Daily Kittens

Busy day for me today, more posting later.

Oh my!!

Ping pong sea sponge.

Fanfin seadevil.

Eli draws out attention to a delightful new book, The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Deep, reviewed in the NYTimes today, here::

When, more than 70 years ago, William Beebe became the first scientist to descend into the abyss, he described a world of twinkling lights, silvery eels, throbbing jellyfish, living strings as “lovely as the finest lace” and lanky monsters with needlelike teeth.

“It was stranger than any imagination could have conceived,” he wrote in “Half Mile Down” (Harcourt Brace, 1934). “I would focus on some one creature and just as its outlines began to be distinct on my retina, some brilliant, animated comet or constellation would rush across the small arc of my submarine heaven and every sense would be distracted, and my eyes would involuntarily shift to this new wonder.”

Beebe sketched some of the creatures, because no camera of the day was able to withstand the rigors of the deep and record the nuances of this cornucopia of astonishments.

snip

Today, the revolution in lights, cameras, electronics and digital photography is revealing a world that is even stranger than the one that Beebe struggled to describe.

The images arrayed here come from “The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss” (University of Chicago Press, 2007), by Claire Nouvian, a French journalist and film director. In its preface, Ms. Nouvian writes of an epiphany that began her undersea journey.

“It was as though a veil had been lifted,” she says, “revealing unexpected points of view, vaster and more promising.”

The photos above are from the book. Click through to the slideshow for many more deepsea beasties.

Like Eli, this is a book I have to have.

Daily Ripley

She's such a funny little thing.

Late Night Maddie

Such a pretty girl she's grown up to be.

The Reflection Nebula

The Relection Nebula, NGC1333

The dust is so thick in the center of NGC 1333 that you can hardly see the stars forming. Conversely, the very dust clouds that hide the stars also reflects their optical light, giving NGC 1333's predominantly blue glow the general designation of a reflection nebula. A highly detailed image of the nebula, shown above, was taken recently by the Mayall 4-meter telescope on Kitt Peak in Arizona, USA and released to honor astronomer Stephen Strom on his retirement. Visible near the image top are vast blue regions of dust predominantly reflecting the light from bright massive stars. Visible in the thick central dust are not only newly formed stars but red jets and red-glowing gas energized by the light and winds from recently formed young stars. The NGC 1333 nebula contains hundreds of newly formed stars that are less than one million years old. Reflection nebula NGC 1333 lies about 1,000 light years away toward the constellation of Perseus.

Hat tip to Plum P.

Petra!!

A place I would really like to see. Hopefully before madmen blow up the middle east. I don't really think the grail knight is there, but it's fun to imagine it, eh?

photo: Marwan Naamani, Agence France-Presse

Ripley....

In the meantime, Ripley is still a little squirt.

Teen Age Madeleine

Where does the time go? Maddie looks all growed up all of a sudden.

Seems like it was just yesterday she looked like this:

Sisterly Love

You may say, "Awwwwwwwww" now. And I suggest you step away from any furniture with sharp corners for when the eeeeeepiness overtakes you. (I'm looking at you, watertiger.)

Parting Poodle Gifts

This is what loyalty to George Bush will get you.

I don't know how he sleeps at night.

Madeleine

Maddie photographed in the same light.

She enjoys popping out from under the sofa. In fact, they both do, which is why I'm going to need a new sofa this fall.

The tail. Of doom.

Saturday Ripley

I get sick of shooting with the flash, but the lighting in my apartment is terrible. Oh well, here's Ripley in the late afternoon sun.

Friday Eeeeeepiness

Well, blogger photos appears to be bloggered. Eeeeepiness later.

Nevermind, all fixed. Enjoy!

Eeeeeeeeptitude

Haaalllooooooooooo!!!

Give me scritches!!

Owwwwwwwie!!

No kittens were injured in the making of this post.

Ripley looks like she's yelling, but really she's just getting ready to chomp on Maddie.

Kitten Blitz

Gimme that feather!!

Peeps are delicious.

It is such fun to be a kitten.

Public Service

Photo: Win Mcnamee, Getty Images

Sheesh. Not a one of these bushies fuckers understands what the meaning of "public service" is. From the NYTimes, Wolfowitz Said to Push for Deal to Quit:

WASHINGTON, May 16 — After six weeks of combating efforts to oust him as president of the World Bank, Paul D. Wolfowitz began Wednesday to negotiate the terms under which he would resign, in return for the dropping or softening of the charge that he had engaged in misconduct, bank officials said.

Mr. Wolfowitz was said to be adamant that he be cleared of wrongdoing before he resigned, according to people familiar with his thinking.

Yeah, I'll bet. Clearing him of wrongdoing means that he didn't violate his employment contract and then he'll be able to sue the World Bank for his big fat bonus. He's been there less than two years. Does he really think he's earned a $400,000 bonus?

Nice Wolfie, you're supposed to be working at an institution that deals with world poverty. And you use the opportunity to enrich yourself and your girlfriend.

It's all about the money. With these guys it's ALWAYS about the money.

