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| 5/23 |
| 2004/7/26 [Recreation/Pets] UID:32481 Activity:insanely high |
7/26 Bush's cat India gets Indians enraged:
http://sify.com/news/offbeat/fullstory.php?id=13512345
\_ "Oh look! India's licking its asshole again!"
\_ Huh?
\_ Did he name the cat India after he was president? or is this an old
cat. If he named it since becoming pres, he really is a dumb SOB
Of course, the Indians are lame for getting all bent out of shape
over it, but Damn. [update: Bush has owned cat for 10 years and it
is named after some sports person, so it seems that these Indians
are just lame.] -phuqm
link:www.news24.com/News24/Backpage/Offbeat/0,,2-1343-1347_1552060,00.html
\_ The namesake is supposedly Ruben "El Indio" Sierra, and the
cat is 10 years old, according to http://csua.org/u/8bu
"Indio" is a term for a dark skinned Mexican, and ranges
from derogatory to affectionate. Okay. That was really
hasty. For a wider perspective, "indios" are those who
have more native-american features, as opposed to Spanish/
European features. This is a very deep racial divide in
Mexico, with its own Jim Crow type attitudes (however unspoken/
unwritten). In the US, this word has been reclaimed by the
Chicano movement as a term of pride. To name a cat "India"
would seem to be insensitive to Mexican Americans rather than
Indians. --scotsman
\_ I named my cat Shiva. I bet it's much more insensitive to
Indians than 'India' is to Mexicans. You are stretching,
dude. -- ilyas
\_ Sorry, I wasn't clear. The last sentence should have read
"...would seem to be _more_ insensitive..." I personally
think getting in a huff over a cat's name is insanely
silly. With the previous post, I was just trying to
disect what was behind the name. --scotsman
\_ I am going to rechristen my dog Frog.
\_ There's a singer named India Arie.
\_ a friend named his cats tcsh and perl.
\_ NEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRDDDDSS!!!!
\_ How do you pronounce tcsh? "tee see ess aich"? "tee seesh"?
"tuksh"? I'm gonna name my cats Yahweh and Lucifer (Lucy).
\_ "teesh", duh.
\_ Excuse me but THERE IS A MOTHERFUCKING "C" IN THERE!@!!!
\_ Do you pronounce the t in "listen"?
\_ http://www.mit.edu/people/rei/tiel-tcsh.html
\_ so? man tcsh is authoritative. some random link
about bloody cockatiels is not.
\_ Um... what tcsh man page are you looking at?
\_ tee seesh. teesh is the trusted shell. |
| 5/23 |
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| sify.com/news/offbeat/fullstory.php?id=13512345 Members of the Prathikarana Vedi assembled before the Kerala Assembly saying that Bush calling his cat India was an insult to the country. "This is a disgrace to our great country and this has come from none other than US President George W Bush. This is nothing but an insult to India because there are hundreds of thousands of Indians in the US, and many who occupy key posts in the White House," said MA Latheef, president of the group. The members of the group walked to the front gate of the Assembly building but were stopped by the police. After a brief speech and some slogans, the members burnt an effigy of the US President. |
| csua.org/u/8bu -> www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/Printer&cid=1089090724351&p=1006953079949 The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition Wednesday Call: As American as an Indian cat protest Mike Lebowitz Jul. Meanwhile, the peacenik crowd in Minnesota added its contempt for anything even remotely resembling camouflage while a group from India confused nationalism with a baseball player in a controversy that somehow involved President Bush's cat. Yes, the national pastime once again exemplified the unique American-style freedom, which went way beyond Derek Jeter's blood and guts passion against the Red Sox or Cleveland's seesaw battles with the intrastate Reds. For some reason, this week was witness to some real controversies over the best way to honor the country. We'll start in Boston, where it was revealed that pitcher Keith Foulke was threatened with fines and a suspension if he continued to wear a fingernail-sized American flag on his hat. Baseball officials stated that all uniforms had to be the same, with absolutely no exceptions. "It's not like I was trying to call attention to myself," said Foulke, who has expressed his support for troops serving in Iraq. "I'm a patriotic person and it's just a personal thing I wanted to do." But the "rules are rules" officials in Major League Baseball would have none of that. The problem is, how can people like league commissioner Bud Selig maintain credibility over enforcing these rules when just a few weeks ago he was ready to cover the on-field bases with the "Spider-man 2" logo? "I agree with and admire the patriotic sentiments expressed in your letter," Selig wrote to Foulke in a message that was released late last week. "While I can't imagine anyone having an objection to our American flag on a player's hat, we feel it is crucial to maintain this across the board policy." However, there may be at least one player who would object to the flag. Toronto Blue Jays slugger Carlos Delgado, a native of Puerto Rico, proudly refuses to stand for the playing of "God Bless America" out of contempt for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a tirade against the conflicts, Delgado added that he also does not support the troops themselves. At last check, Delgado has managed to remain under the radar of patriotic fans in the US ballparks. But he likely will find some friends, as well as some enemies, when the Blue Jays