You know what’s spiffier than cats?
Rocks.
You know what else is spiffier than cats?
People singing about rocks.
Anti-Caturday Post
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
You know what’s spiffier than cats?
Rocks.
You know what else is spiffier than cats?
People singing about rocks.
Dana Hunter, of course, loves cats AND rocks. Me too, I think.
Rocks don’t purr.
Purring is awesome.
Therefore cats are better than rocks.
QED.
PZ:
I hate to tell you this, but not only do cats beat rocks, they beat cephalopods.
::ducks::
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!
This video, courtesy of America’s finest news source, is key to your knowledge of rocks worldwide:
…This is every TED talk ever.
but only for art projects
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.
Yes but can a cat travelling fast enough vaporize the planet? Didn’t think so.
Maybe if it’s Nyan Cat.
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.
10 and 11, fictional cats people. My argument stands. rocks>cats
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.
They are the bee’s knees.
Heck, even paper beats rocks.
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.
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.
See that hamster shaped rock on a pedestal? Now that’s cool.
So does Spock.
erikthebassist
FYI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock
Wait, erikthebasist. Are you claiming that the giant frozen spherical space cat doesn’t exist? Prove it!
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.
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!
I wish. I’d be thrilled if my cat did this.
look at it again and listen to this while you do, you’ll see.
Ok… I… I… I’m slightly disturbed by this comment
*backing away from napenthe very slowly*
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!
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.
It used to exist. But then I threw a rock at it. Rocks rock.
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.
I thought it was a rat, but I’m glad I’m not the only one who sees a rodent
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.
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.
Oh. Right.
Dust is a cat.
(Maine Coon, Ragdoll, and something else (at least, that is what our vet 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.
By the way, over in the cattier part of the Internet neighbourhood, I found this ‘blog’ posting. Too funny.
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!)
Oh, it’s on. http://freethoughtblogs.com/entequilaesverdad/2012/11/17/geology-is-best-with-kittehs/
Remember, PZ: you brought this on yourself. Pfft!
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.
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*
Okay. It is official. There really is an xkcd for everything.
You people seeing things, are you talking about the giant tardigrade?
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.
magistramarla, My bad, failure to grok. =)
Napenthe, back away slowly from nohellbelowus, xe saw it first :P
Wait.
Are talking about Mr. Spock or Dr. Spock?
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.
Ogvorbis : we’re talking Big-Bang-Theory.
see : http://youtu.be/cSLeBKT7-sM
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.”
PZ is messing with youse guys… Everyone has failed to notice that this is actually a cat post. Bjork IS a cat.
Ogvorbis, what is “ջարդված”?
nohellbelowus
Holy. Shit.
Not seeing the bear, and the capybara looks more like teh domesticated Guinea Pig (a lot).
Rocks are not mammals! Whoa.
Rocks of that size can contain cats, and are therefore awesome.
> 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)
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.