The Atlantic has a long article "How Your Cat is Making You Crazy" on an old Cochranian bug-a-boo: germs that take over the volition of their hosts and make them do stuff that passes along the germ but don't do the host any good, to put it mildly, like making mice attracted to cats.
That seems like the ultimate frontier in advertising and marketing. Who knows? Maybe Apple bioengineered a virus that makes people crave shiny Apple products?
"How Your Cat is Making You Cray"
ReplyDeleteHow your cat is making you into a supercomputer?
Your intro sentence lists the article title as "How Your Cat is Making You Cray" and I rejoiced! The felines will bring on the singularity! I shall now be a supercomputer! Alas, it was simply a typo---my dreams, crushed. Say, do feline supercomputers dream of electric mice?
ReplyDeleteIt already exists.
ReplyDeleteIt's memetic parasitism.
I don't get this post. Please elaborate. Too subtle if there is a subtle point there.
ReplyDeleteI thought the word for that was "meme"
ReplyDeleteIf the infective agent makes men more tolerant of the smell of cat pee, I'd expect them to favour Sauvignon Blanc when feeling like a glass of wine. Please may I have a grant of, oh, half a million bucks to investigate this crucial hypothesis? Please.
ReplyDeleteHmmm, now there's an interesting re-make of the Manchurian Candidate...
ReplyDeleteMad scientists in CIA black-op spread a virus at CPAC. Neo-cons have inscrutable urge to invade the world.
Here's a funny paradox. The fact that women are politically more liberal means they are naturally more conservative. If conservatism means 'conforming with community standards and prevailing orthodoxy', then people who are naturally more conservative will be more likely to bend before prevailing rules of 'correctness'.
ReplyDeleteSince liberal PC prevails in our culture, media, and schools, and since more women than men are PC, it means women are naturally more conservative. (It's like in a communist system, people of conservative bent are more likely to be arch-communists. Similarly, though Christianity began as a revolutionary movement resisted by Jewish/Roman conservatives, once it became the prevailing orthodoxy, conservative-minded people became the most ardent Christians.)
"germs that take over the volition of their hosts and make them do stuff that passes along the germ but don't do the host any good, to put it mildly, like making mice attracted to cat"
ReplyDeleteShiite, sounds like multi-culti PC virus.
Clinton: in a few decades, all we whites folks gonna be minorities in our own country.
White graduates: yippee yeah!!!
Upon further reflection, I think the Likud Candidate would make a better movie title.
ReplyDelete"Here's a funny paradox. The fact that women are politically more liberal means they are naturally more conservative. "
ReplyDeleteYou've gone a paradox too far. Being pro-establishment when the government supports traditional lifestyles and institutions would appeal to those with conservative bents, not so much when the government tears families apart or threatens religion. You've confused totalitarianism, which might appeal to insecure, fearful females, with liberalism.
I've had two neighbors who were cat lovers. Both were crazy as loons. Not to mention, those two and a third crazy cat host I knew were all middle aged, ectomorphs with beak noses and "mousy" brown hair.
ReplyDeleteYou could be on to something.
ectomorphs with beak noses and "mousy" brown hair.
ReplyDeleteAnti-Semite!
Very interesting article, Steve. One of the reasons I read your site.
ReplyDeleteThere definitely could be something to this. I know a woman with schizophrenia who keeps several cats. Another cat loving woman I know is depressed and has considered suicide.
The cat-ownership/schizophrenia connection has been known for over a decade. Small but persistent. Childhood exposure to cats seems to be a bigger issue than adult contact, though that one's more uncertain.
ReplyDeleteAllanF said: Upon further reflection, I think the Likud Candidate would make a better movie title.
ReplyDeleteHunsdon replied: Candidate, singular?
Another cat loving woman I know is depressed and has considered suicide.
ReplyDeleteWhy? Because she was turned down for a date when she was 16 years old? Talk about a grudge!
My cat has instructed me to inform you folks that the magazine article is all nonsense, & not to pay any attention to it. You're welcome.
