Knowing my predilection for Friday felinity, Michael J today sent in the link to a story entitled Baby tiger found stuffed in bag at Thai airport.  Baby tiger: cute.  Smuggling baby tigers: bad. Rich Iranians like to keep baby tigers as pets: bad.  Baby tiger nearly died: bad.  Baby tiger rescued from nasty smuggling woman: good.  You know the kind of thing.

But why, instead of exporting tigers from Thailand being illegal, doesn’t Thailand let the exporting of tigers be a legal business?  There is obviously money to be made, provided they don’t over-produce the little things, thereby reducing their exoticism and pet snob appeal.  And legal capitalists would be far more likely to worry about preserving tigers in the long term than illegal smugglers, who might just swipe the lot for short term gain.

I seem to recall Leon Louw having written stuff about this, at some time in the past.  His point, as I recall it, was that lefties get all gooey-eyed about endangered species, but don’t care enough about them to make them unendangered to the point of actually ensuring that they survive and flourish.  Flourishing animals aren’t romantic and endearing.  Only endangered ones are good.  Link anyone?  I couldn’t find anything by Louw on this specific point.

More cattery (via David Thompson) here.  Stupid New York women dressing cats up in stupid costumes.

Bad.
 
 
 
 

Here.  Can’t ignore that just because I’m on holiday.

Photoed by me at Farnborough, minutes after photoing this cat:

I particularly like the shovel in the bumper.  See the picture on the left.

Actually it all makes sense, despite my immediate objections on the day.  Supacat is the brand of the vehicle I photoed.  The Bloodhound is one of those spaceships with wheels that people drive across dried out lakes in America, trying to break the world land speed record.  And Falcon is the name of the company that makes the rockets for the spaceship with wheels.  The Supacat carries the Falcons for the Bloodhound, which is why it calls itself the Bloodhound quiver.  Clear?  I think so.

I’m still confused, however, about whether the “Falcon Project” linked to there is anything to do with this.  I believe they’re two separate enterprises, but comments agreeing with that or disagreeing with that would be very welcome.

Cat that lives in the cold but doesn’t need earmuffs, on account of its ears being so small, here:

Their thick fur and short ears tell you that manuls ...

It's called a manul, and is also known as Pallas’s Cat, after the eighteenth century naturalist who first described it.

… have to deal with extreme cold. Because they protrude, ears are heat radiators: that’s why you need earmuffs in winter. To conserve heat, natural selection has produced smaller ears in species that live in cold areas.  (This regularity is called “Allen’s Rule” by evolutionists.)

The Man from Why Evolution Is True says that this creature is “unbearably cute”.  I agree that it is cute to look at, but does it have a cute personality?

Indeed.  First the teeshirt:

And while I’m on about a teeshirt, how do you spell teeshirt? Is it teeshirt?  Or T-shirt?  Or tee-shirt?  Or maybe t-shirt?  Informative comments please.  But however you spell it, I knew, as soon as I saw it, that this particular tea shirt would come in handy for here, today.

But now, take a look at that insect.  What is the explanation of that?

Strange.  I looks like an LP cover or something.  Is this some kind of visual reference that might make sense to others attuned to pop culturecirca 1970?  Or is it just the way it is, because that’s the way it just happens to be, for a merely private reason.

I now have to stop doing laborious postings about the Farnborough Airshow and read three chapters of Man, Economy and State by (a) Murray Rothbard and (b) 6pm this evening.

Here are two scary pictures of helicopters doing scary things, from here, and from here:

Although, you can do wonders with Things, when you photo one Thing directly in front of another Thing.  The Thing behind, actually quite far behind, can look as if it’s almost on top of the Thing in front.  You can make two airplanes look almost intertwined.

The photos are of the Royal Navy’s Westland Lynx helicopter display team, aka the Black Cats, who will be performing at the Bournemouth Air Festival in August.

Tomorrow I’ll be at the Farnborough Air Show, assuming all goes well.  I wonder if these aerial felines will be performing there also.  Apparently not.

I love to photo airplanes, but usually my photos are too blurry (because too far up in the sky) and with a good view only of the underneath, like this:

And that’s one of the better ones.

With luck, tomorrow, I’ll get a closer look at an A380.

The blog posting (linked to from here) is entitled Exploitation Movie Posters 1939 - 1960.  But why exactly are these movies referred to as “Exploitation” movies?  Who is being exploited?  And in what way is Apocalypse Now any less exploitative than the movies advertised in these particular posters?

I suppose the notion being got at is that it is our desire for pure and utterly undiluted entertainment, with no morally lofty excuse attached, to do with being educated, uplifted, improved, that is being “exploited”.  Our baser instincts are being played to.  Our ids are being massaged, while our egos look down, aghast.

Being a libertarian, I am particularly wary of the word “exploitation”, blurring as it does, often deliberately, the boundary between being used in a way that you consent to (often enthusiastically) and being used (often outrageously) in a way that you do not consent to.  Dare to favour the first and you get accused of favouring the second.  Which is a difficult trick to combat if you don’t realise what the trick is.

Putting the point about ids and egos in the language of consent, to talk of “exploitation” movies is to suggest that while our base appetites “consent” to watch movies like these, we ourselves do not.  We are at the mercy of our appetites, who are co-opted by our “exploiters”.  Our appetites betray us, enslave us even.  But controlling our base appetites, if that’s what we decide they are, is for us to do for ourselves.

Personally I don’t think that there is anything wrong about enjoying Cat-Women of the Moon.

Incoming from “Tony et famille”, who live in Quimper, Brittany:

Hello Brian

Bonjour.

I caught Caesar the cat in the act of sneezing on the hot tin roof of our car in Quimper.

According to the date embedded in this picture, this took place as long ago as September 7th 2009, or maybe even July 9th 2009.  Yet did the mainstream media pay any attention to this sensational circumstance, either at the time or since?  I googled “cat on hot tin roof” but all I got was a lot of drivel about a play.  No wonder blogs are taking over the media world.

If you would like to use the pic in your blog the usual fee of 50000 Euros will apply ...

Fine.  I’ll settle up in a couple of years, by which time a single figure clutch of our British pounds should more than suffice to obtain the appropriate brick of Euros.