Comments

  1. Tony ∞ºQueer Duck Hivemind Minionº∞ says

    PZ:
    I hate to tell you this, but not only do cats beat rocks, they beat cephalopods.

    ::ducks::

  2. Holms says

    I was thinking to myself ‘it would be unfair to write off a song I’ve never heard simply because Bjork sang / wrote it, I should give it a shot’.

    To my surprise, brief patches of it were actually quite good!

  3. raphaelsofaer says

    This video, courtesy of America’s finest news source, is key to your knowledge of rocks worldwide:

  4. Tethys says

    I like rocks, cats, and cephalopods. In fact, later today I will spend some time carving a rock into a cuttlefish while being harassed by cats who want to use my lap.

  5. erikthebassist says

    Rocks don’t purr.
    Purring is awesome.
    Therefore cats are better than rocks.
    QED.

    Yes but can a cat travelling fast enough vaporize the planet? Didn’t think so.

  6. UnknownEric says

    Yes but can a cat travelling fast enough vaporize the planet? Didn’t think so.

    Maybe if it’s Nyan Cat.

  7. Ogvorbis: ջարդված says

    Yes but can a cat travelling fast enough vaporize the planet? Didn’t think so.

    Depends on the size and velocity of the cat.

    For instance, if we assume a perfectly spherical space cat, frozen, with a diameter of 10,000 metres, impacting at a 45 degree angle in 200m deep water at a speed of 72 km per second, it would create a seafloor crater 142 kilometres in diameter with a crater depth of 1.32km. And even 500km away, the tsunami would arrive with an amplitude of between 26.6 and 53.2 metres and the wind velocity at the same distance would be over 2000mph.

    Scale that up a few more magnitudes and boom! no more earth.

  8. JohnnieCanuck says

    Libyan Desert Glass may have been formed when a significant meteor came in at a shallow angle and radiated so much heat that the sand it passed over melted into globules.

    This would have been awesome to experience, but not unless there were sufficient tens of kilometres between the observer and the meteor so that it could also be memorable.

    Rocks rock. One of my cats drools.

  9. magistramarla says

    PZ, you are really reaching today.
    Those rocks are lovely, and I live less than a mile from a number of such views – very nice to enjoy on a lovely day.
    However, those views can’t snuggle up to me, purring and warm, on a cold, rainy day like this one, while I recover from a bad fall, resulting in a bad headache and a very sore back.

  10. erikthebassist says

    Heck, even paper beats rocks.

    Oh please, that game needs revision. Covering something up isn’t beating it. Have you ever seen a cat shred a piece of paper? Throw a rock a sufficiently taught piece of paper and see what happens.

    Rocks>scissors>cats>paper

    Q fucking E.D.

  11. Ogvorbis: ջարդված says

    Wait, erikthebasist. Are you claiming that the giant frozen spherical space cat doesn’t exist? Prove it!

  12. erikthebassist says

    rocks:

    Don’t require feeding

    Don’t require a litter box

    Don’t kill for the fun of it

    Don’t tempt you to call them then refuse

    Can be kept as pets

    Won’t tear up your furniture

    Don’t lick their own ass in plain view constantly

    Don’t cough up fur balls.

    Won’t try and get out every time you open the door.

    Are plainly never alive, so no need for guesswork when considering quantum mechanics.

    Can vaporize a planet.

    Sometimes are shiny.

  13. erikthebassist says

    Ogvorbis, that’s a teapot you’re seeing through your telescope, not a giant frozen space cat.

  14. Ogvorbis: ջարդված says

    Ogvorbis, that’s a teapot you’re seeing through your telescope, not a giant frozen space cat.

    Prove it.

    Oh, and rocks can be dissolved in acid. So there!

  15. Nepenthe says

    Don’t lick their own ass in plain view constantly

    I wish. I’d be thrilled if my cat did this.

  16. erikthebassist says

    Don’t lick their own ass in plain view constantly

    I wish. I’d be thrilled if my cat did this.

    Ok… I… I… I’m slightly disturbed by this comment

    *backing away from napenthe very slowly*

  17. nohellbelowus says

    Okay, quick Rorschach Test. In the photo of the rocks, in particular the ones in the foreground at the right side of the picture, who else sees a large capybara mounting a young brown bear?

    C’mon… admit it!

  18. magistramarla says

    Nepenthe probably has a cat like mine – too fat and lazy to lick his ass. The dog often does it for him, and he seems to appreciate it. Sometimes I even give it a cleaning for him.
    Don’t judge – I did it for my babies, so I’ll do it for my pets, too.

  19. davem says

    Wait, erikthebasist. Are you claiming that the giant frozen spherical space cat doesn’t exist? Prove it!

    It used to exist. But then I threw a rock at it. Rocks rock.

  20. erikthebassist says

    Okay, quick Rorschach Test. In the photo of the rocks, in particular the ones in the foreground at the right side of the picture, who else sees a large capybara mounting a young brown bear?

    C’mon… admit it!

    Pervadolia? ok, I see it.

    *****

    magistramarla, I was clearly joking. I imagined it was something to the effect, having owned two cats myself. If you haven’t noticed, this whole thread has been lighthearted in nature debbie downer.

  21. magistramarla says

    Erik,
    I wasn’t being a Debbie downer. I was sort of making fun of my fat and lazy cat. He’s a 17 1/2 lb. flame-point Siamese who is good for nothing but purring and loving. He’s so friendly that he will follow the exterminator around the house just in case the guy might stop and give him some love.
    We deeply love our cats (dog, too!) and I love to tease PZ about his anti-Caturday posts.

