shed by cats!
Hmm… I wonder … I wonder if there’s a clue in there somewhere in the word “herbivore”. Nah, probably not. Why else would these people be so confused over something that painfully and kindergartenly simple and obvious?
Maybe no scientific study is necessary because the path of transmission to all herbivores is so glaringly apparent to anyone with even a modicum of commonsense that no study was ever needed? Nah, probably not.
Not with brainiacs like this refuting this simple transmission mechanism, all the while still trying to figure out how this parasite infects all herbivores. They must know something more than even a 1st-grader can easily comprehend to be able to spew their disparity so vehemently.
Wow, if this is a “biology forum”, it looks like you’ve attracted quite a few mommy’s-basement home-schooled trolls as permanent residents. Nobody of worth needs to be banned from this place. They just need to interact with the resident morons just once to know there’s nothing worth knowing nor worth interacting-with here.
Did you just say cats are herbivores?
Thanks for the lesson in exponentiation. I think I discovered that aged, what, nine? Afterwards, I got to do real calculus!
—
TLC: “I’m doing my part to deal with the Northern Pikeminnow”
… branded catfood. Just sayin’.
And: “I don’t think I’ll be hunting any domestic cats”
I saw a documentary about prisoners who were in Colditz. They ate the regimental cat. Apparently (and this is a direct quotation), “it makes a very greasy meal, does cat”. :-/
—
WM1: “How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy”
Scooped! (Beat Crommunist to it too, I believe.)
“But the cat-hoarder’s home has to eventually be demolished because the uncleanable stench is so bad that it effects everyone living in the whole neighborhood, a city-block in diameter.”
Nuke the entire site from orbit–it’s the only way to be sure.
“Homo sapiens is NOT an invasive species ANYWHERE, you freakishly stupid MORON. Since humans have the genetic code to give them the capability to travel/migrate to ANY part of the globe”
You know, when those people crossed the Bering Straight into North America, the cats might have followed them?
Doh!
gh. Curse you spelchek.And, fortified by eating the regimental cat, they built a frickin’ glider to escape!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colditz_Cock
[meta]
woodsmanone:
Translation: “I am no-one of worth”.
Woodsmanone, I have trouble wading through your ranting, but I think you think it is impossible for an herbivore to get gondii:
An herbivore could eat grass that a cat has shit on. That’s pretty damn obvious and a well-known method of transmission for other parasites–oral ingestion of feces-borne parasites.
Are you stupid, ignorant or just bad at writing?
Menyambal — damned dirty ape, wrote: “An herbivore could eat grass that a cat has shit on. That’s pretty damn obvious and a well-known method of transmission for other parasites–oral ingestion of feces-borne parasites.
Are you stupid, ignorant or just bad at writing?”
Wow. Who would have thought that such painfully obvious sarcasm that was used to drive home a point of just how painfully, pathetically, and f***ingly stupid they are; would have been missed by such intellectually-superior people!
I am reminded of one thing and one thing only. A phrase I keep on a kitchen-magnet to help me get through times like this. “NEVER underestimate the stupidity of humanity!”
woodsmanone:
<snicker>
Dry sarcasm is a step too far for ya, not being painfully obvious and all.
(No sense, no feeling)
It’s that ubiquitous parasite, obviously.
(Luckily, you wear gloves!)
Insert the sound of one of those astounding sighs of disbelief and awe when no other expression will do — when confronted with the interminable display of absurdity of an unbelievable amount of ignorance and stupidity in the human race. Come to think of it, I don’t think there’s any sound or expression that could humanly express the disbelief and disappointment that is required at this point.
Meh.
[meta]
woodsmanone, ah, I see onomatopoeia ain’t is yet another thing at which you fail.
(You do realise that something that is unbelievable is not to be believed, no? ;)
(Your belief in the unbelievable is duly noted))
woodsmanone
What is your take on horses and starlings?
woodsmanone, sarcasm is hard to do in writing, and the internet is crawling with people who will say the stupidest things in dead seriousness.
By the way, you aren’t going to convince me that I am stupid. You also aren’t going to get me to read much more of your nonsense.
If he attacks horses, I’m not sure that I’m going to be able to keep the all of the safety catches on my stupidity crusher engaged.
ChasCPeterson:
Much too frequently – yes. There are certainly excellent police officers who “protect and serve” but there is also a sizable subset of the “autocratic asshole” variety who seem to think they’ve been granted the right to persecute anyone they don’t like the looks of.
So what you’re saying is that in your world, it’s perfectly OK to question, discuss and challenge anything in one of PZ’s posts… except whether it’s funny. If one does question the “humor”, one is immediately branded a member of the so-called “Humor Police” – who don’t threaten anyone, of course – and is then an acceptable target for derision.
What a very odd way to look at things.
And they can then be criticized and/or mocked for it in turn, if other people find the question or challenge obnoxious/stupid/poorly argued. O.o
Of course, it’s not “my world,” it’s PZ’s World and the rest of us only comment in it.
But just to clarify, in this world it’s perfectly OK to question, discuss, and challenge anything in PZ’s posts, period.
But if your challenge is in its entirety ‘that’s not funny’, what’s the point? You might as well share your dislike for peas, or for the color mauve. It’s entirely subjective, purely opinion, and there’s really no reason for anybody else to care about it. So why post it? Only if you’re actually trying to influence the behavior of the blogger by, say, convincing him or her to stop posting those mean jokes about cats of which you are very fond. And that’s simply pointless and even a bit presumptuous. If I was the blogger my reaction would be a shrug; I’d keep posting shit that I thought was funny because it would be (in this hypothetical scenario) my blog. See how it works?
I used the comparison to atheist baby-eating jokes intentionally because I, personally, have always found them tasteless and, well, not funny. But I do not go around trying to police them, because I am adult enough to realize that senses of humor are subject to wide variation.
There’s nothing odd about this at all.
If you think something PZ or anyone else says is misogynist, racist, homophobic, or in any way demeaning to others who can’t fight back*, then bring out your concerns about what’s being said. That’s done often enough, even to PZ.
*There’s a difference between bullying and making a joke. A bully picks on someone who can’t or won’t rebut the bullying. For instance, making a homophobic joke is bullying GLBTs who have a hard time fighting the bullying. On the other hand, making a joke about Christian preachers just being in it for the money and power is acceptable because those preachers are strongly supported by a sizable group. They can fight the bullying.
I just realized that you can’t spell ‘Caturday’ without ‘Cat’ and ‘turd’.
An appropriate cat video