Weekend Cat Blogging and more: "Light"

This weekend we have some interesting “bright” photos:

It is amazing how the diagonals in both photos seem to line up.

In the first we have Luna peering off one of the balconies, as she is wont to do . The second could be an “easy like Sunday” photo, but one can also see the bases of Luna's paws, which is the theme of this weekend's Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos. No chaos here, of course.

Some sad news this weekend from our friend's at What Did You Eat. Upsie has being diagnosed with cancer. Her prognosis is pretty grim. She does at least get to go off of her diet and enjoy some of the pleasures of life for last few months. We at CatSynth extend our thoughts to Upsie and to our friend sher – they also lost Sundance last summer.

Weekend Cat Blogging #145 will be held at the The Cat Blogosphere.

The Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos will be hosted this weekend by Pet & The Bengal Brats at Pet?s Garden Blog. The optional theme this weekend is “toes and claws.”

Carnival of the Cats will be on this Sunday at This, That and The Other Thing.

And of course Friday Ark #182 will be at the modulator

Fun with Pi (Day)

We saw this picture on meeyauw, and thought it was a good way to open our own Pi Day offering. Pi Day, or π day is celebrated on March 14 (3/14) of every year.

π does turn up in some interesting places besides circles and standard trigonometry (and LOLcat photos). There is of course Euler's famous identity:

which unites π with four of the other most famous constants in mathematics: zero, 1, i (the imaginary root of -1) and e. But it also turns up in some more surprising places. Consider the well-known factorial function, where n! or “n factorial” is the product of all the integers between 1 and n. For example:

5! = 5×4×3×2×1 = 120.

Simple enough. But of course some troublemaker is eventually going to ask for the factorial of 1/2. Not so easy. Fortunately, there is a function, called the Gamma function, that provides a solution:

Not really as simple as the original integer-only factorial. Once calculus is involved, might as well forget about it. But if you go through the trouble of plugging in 1/2 to the formula, you get the following intriguing result:

or

So the factorial of one half is one half the square root of π. Who knew?

Carnival of the Cities, March 12 Edition

Something new for us at CatSynth: we are hosting the March 12, 2008 edition of Carnival of Cities. We have been participating recently with our posts on art and photographs from our new neighborhood, so we are happy to be hosting this week.

We start off in our home city, San Francisco, where CalebL presents Use your Useless Knowledge posted at City on a Dime.

Kara Williams presents The Arts in New Orleans – Part I posted at Traveling Mamas, saying, “Beth Blair, DesertMama, wrote this post after she visited New Orleans last week!” I recall enjoying some of the artistic opportunities in New Orleans when I visited in 2006 (a little over a year after Katrina), but I did not see the Ogden museum. Sounds like the atrium is itself worth a visit.

Mary Jo Manzanares presents This Seattle Bar Will Suit You to a Tea posted at The Seattle Traveler, saying, “A hot “cuppa” and free wi-fi, what more could you want?” She makes a good point.

Amanda Milne presents a travelog from Orlando, pretty much everything except for a certain resort with a mouse. Posted at Value For Your Life.

In honor of Tavern Day,Jul presents a little post about drinking in Munich posted at Europe String. “There?s drinking in Munich??

Marsha Takeda-Morrison presents American Idol: Welcome to Hollywood, Dawg! posted at Kango Blog, saying, “You know the part where Randy shouts out, ?Welcome to Hollywood, dawg?? Well they actually do come to Hollywood, believe it or not. So if you’re thinking of coming to L.A. to scope out a live taping, read this first…”

One of the great things about hosting a carnival is finding articles like this next one. Heatheronhertravels presents Graffiti tourism in Bristol posted at Heather on her travels, saying, “Take a look at the street-art explosion that’s happening in the Stokes Croft area of Bristol, UK. Every builder’s hoarding has become an opportunity for artistic expression and the residents and shop-keepers are getting in on the act. You can see the piece by famous Bristol born street artist Banksy too.” Do check it out. The artworks, both on the street and in the galleries, are at least as good as some of what I have seen recently in New York and San Francisco. I would love to check this out, if I ever found myself in Bristol.