  22. Ogvorbis: ջարդված says

    . I was sort of making fun of my fat and lazy cat. He’s a 17 1/2 lb. flame-point Siamese

    Pfft! Piker.

    Dust is down to only 26 pounds. He is large anyway (he can stand on his back legs and rest his chin on the counter) but he has the build of an NFL lineman — lots of muscles and lots of fat.

    But he limber enough to lick his own ass. Usually.

    And he drools. And is aggressively affectionate.

  23. Ogvorbis: ջարդված says

    Oh. Right.

    Dust is a cat.

    (Maine Coon, Ragdoll, and something else (at least, that is what our vet says)).

  24. JohnnieCanuck says

    Ogvorbis @11

    Imagine a perfectly spherical kitten about the size of a baseball, thrown by a ‘pitcher’ at 0.9c.

    The situation you have then, is analysed by xkcd at his What if? page.

  25. alanbagain says

    Rocks ROCK!

    Just for starters. They tell you about Earth’s history:

    from its beginning at 4.54 (+/- 1%) billion years old, with a maximum figure of 4.567 billion years old and how:

    it was pummelled about 3.8 billion years by the late great bombardment
    the Earth’s atmosphere has changed allowing the evolution of the staggering range of living things
    the continents have combined into a supercontinent, not once but approximately every 300-500 million years
    mountain chains are formed and reduced to dust
    how animals and plants evolved
    why volcanoes and earthquakes occur

    and so many other things about our world.

    AND they are so beautiful:
    Search google images for ecolgite, larvikite, banded iron formations, banded hornfels. These all say special things about the history of the Earth and how it works.

    When he was young my grandson and I went on fieldtrips and looked at many rocks. He asked me once, “Granpa, is this a good rock?” and I told him there are no bad rocks!

    Rocks ROCK

    (I appreciate other things as well … especially my wife – she’s beautiful too!)

  26. Ragutis says

    Okay, quick Rorschach Test. In the photo of the rocks, in particular the ones in the foreground at the right side of the picture, who else sees a large capybara mounting a young brown bear?

    Actually, and ironically, I thought that looked like a big puffy fat cat like a Himalayan or something perched on top. Lemme have a few more beers and I’ll see if I can see the cross species sex act you’re describing.

  27. Nepenthe says

    She isn’t even too fat. She’s just lazy/stupid. Hasn’t figured out the proper leg position to do it easily; too lazy to make the effor the hard way.

    *shakes head*

    —-

    Erik, I see the capybara, but I think you’re just fantasizing the brown bear. *backs rather quickly away from erik*

  28. Ogvorbis: ջարդված says

    The situation you have then, is analysed by xkcd at his What if? page.

    Okay. It is official. There really is an xkcd for everything.

  29. DLC says

    so, it’s Paper>Rock>Scissors ? where is cat in there ?
    Paper gets shredded by cat.
    Rock misses cat.
    Scissors clip cat’s fur.
    Mr Spock explains cat.
    Paper debunks Spock.

  30. erikthebassist says

    magistramarla, My bad, failure to grok. =)

    Napenthe, back away slowly from nohellbelowus, xe saw it first :P

  31. Lofty says

    Today, Sunday, (which is your tomorrow) I rode my bicycle across Hindmarsh Island to the mouth of Australia’s longest river the Murray. On the shore of the island opposite the mouth I found a nice sun-warmed rock to park my butt on, had the sun on my back and a stiff sea breeze in my face and contemplated with sadness the tiny opening to the open sea you could hit a baseball across. Ships were wrecked here last century, attempting to enter the rip with the stiff southerly gale heaping the water up into short dangerous waves on a crippling sand bar.
    As I munched on my sandwich I stroked the veins in the adjacent sandstone block, I thought about about furriness, or the lack of it, of rocks. Yea, they may indeed have false warmth on a sunny day, but a cat’s warmth lasts much longer. A house made of rocks takes forever to heat, a cat is up to therapeutic temp all day and all night. Rocks rock but cats do too.

  32. Ogvorbis: ջարդված says

    Ogvorbis: Cat’s can’t be dissolved in acid? Two letters: HF

    I never claimed they can’t be. I just, conveniently, left out that bit of data in my claim.

    ===========

    And the capybara humping the bear? Don’t see it. I see a smug looking Persian cat sitting on the rocks. And, by the expression, the cat is ‘saying’, “Don’t worry about me. I’ll just sit here, on these cold, wet rocks, while you go and enjoy your life. I’ll be fine.”

  33. blindrobin says

    PZ is messing with youse guys… Everyone has failed to notice that this is actually a cat post. Bjork IS a cat.

  34. F says

    nohellbelowus

    Holy. Shit.

    Not seeing the bear, and the capybara looks more like teh domesticated Guinea Pig (a lot).

  35. hackerguitar says

    > Rocks rock. One of my cats drools.

    I call anecdata on the second sentence.

    Besides, drool is liquid. And as we all learned*, liquids, given enough time, will ablate rock. So a nearly-infinite number of cats drooling on a rock for a bloody long time*** will eventually wear it away. Not as fast as a perfectly spherical space cat but the probability of it occurring is ever so slightly higher.

    * well, learned** if we took geology
    ** for values of learning which do not include trying to figure out how to code during class…
    *** depending on how hard the water is the cats drink (e.g., mineral content)

  36. jarimakela says

    I am sorry to say it that even if cats purr and rocks are cool and cephelapods can grasp both, Björk makes me happy. Björk vs. other things, Björk wins.