Yes Richard. In no time they will out in the garden and beyond, killing off their fair share of rare and unusual birds found in the US.

Here is the check list:
http://www.focusonnature.com/NorthAmericaRareBirdsPhotoFeature.htm

November 3, 2012 @ 2:14 pm | Comment

Yeah, tons of crane hawks will fall victim to those evil beasts, KT. Besides, most birds caught by cats will not be rare species, for statistical reasons. In most places (outside Tubbyland), man was faster than cat.

But the world’s nicest cats are here.

November 3, 2012 @ 3:06 pm | Comment

Anyway, if you want to save the habitat, raise a few crime-solving cats.

November 3, 2012 @ 3:08 pm | Comment

Aw JR. I knew you would be lurking somewhere around this post.

Well, someone has to stand up for the rights of the Rufous-capped Warbler, endangered specie specific to Arizona and Texas.

Furthermore, past experience has led me to distrust your use of Sino statistics. About as reliable as a Pew China survey.

Believe it or no, but I have approx 125 different types of feathered friends at my domicile, and this can be directly attributed to no cats.

November 3, 2012 @ 5:06 pm | Comment

125 different types of feathered friends that start shitting on my hat every time I’m moving out of the door? That’s a nightmare. Cats keep the environment clean.

November 3, 2012 @ 6:39 pm | Comment

I’m afraid this thread, too, has been hijacked. Away from the kindness of Archie and Zack, back to the sinister side of nature.

As usual.

November 3, 2012 @ 6:44 pm | Comment

4 disgusting habits of Americans:

1) Not showering before going to bed at night. Do your bedsheets not smell, do your feet not smell? Do you not feel weird and sticky under the covers after a whole day without showering? In the old days, before we were rich enough to shower everyday in China, we at least washed our faces, feet, and ass before going to bed. American average personal hygiene is worse than Chinese people in the 80’s.

2) Not brushing your teeth before eating in the morning. Do you not smell your own morning breath, does your spouse not smell your morning breath? If you are afraid of dirtying your teeth again after eating, then just gargle or brush again after breakfast.

3) Drinking water directly from the tap. Let’s put aside this myth that American water is cleaner than distilled water. Even if is, if you live in a city like NYC, with 100 year old tenetments, do your water pipes not rust? what do you think are in the walls of those 100 year old water pipes?

4) Driving. What is a more prime example of waste of resource than putting one single person behind a machine 50 times his volume, that produces nothing but harmful gas and noise pollution, just so he can travel 5 mins to get some grocery in the suburbs? If every citizen in the world lives this suburban driving-to-the-gym, driving-to-get-milk, driving-to-take-a-walk, lifestyle, 5 earths would not be enough.

November 4, 2012 @ 4:01 am | Comment

To the dunce clock,
you really are dumber than the average CCP-apologist bear, and lord knows the average CCP-apologist bear is already dumb as dirt.

1. if you shower once a day, then you will be relatively as clean or dirty over the course of the day as anyone else who showers daily. If you want to shower at night, then go to work the next day smelling like you slept in your clothes all night, with gorgeous bed-head to match, be my guest. To each his own. But to extrapolate that into a comparison of relative personal hygiene is dumb as dirt, which is par for course for you.

2. The best time to brush your teeth is after a meal. At least that’s what dentists say. Perhaps you’ve never seen one. If this is the sort of thing you are left to bitch about, you need a hobby, like watching paint dry, perhaps.

3. There’s nothing wrong with American drinking water, in the places I’ve visited. If you want a colourful comparison, see how drinking water in China measures up (quick hint: it doesn’t). Now, rusty pipes / aging delivery infrastructure of said drinking water is indeed an issue. I imagine most people, if they saw that their tap water was discoloured, wouldn’t drink it straight out of the tap. Admittedly, you are likely not “most people”, and may not be smart enough to figure that one out on your own.

4. This one, you have a point. I understand that there is a car-centric culture in much of the US. Probably explains why my favourite US cities are the walkable ones, like SF, Manhattan, and Boston. On the other hand, I’m a petrol-head in the parlance of Jeremy Clarkson (Top Gear on BBC if you missed the reference), so I’m as guilty as the next guy.

November 4, 2012 @ 12:18 pm | Comment

we at least washed our faces, feet, and ass before going to bed

Bytheclock has never washed his mouth. Neither recently, nor in the old days.

November 4, 2012 @ 1:36 pm | Comment

Clock. Since you are so concerned about the body and East-West comparisons, what about going all Chinasmack and let’s discuss comparative anatomy. Got laughed at in the restroom did you, or did a western girl state the obvious.

