Friday Cat Blogging – 3 October 2014


We have names! They have not, ahem, been met with universal acclaim, but we’re sticking with them. Our little gray-and-white girl is:

  • Hopper aka Gracie aka The Admiral

And our little black-and-white boy is:

  • Hilbert aka Davie aka The Professor aka The 24th Problem

For those of you too lazy to google things, Hopper is named after Admiral Grace Hopper, “the mother of COBOL.” Hilbert is named after David Hilbert, a famous German mathematician who has some personal resonance for me and also happens to have a name that begins with H, which makes him a nicely alliterative companion for Hopper. Among other things, Hilbert is famous for a speech in 1900 in which he laid out 23 fundamental mathematical problems, some of which remain unsolved to this day.

It turns out, by the way, that the fastest way to get Hilbert’s attention is to pay attention to Hopper. All we have to do is scratch Hopper’s chin and Hilbert, somehow, becomes aware of it and comes bounding into the room demanding that we scratch his chin. It’s really quite remarkable. He not only has a jealous streak, he apparently has ESP too.

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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