Yup, the secret cyber kitty is not in doubt, it’s the impressive neurosurgical details that are. I just think it’s wrong to hype it out of proportion to what really could have happend. There’s evidence of trying to wire the kitty- granted. The rest of the clap trap is just that. IANA-NA (Neuroanatomist), but I do know that outside of the CIA, the rest of the research world doesn’t know how to do this.
CIA- Bad.
Kitty- Good.
CIA- Maniacal supergeniuses. I don’t think so. (Maniacal maybe)
Yup, the secret cyber kitty is not in doubt, it’s the impressive neurosurgical details that are. I just think it’s wrong to hype it out of proportion to what really could have happend. There’s evidence of trying to wire the kitty- granted. The rest of the clap trap is just that. IANA-NA (Neuroanatomist), but I do know that outside of the CIA, the rest of the research world doesn’t know how to do this.
CIA- Bad.
Kitty- Good.
CIA- Maniacal supergeniuses. I don’t think so. (Maniacal maybe)
err… I dont see the point of this rant. I work in Speech Recognition and we would like to know how the human ear works when the brain recognizes speech. Human subjects are out of the question. So, what do the Physiological guys do? …Thats right!!! screw around with cats’ ears!!! This has been going on for at least 30 years (I will guess this started in the 50s or even the 40s)
Reminds me of the infamous case of Vancouverite Rick Gibson, who created a huge public outcry in 1990 when he:[list=1][li]Built a concrete euthanasia machine.[]Purchased a rat that was being sold as live reptile food.[]Held a press conference in which he introduced “Sniffy”,[/li]got everyone to acknowledge how cute he was,
and announced his intention to crush him as “performance art.”[/list=1]IIRC, his property was vandalized, he was assaulted, threats were made, and nobody understood when he explained that Sniffy would actually be spared a worse fate if he was snuffed out quickly.
Or the Vietnam era activists that narrowly avoided being beaten up by outraged animal lovers when they announced that they were going to napalm a dog in a public square in order to demonstrate how horrible napalm was. There was no dog, and no napalm-- They intended to say “You people are here to protest the death one one dog. Can you support our government using it on women and children?” They didn’t get a chance-- As soon as the crowd identified them, they had to run. Ha.
While I agree, it’s a pretty cruel thing to do, I have to admit that I’ve always wondered: If you had an electriconic compass in your head, that delivered a variable microvoltaic signal to an electrode in your brain, would you eventually always know what direction you were facing? I’d be willing to give it a shot, if they tested it on a few cats first and they didn’t have too many seizures.
Actually, when I was in college, I helped a friend test a program for psychology students that was based on some old experiments where cats (I think, it might have been rats) did have their hunger centers burned out by probes, and the effects of stimulation to said centers. The experiments were carried out in the 50’s or earlier I believe. The program was a crude simulator, you had a (poor) graphic of what was supposed to be a cat’s brain, and would ‘burn’ out areas and wire other areas and then see what would happen. Basically, it used a lookup table and gave you results of said experiments from long ago.
I understand that the site is meant to be humorous.
I understand that it is protected by free speech.
I also think that snopes is going overboard by so vigorously defending something that is NOT FUNNY. The parallel they draw between the site and a film like “Life is Beautiful” is specious at best.
I also understand that there are a lot of stupid, sick people who may be inspired by such sickness to actually try something like what the site “jokingly” portrays, which is what I said. I did not say that the site was actually trying to shape kittens by cramming them into glass blocks.
Does this justify hounding the the people and forcing them to take their site down? Probably not, but I have a right to voice my opinion, too.
So, I ask again, do you have a fucking point, or what?
Yondan The site suggests using a shoe horn to maneuver the animal into the jar. If that doesn’t strike you as so preposterous that you don’t howl in laughter then you have - missed the point - of the website. The fact that you thought it could possibly be real (or inspire someone to try it “for real”) also strikes me as humorous. Its like a double whammy every time someone links to bonsaikitten.
So, it’s funny when someone is horrified by something?
And if you don’t think that someone could easily be inspired to try something similar to the site, then you and I live in different worlds. On the SDMB alone there are first hand accounts of people committing terrible acts of cruelty to animals, from poisoning pets to running over turtles. I have seen kids shove glass into frogs’ mouths and run over kittens with lawnmowers.
You think it’s funny? Fine. But don’t tell me I missed the point as though something HAS to be funny to everyone, or that’s something is wrong with me because I think a joke is sick.