February 6, 2009

There was this blackboard kitty cat...

Blackboard Kitty Cat

I'm only partially responsible for drawing that.

As long as I've got the iPhone in hand and open to the camera app...

Office Shelfscape

I call that "Office Shelfscape."

And then, here's "Office Floorscape":

Office Floorscape

So really, Althouse, what is it? You've got the kitty cat, drawn on the board in, apparently, a conlaw class, and then, amidst law books, some "compassionate choices" for chickens, and that old familiar office toy, Blue Flame? What are we to make of this?

22 comments:

Michael Haz said...

After and before? Klutter Kat is the official mascot of messy offices (and book shelves)

Love the model of the 1954 Corvette. That year, the hottest Corvette engine was a six cylinder unit called the Blue Flame Six.

Host with the Most said...

You are a creative personality.

While you can be shy at times, you can also be assertive when you need to be.

You are often helping others, but do not forget to take time for yourself.

Today will be a good day for you. Look for opportunities to arise in unexpected . . . (sorry, I can't make out the rest without my glasses).

Host with the Most said...

What is the book "Constitutional Faith"?

George M. Spencer said...

That's a Victorian-era novellette about a governess named Faith who is kidnapped on one of her morning constitutionals and is taken to the Scottish moors to care for the wife of a laird....ah, I've given away too much of the story already...

Host with the Most said...

Didn't they make that into a BBC TV Miniseries? Kate Winslet gained 210 pounds British to play the wife of Colin Firth, the stablemaster.

Ann Althouse said...

Constitutional Faith.

The Dude said...

That toy is of a later Corvette - maybe a '57 or a '58 - it looks like it has quad headlights. At that time they had a V8 and would not properly be called Blue Flame anything. I like the straight sixes that GM made in the mid-50s - very nice engines. But they needed V8s in order to become Corvettes in the sense that we understand Corvettes.

Simon said...

Ann Althouse said...
"Constitutional Faith."

From the review: "Sanford Levinson is a man of the left who takes patriotism seriously." Cf. Sanford Levinson, Our Undemocratic Constitution (arguing for it to be chunked).

William said...

You actually read those books. God help you: you probably found them interesting. Drawing a blackboard kitty is a symptom of (repressed) normalcy. Those books are a symptom of full blown obsession. There is order and reason in the world. It is only necessary to read enough books and think harder and I will find it.

ricpic said...

Clutter is comforting.

CCMCornell said...

Chalkboards remind me of physics classes. Cats on chalkboards remind me of Schrodinger's Cat, who was doomed to a strange mixed state of being both alive and dead until someone actually looked at it to see if it were alive or dead. I know we mentioned the mind experiment in some of the classes, but I don't think we ever actually drew a cat on the board, though we did have a quantum mechanics textbook by Griffiths that has a cat on the front cover and then the same cat on the back dead (or maybe just sleeping.)

Could there be some kind of Constitutional cat experiment or mock case? Like, do the people have the right to have cats as one of the rights retained in the 9th amendment but not enumerated in the earlier amendments? Or does a well defined answer not even exist until "observed" by the Supreme Court?

Ann Althouse said...

@CCMCornell I don't know of any constitutional cats, but you've made me curious about it. I can tell you that Scalia once wrote:

"[I]t would be odd to say that a car dealer is in the business of selling steel or carpets because the cars he sells include both steel frames and carpeting. Nor does the water company sell hydrogen, nor the pet store water (though dogs and cats are largely water at the molecular level)."

Ann Althouse said...

The clue is in the post: "I'm only partially responsible for drawing that."

This was a case of a leftover diagram from another class (Property, I think) and it just looked like a cat to me. So I made it look more like a cat.

Simon said...

CCMCornell said...
"Cats on chalkboards remind me of Schrodinger's Cat, who was doomed to a strange mixed state of being both alive and dead until someone actually looked at it to see if it were alive or dead."

Perhaps this is semantics, but I had thought that the lesson of said cat was that it was neither dead nor alive; there is only an expanding range of probabilities until the result is observed, collapsing the range. The point of the thought experiment is to demonstrate why Heisenberg's uncertainty principle posits subatomic behavior that would be unbelievable if scaled up to real objects, right?

ricpic said...

Property, eh? That would make it a cul-de-sac cat.

chickelit said...

This was a case of a leftover diagram from another class (Property, I think) and it just looked like a cat to me.

That curve reminded me of one of these, but with some pretty messed-up energy levels. Get some rest.

Rockport Conservative said...

My first thought was that someone had started a drawing of a shoe and it was turned into a cat. Perhaps it was because of the shoe photo I had just seen.

Michael Haz said...

Are you sure it was a kitty cat? Maybe it was something else, later disguised as a kitty cat.

chickelit said...

disguised as a kitty cat.

I think that should read "something else" is disguising a kitty cat.

and Michael H, you should have given a camel toe alert.

Michael Haz said...

and Michael H, you should have given a camel toe alert.

I did, but that other guy was all busy with cheesecake and sandwiches.

former law student said...

I forget who originally said this, but a professor's office is not really cluttered until the piles on the floor start toppling onto the desk.

blake said...

Another day @ Althouse, another psychological profile. But who's profiling whom?