Kitten on a Keyboard

The destructive power of the kitten has been vastly underestimated, except by the Goodies. Buster, pictured here, has just eliminated a whole evening's deathless prose, and also designed a new, improved MP3 player. A six week old kitten and an antediluvian keyboard do not make a good combination!

Big Brother and Normative Ethics

I have always found this 'personality' particularly repellant. Much is made of her motherhood, caring for babies, yet she makes her 'living' (no apologies for scare quotes) mocking the afflicted. This may be a reflection on the moraliy of my parents, brought up in the war years, or even upon my grandmother who lived through the aftermath of the great war, but as a small boy I was always told 'Do not mock the afflicted.' I was never told 'they have enough trouble anyway', but it was taken as read. To profit from the social ineptitude of one's fellow beings is either some kind of Nietschean triumph, or a piece of manipulative malpractice of the most loathsome kind. I leave you to decide.

In Praise of... Sir Peter Medawar and Reason

Yesterday I came upon this critique of Pere Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man, via a commenter at Butterflies and Wheels. I think it is a marvellous piece of clear thinking and debunking of obfuscatory hyperbole. For those of you who cannot be bothered to read the whole thing, I recommend this wonderful paragraph - it is particularly relevant to these days when 50% must go into tertiary education.
"How have people come to be taken in by The Phenomenon of Man? We must not underestimate the size of the market for works of this kind, for philosophy-fiction. Just as compulsory primary education created a market catered for by cheap dailies and weeklies, so the spread of secondary and latterly tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well-developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought."
Elitist? Possibly, but elitism is such a slippery word. We all applaud excellence and abhor giving unfair social advantage to the already advantaged. Perhaps secondary and tertiary educational institutions should make greater efforts to inculcate the capacity for analytical thought. It is sadly lacking in many graduates, and one PhD of my acquaintance.

Boofykitz

The boys have been practising their ring skills, not with Buster of course, 'cos she can whup any two of them. I'm finally getting some good pictures, because I have figured out how to get the flash to work on the digicam. The one in the foreground is Oberon. We suspect that he is the most showable, but Bianca (Buster) is the most outgoing, Polaris has the most endearing face and Rastaban, as is perhaps typical of browns, has a coat quality that seems to us just what a Burmese coat should be - dense, short and very fine and shiny. Had to de-flea our entire feline population today. Topaz does not take kindly to being sprayed, and I have the scars to prove it!

Comings and Goings

Sparky died. We are very disappointed. Four kittens are doing well. We are very pleased. We have chosen suitably pretentious names for our babies - Boofykatz Blue Bianca for the biggest fluffiest monster in the litter. Polaris and Oberon for the two boys who seem to regard life as a personal sleep-over cum playfight. And for our Brown boy, the most pretentious of them all - Boofykatz Brown Rastaban.

Sparky - and the Argument from Evil

She is fading fast now. It is difficult to know how much of one's tristesse is self indulgent, how much is culturally induced, and how much is 'authentic'. Perhaps, as with all subjective judgements, there is no definitive answer. I wonder how the theists can argue that the suffering and premature death of a small and beloved creature can in any way glorify their wretched vision of an intemperate and childish deity? This is the second time I have had to watch a kitten die. I can cope and comprehend if the world is the way I believe it to be, but if I believed there was a god, what a foul and corrupt being that god would have to be.

Burmese Boofykatz - 3 Weeks

If ever the capricious mix of joy and trouble we find in our lives needed illustration, here it is. Four frolicsome boofykitz and one poor little Sparky plagued by FCKS (flat chested kitten syndrome). We now doubt that she will grow to adulthood, despite our efforts at handfeeding. It is perhaps indicative of the human condition that one tragedy can completely overshadow the four joyous bundles we have also been gifted.

John Reid - Blair's Death Knell

So, this mad axeman has been appointed Home Secretary. The man who believes that the poor should be permitted to self-euthanise on nicotine. The man who never answers a question but always gets the point across that he is a complete tosser. Well done Tony. The best thing you have ever done for the country. I used to dread hearing Reid on the Today programme, because for all his bluster he was just an apparatchik. Now he has a substantual task, and I cannot wait to see the arrogant celtic git (yes, the West Lothian question does rankle)fall flat on his extremely unattractive face.

Mixed News

A bitter sweet day. The now smallest boofykit is not doing well. We fear she may die, and Max and I find this very hard to stomach. She is such a sweet and determined little life. I have decided, for some vague atavistic and all too human reason, that her spark will not disappear nameless - so, leading in to our other piece of news - she is Boofykatz Blue Sparky. As I write this I have tears streaming down my face, and I am not remotely apologetic for my emotional transparency. I hope that fate will smile kindly upon her.
I am, as any of you who have read this blog more than once will know, a fairly confident atheist; so perhaps you will humour me and picture a small grey scrap of flesh, claws and hair, eyes barely open and desperate to taste life, and ponder for just a moment what kind of pathetic deity would see her fade hopelessly into oblivion.
The good news, though somewhat overshadowed, is that today our GCCF prefix was confirmed. Boofykatz is now a dynasty, and Topaz is our founding queen.