travel to Minnesota to play the Twins. Peace activists protested on Monday the Twins management's decision to give away 5,000 GI Joe action figures to children. Although the figures did not include toy guns, activists accused the team of promoting war. The team for its part said the toys were in honor of the troops currently serving overseas. This incident appears to be a situation where you say "tomato" and I say "tomahto." The peaceniks appeared to believe that any reference to soldiers is a promotion of war, while the team decked out the packaging with statements of sacrifice and patriotism in what it said was a tribute. The question over how to honor the military must be a relatively new phenomenon as it is highly unlikely that businesses operating during World War II had to put up with this kind of dispute. Finally, members of a 5,000-person organization in India exercised their democratic rights as they marched and burned an effigy of President Bush in protest over the name of the US leader's cat, India. "It is an insult to India, to Indians, and our nationality," a group leader stated. While peaceful protesting is something to be respected, perhaps this organization would be better served if it jumped on another anti-Bush bandwagon and abandoned the nationalism vs cat platform. Presidential feline India "Willie" Bush, 10, is actually named after former Texas Rangers star Ruben Sierra, nicknamed "El Indio." Besides, Native American supporters have been marching through Cleveland for years against the Indians' name to no avail, providing a double whammy to the effectiveness of those protesters living all the way out on the sub-continent. If nothing else, this past week has been a showcase of America's conflicting relationship between politics and professional sports. On the one hand, players and owners feel they owe a sense of duty to utilize the lofty perch that society has placed them, while on the other, people are driven by a mixture of well-intentioned passion and confusion to promote their agendas. But if controversies were always as simple as a misunderstanding over the name of a cat, the world may be a little easier to comprehend. |
| www.mit.edu/people/rei/tiel-tcsh.html Groks (Figures Out) Doors An experience in birdy psychology How one bird's misunderstanding of cage doors made it miserable For those of you who have experienced the frustration of sticking your hand in your bird's cage, and having him or her have tremendous hissy fits, and then (after much effort) discovering the bird is perfectly happy and mellow and loving once outside his/her cage --- well, it might be that your bird is "cage-bound" (psychologically addicted to the security of the cage), or, it might simply mean that your bird does not understand doors. That's the case of our cockatiel, Tcsh (for you computer nerds, that's "tcsh" as in the UNIX shell; ") He seems like a serious, curious, and purposeful bird; it was his calm curiosity and purposeful (but silly) behavior that first got us to buy him at the pet store. In any case, Tcsh in general struck us as a brighter bird than our previous 'tiel, lovable old Torque, who was a social butterfly but not much of a philosopher. The cage Tcsh normally lives in is a Hoei with doors that open out on top - something like upside down DeLorean doors. He had no problems with those, and would happily clamber out and, being the well-feathered bird he is, flap his way to the nearest human even with clipped wing feathers. We did notice he never came out of the vertical slide doors, even though he'd occasionally ride in through them while ravenously eating out of the food bowl/perch being placed into position. However, this happy behavior changed when we took him with us on vacation. The temporary cage he lived in had only those vertical sliding doors. He'd do his let-me-out dance, and would climb onto our hands when we finally put them in the cage to coax him out, but the moment we tried to bring him to the door of the cage, he'd have a hissy fit and jump off. After a while of this, he got to the point of acting miserably frustrated and would just attack and/or run away from hands that came into the cage. He grew more and more stressed as the days went by, and getting him out was becoming seriously unpleasant. He did not realize that the opened space in the middle of the cage wall was exactly that - open space he could pass through safely. And his inability to figure out how to otherwise get out of his cage was driving him batty - especially because (apparently) he thought us humans were trying to kill him whenever we brought him toward those evil non-existant Door-Things. We tried various things - forcing him out, showing him the door, putting him back in - but finally we just wired the door open, left out some paper outside the door to lure him out (he loves chewing on paper - it's how we got him to perch on hands long ago), and waited. From then on, he would happily clamber in and out of the cage through the now-understood "door" thing, and was ever so much more mellow, relaxed, and pleased about life. He would also clamber onto hands and ride out through the once-hated doors. We just hope he doesn't learn to open those doors himself and get out of his cage like our lovebird. So, just as young birds have to be taught what a food bowl and water bowl are, some birds need to be taught what a door is. It might just explain a bird's confused and psychotic behavior when it's in its cage. Grok is a Heinlein term (Stranger in a Strange Land) that means very roughly to "thoroughly know and understand something." |