Living with Tabitha is, I swear, like having a child.

She makes a mess.

She whines.

She follows me everywhere - even into the bathroom, where she immediately wants to leave because it is the Bad Place of Flea Shampoo, or the toilet, where she gives me dirty looks for its lack of interestingness.

If I go into the kitchen, she expects a Treat. This applies even when "going into the kitchen" can be defined as "passing through it because the layout of this building is such that the kitchen is a primary walkway".

And yet, she is cute and I love her.

Vel is officially cool, for she did indeed explain why my tags were getting stripped. Bad Mozilla.

I think it says something sad and nerdy about me that I was saddened by this article about the decline of Bobby Fischer. For I do love my chess, I do, although I play far too rarely these days to be even vaguely, remotely good any more, and have the love for its stars.

Besides, anti-Semitism is so passé these days, darling. Nowadays we reserve our religious discrimination for Islam.

(Yes, I know radical fundamentalist Islam is become bad and violent. The new association of Islam and terrorism should have come as no surprise to anyone, really. The point is that we should no more associate terrorism with Islam than we should associate the Ku Klux Klan or the Inquisition or pretty much any one of its more psychotic radical fundamentalists' many, many crimes with Christianity.)

A fascinating article on the pros and cons of meat-eating, starting from a book review. Leave your prejudices aside - whichever way you approach it - before you read, because it's an intriguingly balanced perspective, for the most part.

Of course, it agrees with my own perspective: that eating meat is fine but mistreating animals isn't, and pointing out that if all the world went vegetarian it would not, in fact, be an unmixed good, for animals or humans.

(No anti-meat-eating flame, please. You aren't going to change my mind, I can't be bothered trying to change yours.)

Riddle me this.

Can someone explain to me why blogger keeps stripping the classes from some, but not all of my div tags? 'Tis annoying. Every time I change something it breaks the HTML and it looks less pretty, and then I have to go through and find where it broke - again.

Oh, the pain.

Had some quite traumatic Trade Wars times in the past few days - but still, we learn, do we not, and eventually I will get the hang of it fully and stop getting my ship blown up really really stupidly. Also, note that if one loses one's Federal Commission, change your ship before it gets blown up...

Life in the Dialup Lane

Shades of comedy: Textbook-novels. Somehow I think wrapping the lesson in bad prose isn't going to help - I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd be too busy cringing at the clunky, forced structure of the novel (I assume; I don't see how you work an economics textbook into a novel without it being forced and clunky) to pay close attention to the subject at hand.

But then, I quite like textbooks, and have been known to look through textbooks on subjects I'm not studying. For I am a freak who likes to learn things.

(Note: Link goes to the New York Times webpage, which requires registration. Do it once and you never have to do it again. Take the plunge, it's free and they often have things worth reading.)

From the article:

"The latest Roberts novel, "The Invisible Heart: An Economic Romance," published last year by MIT Press, examines corporate responsibility and consumer safety while following the blossoming love story between a high school economics teacher and an English instructor."

Welcome to my nightmare.

Patricia Cornwell annoys me, of late. She didn't used to - I loved the early Scarpetta books, even enjoyed Hornet's Nest, but it was after that that the love started to fade.

Not just because Southern Cross is so appallingly bad that I have yet to finish it.

Not just because Unnatural Exposure is just as bad. And has elements of sheer lameness present in the plot, such as it is, which are lacking in Southern Cross with its uncomplicated dreckiness.

Not just because she's taken to discarding credible continuity of characterisation to up the angst levels.

But also, now, because of this.