Alleged cat-lovers in Wisconsin are up in arms over a proposed law to allow hunting of feral cats. The web site for their campaign is dontshootthecat.com.

Sadly, shootthecat.com is a slow-loading artist’s site that has no connection to this issue, and doesn’t even seem to have any pictures of cats. Pity. Maybe some bird-lovers should buy the domain from him and highlight some of the unrealistic arguments being made against the legislation.

Personally, I’ve had run-ins with feral cats, and they ain’t the family pet Fluffy. They’re carnivorous wild animals, which makes them at least as big a pest as the gophers and skunks that are already legal to shoot in Wisconsin. More so, probably; I don’t think Wisconsin’s skunks are killing tens of millions of songbirds each year.

I love their support for “trap, neuter, and release”, by the way. If the estimate of two million feral cats in Wisconsin is even vaguely correct, the best they can hope for is weeding out the stupid ones, leaving only the cleverest cats running loose to breed. That’ll fix things for sure!

[Disclaimer: I like cats, enjoy seeing them roaming through the jungle that is my back yard, and once adopted a semi-feral cat who was in danger of being shot by a local farm-owner. I still think it’s stupid and irresponsible to allow them to roam free without a collar or neutering, so I have no sympathy for people who do so.]

…about Terry Schiavo. It seems to be one of the most important issues in the country, judging from the amount of ink, pixels, and heat that it’s generating.

After reading up on the facts of the case (well-referenced and presented with a refreshing lack of bias), I think the key point is that the medical experts agree that her brain scans consistently show that there is little or nothing remaining of her cerebral cortex. That is, the portions of the brain responsible for everything we associate with a functional living being are just plain gone (sorry, Rachel, but your analogy fell apart the moment your arthritic dog licked himself).

The only debate between the doctors is whether she has a small amount of isolated living tissue in her cerebral cortex or whether she has no living tissue in her cerebral cortex.

I’m not familiar with any existing or promised medical procedure that promises to grow a new brain, and even if one existed, that person would have little or nothing in common with the previous occupant of that body. Unless you believe in miracles, Terry Schiavo can never wake up, because she’s not there any more.

Since I don’t think the courts have any business basing their decisions on the likelihood of a miracle occurring, they must balance the medical testimony against the emotional appeal of the family. The judge chose medicine, which sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

I don’t actually care if the family manages to win the right to keep her body running on life support for another fifteen years. I think it’s a pretty morbid way of coping with loss, but they’ve apparently got the money to do it, so who am I to interfere?

I do care about politicians and pundits suddenly pretending to care about her. It reminds me of the old VH-1 Earth Day commercial “we’re not doing it because everyone is doing it, we’re doing it until everyone is doing it”, one of the more blatant lies in the history of environmental activism.

Update: The American Council on Science and Health speaks up.

…shame none of the witnesses were, either: man beheaded with axe on London street.

Sadly, it sounds like the witnesses weren’t the sort who’d have done anything even if they’d had the means. At least half a dozen people stood there and watched for several minutes, and all they did was politely ask him to stop chopping up his victim.

…the middle finger is for Michael Moore.

Got an amusing phone poll tonight, by some company called Ipsos, on behalf of the AP. They led off by asking about approval of Bush and Congress, then asked if I liked NASCAR racing, then a series of questions about ice cream as a comfort food and “relationship bonding” tool, then New Years resolutions about diet/lifestyle, then pizza delivery chains, then specifically about Dominos Pizza, then about Dominos’ sponsorship of NASCAR, then buying prescription drugs from Canada and Mexico, then whether I was some variety of born-again or evangelical Christian, and finally the usual demographics.

Each segue was accompanied by the words “now on an unrelated topic”. Unrelated, my ass; they were definitely trying to tie things together to support a predetermined conclusion. About the only thing they left out was the gay-rights issue.

I’m quite certain that my answers won’t fit their spin. :-)

The government of the city of San Francisco wants to ban all private possession of handguns. Oddly, Fark tagged it as Misc. I’d have gone with Asinine or Dumbass, myself.

Money quote:

Barnes said the initiative is a response to San Francisco's skyrocketing homicide rate, as well as other social ills.

Yes, their response to a “skyrocketing homicide rate” is to make sure that only people who disobey the law have guns. And government agents, of course. This really shouldn’t come as a surprise to the four remaining gun owners in SF, of course; the city hounded the gun-shop owners out years ago, and if there’s one thing they can’t stand in San Francisco, it’s people who don’t conform.

I’m sorry, but Matsushita lost my battery business right here:

Reporters were also shown audio players powered by a regular battery vs. Oxyride. The one with Oxyride delivered a stronger, deeper bass, and Matsushita officials said some music experts express a preference for Oxyride.

Yes, not only does their battery last significantly longer in portable devices, it makes them sound better, too. I’m surprised they didn’t also claim that it improves the contrast on your digital camera.

…make sure you know what civil rights you’re giving up:

France has embraced a law enforcement strategy that relies heavily on preemptive arrests, ethnic profiling and an efficient domestic intelligence-gathering network. French anti-terrorism prosecutors and investigators are among the most powerful in Europe, backed by laws that allow them to interrogate suspects for days without interference from defense attorneys.