@ Richard. I think this thread has exhausted itself.

November 4, 2012 @ 2:02 pm | Comment

I think this thread has exhausted itself.

Only because you are losing your case against cats, KT? Weak!

November 4, 2012 @ 5:01 pm | Comment

4 disgusting habits of Chinese:
1. Spitting in public
2. Shitting in public
3. pissing in public
4. Driving

November 5, 2012 @ 3:47 am | Comment

Of course, my post is tongue in cheek 😀 Many Chinese I know abhor the ostentatious spitters. Indeed, the garglisng snot rolling hawking that some mainland China immigrants seem to think is OK to do in an open plan office elicits as much response from Chinese as it does from westerners. The public shitting and pissing raised ire in Hong Kong – an island inhabited by Chinese who also thought it rather disgusting.
As for driving in China – no words need be said. It is a good job cities like Shanghai and Peking are choked with traffic as the standards of driving are so poor in so many that anything allowing them to drive freely is guaranteed to end in tears…

November 5, 2012 @ 3:51 am | Comment

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/cats_actually_kill

Essential reading for all us cat lovers out there. I disagree with his conclusion, but the rest is very amusing

November 5, 2012 @ 5:14 pm | Comment

And if there is real justice in this world, may the 49% be left to rot in JRs bedroom and the other 21% be deposited in Richard’s study.

November 5, 2012 @ 10:53 pm | Comment

I don’t mind cats – having toxoplasmosis immunity now. Does seem they are having a bad effect on NZ’s dolphins though… http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10844785
Just remember, Richard, whenever you make a bad mistake, you can, hand on heart, say it wasn’t reallu your fault. The T. gondii made you do it 😉

November 6, 2012 @ 4:34 am | Comment

At least in China, I have the right to vote, in America, I don’t. As simple as that.

In China, my sacred right to vote was guaranteed by the Chinese Constitution. In America, I’ve been here 15 years, and am still not a green card holder yet, if you apply for a green card now, the wait is 10+ years. Under HeiBama, illegals have higher priority than high-tech legal immigrants towards green card and citizenship.

If you don’t give me the right to vote, why should I support this country? CCP gave me the right to vote, so what’s wrong with supporting CCP?

And 1 in 20 Chinese people is a CCP member. That’s larger than the popualtion of most countries. This means CCP is an organization with mass support and grass root foundations. Supporting CCP is just like supporting the Chinese peeople. What’s wrong that?

In China, I had the right to vote.

November 6, 2012 @ 8:44 am | Comment

@TheClock – Your complaining that you don’t have the vote because you never even bothered to apply for citizenship? Cry me a river.

Here’s a surprise for you: I couldn’t vote in China either. However, I never met anyone in China who actually took the casting of votes seriously – none of them knew who the candidates were or what they stood for because there were no debates and no publication of manifestos.

Again, you’re failing at trolling.

November 6, 2012 @ 1:52 pm | Comment

“CCP gave me the right to vote, so what’s wrong with supporting CCP? ”
—then why the fuck aren’t you supporting the CCP IN CHINA? If voting is so important to you, and you can’t do it in the US, then why the fuck are you still there?

Like FOARP says, you are just lame-ass. “Supporting CCP is just like supporting the Chinese peeople”? Good grief. Stupid people can be so stupid sometimes.

November 6, 2012 @ 2:50 pm | Comment

“1 in 20 Chinese people is a CCP member.”
“This means CCP is an organization with mass support and grass root foundations.”

And that’s the final word on structural engineering from our friend DaClock.

November 6, 2012 @ 5:17 pm | Comment

And if there is real justice in this world, may the 49% be left to rot in JRs bedroom and the other 21% be deposited in Richard’s study.

As long as I’m not rotting there along with them, I’ll clean the place up, thank you.
Besides, how are those 49 percent supposed to get into the bedroom? Are you religious, KT?

November 7, 2012 @ 12:50 am | Comment

“If you don’t give me the right to vote, why should I support this country? CCP gave me the right to vote, so what’s wrong with supporting CCP?”

Nothing is worng with supporting the CCP. Begs the question, though, why you want to do it from the safety of the US of A….

November 7, 2012 @ 6:03 am | Comment

“1 in 20 Chinese people is a CCP member.”

Is it much of a coincidence that the number of CCP members and the number of people with mental health problems in China is a corresponding number?

November 7, 2012 @ 6:42 am | Comment

My brther in law’s wife is a CCP member. Good connections are very important in career furhterment. It also helped with her daughter’s schooling – she failed the entrance exam but a few words in the right ears soon cleared up that “mistake”.

November 7, 2012 @ 7:43 am | Comment

If you don’t give me the right to vote, why should I support this country? CCP gave me the right to vote, so what’s wrong with supporting CCP?”
Nothing is worng with supporting the CCP. Begs the question, though, why you want to do it from the safety of the US of A….

There’s already ample support for the CCP back home (90% approval rate), but not enough here in the USA. So that’s why I’m here.

November 7, 2012 @ 8:01 am | Comment

Two definitions of Starvation

What is death starvation? If one stops eating, and dies directly as a result, that’s death by starvation.

Does the ’30 million dead during GLF’ meet above defintion of death by starvation? If it does, give me one example, just one single example of someone who died meeting that criterion. No, what you read in a book does not count. Who do you know personally, or their direct relative who died like that during GLF?

What, I’m splitting hairs with the definition, playing semantics?
Fine. let’s say: if one stops eating but gets hit by a car 10 days later because he was too hungry to walk properly and see clearly, let’s be call that ‘death by starvation’ too. Happy?

With the 2nd definition, perhaps most people in China in those years were in a state of hunger, and most died indirectly as a result.

If you go with the 2nd criterion, then you have to be consistent: a third world, a poor nation, with its food supply issue not fully resolved, naturally will have most of its citiznes living in hunger and poverty, and the average life span is short as a result. It’s pretty natural and unsurprising to conclude then, that in any third world poor nation, most seniors’ deaths were indirectly as result of hunger, so most senior citizens in poor third world countries starved to deaths (going with the 2nd defintion).

So, going with this defintion, ever since the founding of People’s Republic in ’49, before Chinese economic reforms in early 80′s, most of Chinese seniors’ starved to death.

So statisically, we can claim that from 1940 to 1980, several hundred million people starved to death. Surely, the that number will delight many of you here, come on, go write another instant best seller.

Going along with this definition, during the reign of KMT, during the reign of Qing Dynasty, the average life span of a Chinese man was 40 years, and was called ‘Sick Man of the East’, why ‘Sick Man’, well the Chinese man back then was thin, short, scrawny, weak, due to lack of nutrition. Then, we can claim that most seniors starved to death during the entire reign of KMT and Qing.

Most of today’s Indian senior citizens in poor provinces starve to death too then.

Today’s world population is 5,6 billion, 3/2 of them live in poor places with malnutrition and lack of food. That is, 4 billion people will starve to death, again, going by the 2nd definition.
Going by the 2nd defintion, my dad starved to death too, even though he died only 5 years ago. Well when he was young, food was not abundant, he ate rice with pickeld cucmbers for years, causing malnutirtion, which led to his short life span when he died. So he also starved to death, otherwise he could’ve lived till 90 years old.

All in all, if use the 2nd definition, we have to be consistent and rigorous.

But then, with the 2nd definition, how is death rate in GLF any different from death rate in any deaths in any poor third world country? How is the death rate any different from any other period in China’s own history? Why selectively choose a 3 year window of a specific country, if by the 2nd defintion, we already established that the data in that window is completely unremarkable compared to the universe of data?

November 7, 2012 @ 8:07 am | Comment

Sorry i meant to copy the above one into the other thread about GLF.

November 7, 2012 @ 8:12 am | Comment

Been following the election in the US and you know, Tickers old boy, I can’t for the life of me find the CCP anywhere on any political list…

November 7, 2012 @ 9:36 am | Comment

@The Clock

You are truly a legend. To have people pathetically use their time and energy to take your flame bait.

November 7, 2012 @ 10:14 am | Comment

Post what you want, Richard – bytheclock will always be there. Doesn’t that feel good?

November 7, 2012 @ 10:36 am | Comment

Oh clock, your brain simply has not evolved into much of a logic instrument.

Why would the CCP need support in the US? Even if that’s what you’re doing, you’re serving a completely illogical and idiotic purpose. Since you like voting so much, I’d suggest you ‘vote with your feet’, and get back to CCP China ASAP. The US of A will almost certainly be better for it. As for whether China is a better place with you in it, I wouldn’t hold out much hope for that either. But hey, apparently they’ll let you vote, so that’s all that matters, right?

It’s funny how you apologist types are always spitting-out-rice in reciting Pew surveys. I suppose the finer points, like how those surveys are methodological junk, simply elude you people.

November 9, 2012 @ 5:13 am | Comment