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10/GUI. The future? The now?

Our black cat, Bear, has a drinking problem. He likes to drink from the faucet in the bathtub. Observe:

For a while he used to wander into the bathroom, stand at the tub, and meow as loud as possible until Lena or I came and turned on the faucet. That sort of worked for a while; Lena and I are trainable, but both lazy. So Bear has taken to seizing the opportunities whenever we're near the bathroom to launch himself to the tub and meow.

Unfortunately, "near the bathroom" often coincides with "using the bathroom." And Bear doesn't really know the difference.

Let me leave you at that perilous thought for just one second to explain something about cats in general and our cats in particular, and Bear especially. They resent closed doors. They *hate* closed doors. Hate. Hate, hate, hate. At our house, a closed door is soon met with a meow and a whine. Then some scratching. Then another plaintive meow. And then the thumping begins. Dup-dup-dup-dup-THUD. Dup-dup-dup-WHAM. That is the sound of Bear ramming the door with his head, the hardest substance known to man, and certainly the heaviest weapon Bear knows about. Toward the end of keeping our house and our cats as undamaged as possible, we've adopted a more or less open-door policy toward the bathroom, at least when guests aren't about. So when you're comfortably ensconced in the bathroom, chances are pretty good that you'll get a visitor or two during your stay.

And back to Bear's habit... I was in the bathroom, conducting a minor transaction (standing), when I hear the door swing open, and Bear tears through the air, with a light redirecting jump onto the toilet tank, and onto the side of the tub, where if I don't manage to turn the water on while I'm actually peeing, he'll proceed to whine and meow about me taking my sweet time and how he's withering away of thirst, practically drying up as we speak.

At least, that's how he thought it was going to go. Instead, he miscalculated the jump, missed the redirect, knocked all the sundries off the tank, knocked the lid off balance, and fell into the trash can. I managed an unbelievable reflex catch of the lid before it fell down. Bear, who is often spooked by loud noises, even when he makes them, took off into the bedroom like a shot. Laughing, I finished my transaction and went to make sure Bear was not bleeding.

Bear, gifted by God and Nature with a mind like a spring cloudburst and the attention span of a goldfish, went for another drink later on that same evening, in practically the same manner, only without the wipeout.

I know the day is coming when he "crosses the stream," so to speak. I am dreading that day. But not enough to fully close the doors, of course. That's crazy talk.

Here is an excellent visualization of dimensions; more importantly, how to visualize and grasp the ones beyond the 3rd one.

...of the world of air traffic. Each yellow dot is one airplane:

I bet you can recognize at least one of the tunes played by the violinist in this vid:

So happy drinking cat makes a little noise. So what?

Cat who loves water. And I mean loves water.

Mean Kitty song: