Pics kindly donated by Nancy U.

“They are the two new girls in the house – Margo is the sleek black kitty, Maggie is the tabby. Margo likes to purr very loudly, and Maggie has decided that fetch is a pretty fun game when you use a toy mouse rather than a stick.”

Maggie

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Margo

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Handsome kittens, they are. Thanks, Nancy! I feel better now.

This beats the hell out of looking at Alberto Gonzales pics.

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Well, my fellow citizens, this week seems to be the one that’s finally edging into the truly dire territory at the beginning of the actual fight over ‘executive privilege’, whatever the hell that is, that eventually determines whether we end up with a constitutional republic, or a dictatorship.

Or maybe I’m just being a cranky old loony.

In either case, rather than rant about it again today, I think I’ll take a break from it all:

This is Secret Kitty. He’s four months old. When he grows up, he wants to become a CD collection. He’s been practicing a lot lately, so he might make it, if he continues to persevere like this. I’m proud of his ambition.

If you have any more nauseatingly cute (and original) animal or child pics that you’ve been hoarding, please e-mail them to eatourbrains@gmail.com, and I’ll publish them here. I’m needing a heaping helping of nauseatingly cute right now, to counteract the nauseatingly ugly I’ve been wading through lately.

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Pic credit to Rachael, of course.

I love competence and professional pride. I think they’re sexier than broad shoulders or tight glutes, and right up there with a good voice and beautiful hands (hey, everyone has their buttons). But like most people, I get tunnel vision about all the different kinds of competence that are out there. Just because I’ve never wanted to be a butcher doesn’t mean that there aren’t artists out there for whom the proper filleting of a chicken breast is a deeply satisfying thing.

So: this morning I went in to have a crown put in, but my dentist wasn’t satisfied with it. Seeing that the crown is for the upper front tooth that I cleverly smashed last month, having it look like it belongs with the teeth on either side is important (in building design this is referred to as “vernacular architecture”). The dentist left it up to me whether this was something to worry about, but it clearly bothered her that the crown didn’t play well with others, and considering that it’s likely to be in place as long as I have teeth, well, her concern made some sense to me. Which is why I found myself driving to another part of the city, to the dental ceramics lab, so that her “crown guy” could get a better match for me.

My dentist warned me beforehand that this was not a glamorous place–just a ceramics lab. And in fact it was several rows of old desks littered with tools and magnifying lamps, and a patina of ceramic dust covering everything. Kind of a dreary place, not somewhere I’d want to work. I had to wait for a few minutes, until the “crown guy” arrived (tearing down the hall on a Razor scooter!) and turned out to be a tall, handsome, middle-aged Chinese guy with a deep voice, who looked at the crown he’d originally produced, shook his head, and announced that that one was all wrong. He then stood me in the light and spent five minutes debating with himself between two shades that were almost indistinguishable to my eyes. He swapped them one for the other in situ, hmming to himself as I grinned like a serial killer. And I realized that it was a matter of pride to the Crown Guy that he make my crown as close to the tone of my teeth as he possibly could. I’m gonna look great because making me look good makes him look good.

I get tunnel vision sometimes; there are all sorts of jobs I wouldn’t want to do, and many, many jobs I never even imagine. Making ceramic dental crowns is one of them. And the Crown Guy reminded me that it’s not just a job–for him, at least, it’s a calling. Cool.

Via Climate Progress, a recent study (PDF) has some great news on the green tech front. It’s looking as though plug-in hybrids are a great option, regardless of the source of their electricity.

Even coal-powered plug-ins are better than conventional cars. If 60% of American drivers bought a plug-in, we would reduce our oil imports by twice as much as we are currently importing from Saudi Arabia.

And another cool thing: hybrids would mostly be plugged in at night, thus making use of unused capacity. So the impact on the nation’s power grid would be manageable: maybe a 7 to 8% increase in electricity demand.

So what are we waiting for? Eh?

Oh, yeah, I want my plug-in hybrid. I want it NOW!

Update: here’s something fun. Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection is sponsoring a contest. Come up with a 15-, 30-, or 60-second ad to showcase what you or someone you know is doing to alleviate the climate crisis, or to inspire others to make changes. First prize is a Toyota hybrid, and they have other cool prizes in store for finalists and semi-finalists.

More info is here.

I got this in email this morning (via Tanley McMullan):

There is an awesome dance, called the Thousand-Hand Guanyin, which is making the rounds across the net. Considering the tight coordination required, their accomplishment is nothing short of amazing, even if they were not all deaf. Yes, you read correctly. All 21 of the dancers are complete deaf-mutes [sic].

Relying only on signals from trainers at the four corners of the stage, these extraordinary dancers deliver a visual spectacle that is at once intricate and stirring. Its first major international debut was in Athens last year at the closing ceremonies for the 2004 Paralympics. But it had long been in the repertoire of the Chinese Disabled People’s Performing Art Troupe and had traveled to more than 40 countries.

Its lead dancer is 29 year old Tai Lihua, who has a BA from the Hubei Fine Arts Institute. The video was recorded in Beijing during the Spring Festival this year.

It’s breathtaking—truly magnificent. Enjoy.