ReplyDeleteWell, I'd certainly say that today's America is one of the most heavily parasitized societies in recent history. But I don't think the cat-virus is the main culprit...
ReplyDelete"ectomorphs with beak noses and "mousy" brown hair.
ReplyDeleteAnti-Semite!"
To be fair, this could describe any number of women of German, English or even Scots-Irish descent. I'd bank on Germanic for this trio, however.
Actually when you think about it the whole pet cat thing is pretty weird. Aliens looking down might conclude they rule us by mind control.
ReplyDelete"You've gone a paradox too far. Being pro-establishment when the government supports traditional lifestyles and institutions would appeal to those with conservative bents, not so much when the government tears families apart or threatens religion."
ReplyDeleteThat's why I made a distinction between 'naturally' and 'politically'. It doesn't matter what the system is, left or right, democratic or totalitarian. People of naturally more conservative bent will support the system they were born into and/or indoctrinated into.
This is why many 'conservatives' today are naturally more rebellious.
When I have kids, I think I'll become a dog person.
ReplyDeleteToxoplasmosis gondi is the infective agent (I think it's a single-cell animal, as an amoeba,
ReplyDeletebut don't really remember).
It's spread usually, not by contact with cats themselves but by ingestion of tiny particles of dry surface soil contaminated with cat feces. I also seem to remember that a couple of the most frequent spreaders are bird flocks--especially starlings and grackles.
Supposedly, in the U.S., about 45%
of the entire adult population are infected including cat owners, of whom more than 95% are infected.
The infection has no established effect on humans--other than to make them like cats. Very lately, there's been research showing (purportedly) such infection cause or allow formation of certain tumors.
Now let's add parasites and schizophrenia to the cats-books-beards-brains Axis of Evil.
ReplyDeleteT. gondii's manipulation appears to alter the rat's perception of cat predation risk, in some cases turning their innate aversion into an imprudent attraction. The selectivity of such behavioural changes suggests that this ubiquitous parasite subtly alters the brain of its intermediate host to enhance predation rate.
ReplyDeleteSource: Fatal attraction in rats infected with Toxoplasma gondii. By Oxford University Veterinary Services. August 7th, 2000.
These women and children are seriously mind controlled by viruses. Pretty terrifying and disgusting, my natural disdain for cats could be an evolutionary defense mechanism.
Toxoplasmosis does have known effects on humans in the case of a serious infection, but that only happens if you don't have much of an immune system. I think unborn children can be exposed (doctors always tell pregnant women not to handle cat litter) with pretty bad effects, and it can kill AIDS patients.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if people can give the parasite (not a virus, a single-celled parasite) back to cats. A gene in the parasite that encouraged people to own more cats would become more widespread, but it would take some time--the cats have to get infected with a parasite containing the same genes, and then spread it around to other cats who then spread it back to other humans.
NOTA--
ReplyDeleteNo--the spread of infection to other cats wouldn't be nearly as tenuous as you've inferred.
Even presumably uninfected cats would be exposed to other cats' litter (and the occurrence of the
parasite externally--microscopic
bits of fecal material on the cat itself) and, what I've read is the greatest source of infection--cat feces spread throughout surface soil. That's in addition, mind you, to the infected birds and mice--intermediary hosts--who've become infected through the surface soil route and, less risk-averse, become prey to those previously uninfected cats.
"Pretty terrifying and disgusting, my natural disdain for cats could be an evolutionary defense mechanism."
ReplyDeleteCats, like most domestic animals, are capable of extreme devotion to humans. I've been in awe of what I've seen in both cats & dogs. Their ability to forgive and forget--sometimes I wonder how animals can forgive what humans do to them.
If you "disdain" them, you have no clue.
I once had a Hungarian psychology teacher who'd been a medical doctor during wwii. He himself liked cats and pointed out studies linking fondness for cats (extremely common among artists, writers, and to some extent, scientists) with a certain "other oriented" personality. Dictators have an extreme aversion to cats. He cited Napoleaon, and Hitler, who was famous for fearing cats.