Karen Bryan presents Free Berlin walking tours posted at Europe A La Carte Blog. Like Karen, I generally prefer to go at my own pace around a city. And that is what I did when visiting Berlin. However, a guide at specific locations like the Holocaust Memorial (illustrated in the post) would have been good.

Thursday Thirteen meets Carnival of the Cities, as
Amy @ The Q Family presents 13 Things to do in or around Atlanta posted at The Q Family Adventure. Looks like a decent list to keep in mind, especially if you find yourself in Atlanta and get tired of family or your business conference (and admit it, we all do).

Jon Rochetti presents The New Newseum Opens April 11th posted at The DC Traveler ? Washington DC travel & tourism information, saying, “The new 250,000-square-foot, seven-level museum dedicated to news and the press, covers five centuries of news, news history and reporting with up-to-the-second technology and hands-on exhibits.”

Another great find in this weeks carnival. I am a Frank Lloyd Wright fan, but I don’t think I have ever seen one of homes photographed in the snow before.
Machione presents A Good Day To Shoot Frank Lloyd Wright In Canton posted at The Lives and Times… of Anthony McCune, saying, “There aren’t many towns the size of Canton with three Frank Lloyd Wright designed homes.” Of course, Canton, like much of Ohio, has received record snowfall this March. The dark and spare linear forms of Wright’s architecture are a great contrast to the bare trees and snow.

Well, that concludes this edition. If you would like to participate in the the next edition, submit your blog article
using our
carnival submission form.
Past posts and future hosts can be found on our

blog carnival index page.

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Primary Highways: Wyoming

Even though we're already on to Mississippi today, I did not want to forget the state of Wyoming, which caucused this weekend.

Wyoming is the least populous state in the U.S. The capital and largest city, Cheyenne, is about the same size as my previous hometown, Santa Cruz, CA. The entire state is significantly smaller than my current hometown, San Francisco. But Wyoming is large, and open, something I experienced years ago when driving out from New York to California on I-80. We have gotten to visit a lot of states along I-80 that I remember as part of this series. But coming west, the almost desert-like conditions, wind and brush and emptiness, were a welcome change from largely flat farmland of the previous thousand miles.

We did actually take a detour from I-80 south on US 191 through the Flaming Gorge] area down to Dinosaur National Monument in Utah. The two highways split in a remote area, with mountains and canyons to the south:

One thing I remember quite strikingly was how 191 curled up into the hills heading south from the freeway. Unfortunately, I don't have any of the photographs from the trip available, but this photo from RockyMontainRoads.com illustrates it quite well:

It turns out I had encounted US 191 in Wyoming on a previous trip as well, as it enters Yellostone National Park via the south entrance:

Yellowstone is of course spectacular, and quite a different experience from the starkness of southern Wyoming. It also is the oldest and one of the largest national parks. Although mostly in Wyoming it does extend into Montana and Idaho as well. I leave you with this image from the northern entrance to Yellowstone, in Montana:

The inscription reads “For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People,” with the dual purpose of preserving this natural land and making it accessible to “the people.” It seems like a sentiment that is sadly lost in contemporary politics, but that is a topic for another day…

Midnight Monday: Sick days

A few weeks ago, Luna had a feline upper-respiratory infection. Lots of sneezing and distress, but also a lot of time sleeping on comfy blankets:

This weekend I seemed to have a particularly nasty bug, which means being in a lot of physical distress (with fevers, aches and a runny nose), but also some time to just curl up with a blanket and rest.

It's amazing to see how similarly we deal with illness. It's a reminder that we share a lot of basic traits, despite our obvious anatomical and behavioral differences. On that note, there is a book Your Inner Fish that I am quite curious to read – and of course this would have been a good to read it, being as I have very little energy for anything else. It describes the many mundane and bizarre traits we share with other animals. For example, we have traces of fish anatomy and physiology like gills. Reading about things like this, and observing our own animal companions, it is hard too see how we don't share a common heritage, as some “anti-evolutionists” suggest.

For more black cats on Midnight Monday, visit our friends at House Panthers.