I hope the World Bank tells Wolfowitz, Cheney and Chimpy to fuck off and die.

Bees

Just a beautiful photo. Isn't nature grand?

Photographed in Hawaii by Ken Love, Associated Press.

Kittenz

Help! there's a peep on my head!

She likes feathers.

Alfie!!

Virgotex has a new kitten!! (more kitten goodness at the link.)

Most excellent. Alfie appears to be a on his way to becoming a plushy kitty, which is the kind we like best here at plushlife. Welcome Alfie and congrats to Virgotex.


Pup Possum surreptitiously investigates the kitten's bottom.

Late night kittenz

Both of them, adorable.

Particle Accelerator, paging MAXX!!

NYTimes/Valerio Mezzanoti

I certainly hope that Maxx returns from his comet trip in time to check this out. A Giant Takes on Physic's Biggest Questions.

The physicists, wearing hardhats, kneepads and safety harnesses, are scrambling like Spiderman over this assembly, appropriately named Atlas, ducking under waterfalls of cables and tubes and crawling into hidden room-size cavities stuffed with electronics.

They are getting ready to see the universe born again.

Again and again and again — 30 million times a second, in fact.

Starting sometime next summer if all goes to plan, subatomic particles will begin shooting around a 17-mile underground ring stretching from the European Center for Nuclear Research, or Cern, near Geneva, into France and back again — luckily without having to submit to customs inspections.

Crashing together in the bowels of Atlas and similar contraptions spaced around the ring, the particles will produce tiny fireballs of primordial energy, recreating conditions that last prevailed when the universe was less than a trillionth of a second old.

Whatever forms of matter and whatever laws and forces held sway Back Then — relics not seen in this part of space since the universe cooled 14 billion years ago — will spring fleetingly to life, over and over again in all their possible variations, as if the universe were enacting its own version of the “Groundhog Day” movie. If all goes well, they will leave their footprints in mountains of hardware and computer memory.

BTW, U.S. scientist would be getting ready to answer those questions, but our congress cancelled the American project in 1993. Fuckers.

Dark Matter!!

Photo: NASA from the Hubble Space Telescope

This is kind of fun, Hubble Reveals Ghostly Ring of Dark Matter. Ghostly ring! dark matter!!! Spooky!!

Astronomers have discovered an enormous, ghostly ring of dark matter 5 billion light-years away--the most blatant evidence to date for the existence of a mysterious substance hidden throughout the universe.

Dark matter makes up a vast majority of gravity-exerting mass in the universe, while only about 10 percent is matter we can see and touch. If dark matter didn't exist, scientists say, galaxies like the Milky Way would have already flown apart from a severe lack of gravitational "glue."

I joke, but this is actually serious stuff in the astrophysical world, and a pretty important discovery.

The picture is cool as well.

Fallwell, still dead at 73

Satan reacts.

"Fuck, this place already smells bad enough without that fat old asshole."

(this one is for Hecate)

Falwell dead at 73

And God responds.

Oh, was that uncivil? Tant pis. My motto in life is to try to leave the world a better place than when you came into it. He clearly did not do that.

So I don't give a fuck if he rests in peace or not.

Ah, sisterly love

Ripley decides Maddie has slept quite long enough.

"Just cos I'm sleepy doesn't mean I can't still can slap the shit out of you, you little goofball."

Daily Madeleine

Maddie plays peep football. In her sleep.

Her tail has acheived truly mutant size.

Okay, I'm awake now. Just quit flashy-thinging me.

Morning Ripppppleeeeeeey

Ya know, if I could stay home, I would.

Afternoon Ripleeeeeee

First we play, then we nap.

The fuzzy grey thing in the foreground is Maddie's insanely plushy tail.

Yesterday we had a bit of kitten trauma. The kiddens were playing chase, merrily leaping over the furniture, when Maddie chased Ripley up over the sofa onto my desk, where upon the two of them went sliding off the edge in a shower of staplers, mail and other desky stuff.

Ripley was so frightened she went and hid under the bed. Took me half an hour to calm her down. I was so concerned that she was injured that I almost packed her up and took her to the vet. (I'm not sure if she got hit with something or not, or if the noise just scared her). She quickly recovered though, and was back to her hellion ways within the hour and was none the worse for wear.

Funny little munchkin.

I just like the pitcher

Photo: David Wettergreen- Carnegie Mellon

Ah yes, the power of a nice photograph. It led me to this interesting article about a robot that might lead the way to exploration on Jupiter and Europa. Mexican Sinkhole May Lead NASA to Jupiter.

Mostly though, I just liked the photograph. Undersea! with purty colors.

Daily kittenz

If I sit in the window and look cute will you stay home with me?

Maddie likes to tuck her feetsies up under her chin when she sleeps. The photo is weird, she looks like she has no legs.

Such whiners

Snoozing.

Spotted tummy.

And Rippppppp-llllleeeeeeeeee!!

Oh, and the whiners aren't the kittenz, it's my readers who can't go a day without their plush fix. Addicts!!