Mad Times

Original appearance here.

Previous appearences on icanhascheezburger.com: subway service, facebook.

Well, only 32, but they’re all the stars within 14 light years of home in a 3d animation so you can tell how relatively far away they are. The lines show whether they’re above or below the ecliptic. Nifty.

Whoa, I just noticed that if you point your mouse at a star it will tell you all about it.

via James Nicoll

I’ve dreaded having to write this post for a long time, but we said goodbye to our dear Alice on Friday afternoon.

It’s been about a year and a half since her initial hospitalization and diagnosis with feline chronic renal failure (kidney failure). She responded wonderfully to treatment and we’re thankful for the second chance we got with her. She’d been doing great until earlier this summer when she declined a bit, and then in the last couple of weeks, things just got worse. Nothing painful or horrible, she just got weaker and we had to nag her to eat anything because she just didn’t feel good. Then late this week she started having trouble breathing, and with her other issues, none of the potential answers were good and the tests to find out weren’t going to be a lot of fun for her either. It’s the closest thing we could have hoped for to being able to see the future and know that it was time.

On the plus side, she was still affectionate and tolerant even after the last few weeks when we were always putting unwanted food and water under her nose or tossing pills down her throat or sticking her with needles. She seemed to really enjoy our drumming session on Monday, coming out to visit with everyone and be in the middle of things. On Thursday our friend did Reiki on her which meant she had her hands on Alice for 45 minutes then Alice went off for a minute or two and came back for another 15 minutes. For anyone who knows Alice, you know that her allowing that much contact is just unheard of. After that, she was the most relaxed she’d been in weeks. She spent Thursday night sleeping on our bed with us which was unusual for her. Friday morning she spent sprawled in the sunshine.

She had a good life and ended it well. She’s leaving a big hole in all our lives.

Here are some pictures. I’ll keep her in the cat blogging rotation (in our digital library alone I found 925 pictures with Alice in them)

First day home

This was the day we brought her home. She fell asleep in the car and didn’t wake up until her brother had already been exploring their new home for a while.

All grown up

Taken just a few weeks ago. There was a long time where they didn’t get this cuddly, but Alice mellowed out a little over the past few months.

Favorite things

Egg cartons and sunshine.

More faves

Boxes, of course. That red sock contains the remains of a “wooly bully”, a vaguely mouse-shaped ball of felted wool that she tore to tiny bits. It remained her very favorite toy even after the sock treatment. We would hear her making a muffled meowing sound in another part of the house and when we’d check, the sock would be in a new location. We seldom caught her carrying it around, and as soon as she’d see us she’d drop it and act nonchalant. Never managed to get a picture of her with it.

I heard about this book after seeing Bolte Taylor’s talk for TED. At that time the book was self-published, but it has since been released by Viking Penguin Group.

Bolte Taylor is a brain researcher who volunteers as an advocate for NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. One day before work she had a stroke. The book is a step-by-step account of that experience from her point of view both as the victim of the stroke and as a brain scientist explaining what was happening at each step. She also talks about the process of her recovery following surgery.

The insight beyond the mechanics of the stroke experience is from the effect the damage had on her. The particular effect she got was like the enlightenment from advanced meditation, a kind of peace and freedom from worry and concern with an overarching joy in life and the world. The message she’s sharing following her recovery is that that state is there in our brains available for us to tap into. It’s a little woo-woo, but it’s clear that she had a life-changing experience and it’s fascinating to read about it from such a unique perspective. Definitely worth reading for anyone who has had or knows someone who has had a stroke.

Moore and Gebbie reimagine the stories of Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and Peter Pan as the sexual awakenings of their respective female characters, Alice, Dorothy, and Wendy. The retellings are tantalizingly plausible as real world sexual experiences that could have been hallucinated, rationalized, or repressed into the fantastic stories we know. The book feels like Victorian erotica with its heavy paper, three large volumes and slip cover. The sex is steamy and widely varied providing something to arouse or offend nearly everyone.

While I waffle over whether or not to post reviews of sexually explicit graphic novels on a blog that my mother reads (Just one of many neurotic reasons why I’m months behind in posting book reviews. This blog isn’t called “Mad Times” for nothing. ;-), you can get your book review fix over at Goodreads where Becky has been reviewing up a storm.

Here’s a sample, her review of Isabel Allende’s Zorro: A Novel:

I’m a Zorro fan, but not to the extent of obsessiveness. I remember watching Tyrone Power late at night on my grandma’s black and white TV, and I’ve seen George Hamilton, Antonio Banderas, and probably some other actors in that role, but I haven’t sought out everything-Zorro. When I saw Allende had written a novel about Zorro, I was thrilled. I even waited for a good time to read it. It tells the story of how Zorro became Zorro–a sweeping tale that is both chilling and fun, just as it should be.

Lots more behind the link up there. There’s even an rss feed for updates.

She won’t drink water out of her dish, but has to drink out of our water glasses. Or the water that has flowed through the roots of the wheat grass. Good thing she’s cute.

Peaches should not be crunchy.

Insert rant about insanity of optimizing food to survive an epic journey from tree to mouth rather than for something crazy like… I don’t know, taste maybe?

Sightline drew attention today to an article that points out that for an expensive stretch of road, the cost of building the road cannot be recovered from the gas taxes generated by traffic on that stretch of road. It’s kind of a specious argument since road funding is kind of like insurance where the cost and benefit are spread across the entire network so asking that every subset pay for itself is naive at best.

But the idea that gas taxes pay for roads is one that comes up frequently in discussions of transportation equity especially between car folks and bike folks. The argument is that people who primarily ride bikes aren’t entitled to use the road network because they don’t pay gas or vehicle taxes.

The fact is that while those revenue sources do contribute to road funding, they are far from the only source. Roads are funded from a complex array of sources. And the real kicker is that it’s different for every state.

Here in the northwest, if you look at funding sources for just local roads and streets you might be forgiven for believing that vehicle-related taxes pay for your roads. In Idaho, Montana, and Washington, 95-100% of local streets are paid for with vehicle and fuel taxes. In California, only 59% with the remainder coming from the general fund. In Oregon, only 47% of the funding comes from fuel and vehicle taxes with the remainder coming from federal sources.

However when you look at highway funding, you find that here in the Northwest less than 50% of funding comes from gas and vehicle taxes. The rest is made up from a melange of other sources: state general funds, bonds, local government funds, and especially federal funds.

What those sources of revenue have in common is that they predominantly come from the pockets of drivers, cyclists, walkers, and bus riders alike.

Clever Cycles sells cargo and city bicycles and related gear in Portland. I visited them about a year ago just after they first opened the store. I just heard that they’re closing. Not for good, just for a two-week vacation. In the middle of summer. A bikeshop. Are they insane? Turns out it’s not lack of sanity, it’s lack of bikes. They’ve been doing so well they’re sold out of all their bikes. How cool is that?