Plush Life: 11/11/07

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Yes, saturday is caturday

My beautiful, loving gurl kittehs. How did I get so lucky?

Occasionally I'll hear someone say that animals can't love, that they're only interested in you if you feed them. Of course that's nonsense- anyone who's ever bonded with a kitteh or a dog knows that they're capable of deep devotion. So I loved running across this remarkable photo last night.

The photographer had captioned it, "A polar bear cub kisses his mother..." Teh sweet, eh? I see it here at home-the casual affection my kittenz show each other is adorable. (Not to mention the complete devotion they show to me.)

The bears were photographed on the shore of the Hudson Bay, where the bears congregate in the fall, waiting for the ice pack to solidify.

photo: Jonathan Hayward/Canadian Press

Beware teh kitteh

Dis kitteh is a little upset about the recent news about global warming.

photo: Ilya Naymushin/Reuters, Russia

Friday, November 16, 2007

Support the Writers Stike

The writers from The Daily Show tell you why:

Hat tip to my new favorite blog, Bad Astronomy Blog, but don't be fooled, the astronomy isn't actually bad.

Moar Rippppppleeeeeeeee!!

Iz moar fun to scratch on cowshe.

Kai, U cot me, I iz maekin' biscuits. Iz troo.

Hmmm. Iz bacon up dere?

MoAr Maddie!

Sigh. She iz grown up kitteh nao.

Action kitteh! wut a plushy tummee

"Wut U mean I look liek hoot owl? DOAN WANT!"

Krugman DOES have a kitteh

And his kitteh is teh plushy! somehow, I don't find that surprising. Most intelligent peeples luvs them some plushy kittehs.

Photo by Peter Yang, Rolling Stone.

UR friday kittehs

Maddie hears something alarming outside.

"I can haz carrot and U can't"

"Halllooooo!!"

"Oh p'shaw"

Lion kitteh Maxx

Fear teh MOUSER!!

This is Tizer, a police kitteh in London. Cat recruited to patrol station. Kittehs enjoy being useful, ya know.

I always thought that NYC should enlist kittehs to fight their rat problem. Set up a colony of tabbies in Central Park- and voilá, problem solved.

Guest Kittehs!!

Woody!

and Gordo, who was named after astronaut Gordon Smith.

These nice kittehs belong to long-time lurker Ramona. Most excellent!

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Kitteh for Steve

Ripley sez, "doan U be sad Steve, cause I luvs you!"

Star News... ahem, er PLANET NEWS!!

Gemini Observatory/Aura

From National Geographic News: Star May Be Forming Rocky Planets

November 15, 2007—The violent formation of a new solar system has left one heck of a mess around a nearby star—and suggests that Earthlike planets may be far more common than previously believed, scientists say.

Using an infrared camera on the Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii, researchers recently detected heat that they believe originates from massive amounts of warm space dust surrounding HD 23514, a hundred-million-year-old member of the nearby Pleiades star cluster. The well-known cluster, also called the Seven Sisters, is located about 400 light-years from Earth.

snip

"This is the first clear evidence for planet formation in the Pleiades, and the results we are presenting strongly suggest that terrestrial planets like those in our solar system are quite common," study leader Joseph Rhee, a postdoctoral student at the University of California, Los Angeles, said in a statement.

The research is slated to appear in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

Not for nothing, but don't these artists who illustrate for astronomers freaking rock? Amazing.