Weekend Cat Blogging: Father’s Day

Luna’s Gotcha Day usually comes within a week of Father’s Day, so that, too, becomes a day to mark and celebrate here at CatSynth.

Fatherhood involves so many responsibilities.

Adoption:

Providing a wonderful loving home:

Providing food and drink:


And lots of toys to play with:

Exposure to culture and growth:

And lots of pets:

Happy Father’s Day:

Just in time for the occasion, we received our copy of Tom Cox’s Under the Paw: Confessions of a Cat Man. You can read more about “Cat Man” Tom at The Little Cat Diaries.

We look forward to reading it.

The M-Cats Club is hosting a special Father’s Day Edition of the Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos. We will be heading over there shortly.

Weekend Cat Blogging #158 is being hosted by our friends Kashim and Othello and Astrid. They are remembering friends who have passed away this weekend.

The Carnival of Cats will be going up today at Mind of Mog.

And of course the Friday Ark is at the modulator, with special thoughts to those whose lives have been affected by the ongoing floods in Iowa. We send our thoughts as well.



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Carnival of Mathematics #35

We at CatSynth are delighted to be hosting the 35th Carnival of Mathematics.

The date “Friday the 13th” of course evokes many superstitions. And perhaps that is why we have so few entries so far this weekend. That having been said, we at CatSynth take a dim view of superstitions. Many of the traditions that led to the irrational fear of the number 13 (including skipping over of 13 in building floor numbers, etc) are the same ones that promote the unfair treatment of black cats. Neither has a place in a modern, rational, society.

Consider that 13th of the month is no more likely to fall on a Friday than any other day of the week. Over a period of 28 years, that is 48 “Fridays the 13th,” as described here.

Let us turn away from superstition and myth, so some of the more mathematical properties of the number 13. It is a prime number (indeed, the sixth smallest prime). It is also a well-known twin prime, and it is one of only three known Wilson primes. For those less interested that I am in prime numbers, it is also a Fibnoacci number, and the number of Archimedean solids.

You can find more about the mathematics and mythology of 13 at “13 the Unlucky”.

Last week’s host, the blog 360, has a post about 13 and other “unlucky” numbers. But they also contribute a demonstration, using Godzilla, of how to calculate the speed of a
dinosaur by its footprints.

Recursivity introduces us to the Open Problem Garden, a site collecting open problems in mathematics and theoretical computer science. He presents an open problem about discrete iterations that is easy to state yet frustratingly hard to solve, as are many of the great problems of mathematics.

Looking for a more modest challenge? Math and Logic Play presents a bicycle-racing puzzle. Practice your math skills while staying healthy and reducing your carbon footprint…

Larry Ferlazzo describes a site for math games and education in Tutpup Math & Spelling Games.

Andrée from meeyauw treats us to Sierpinski cookies and earings this week. Those cookies look pretty good, but challenging to make. Fractals are by nature very detail oriented, and I am by nature very not detail oriented. But I’m sure they would taste great in either case.

The state of math education (in the United States) in a frequent topic on Carnival of Mathematics. This week, female math professor critiques an elementary school math program at Life on the Tenure-Track. It seems that at least in some classes, teachers aren’t able to make it through the full syllabus.

More topics in math education can be found at Teach College Math, where we are introduced to the Math Girl videos. “Who says there’s nothing good on YouTube?”

For the more discriminating reader, we have Discriminating Determinants, third in a series from Matt-a-matical Thinking.

We get back to our theme of the number 13. The fashionablemathematician presents the sum of prime factors. For a prime number like 13, the sum is of course the same: 13. But are there other numbers whose prime factors sum to 13? Well, the number 22 has prime factors 2 and 11, which add up to 13.

Sometimes a mathematician can end up being an astrophysicist, especially on Friday the 13th, as is the case with this article from Math Trek.

That is all the posts we currently have. We will continue to add sites throughout the weekend, so please leave a comment or contact us if you would like to participate.



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Luna’s 3rd Gotcha Day!

June 10 is Luna’s Gotcha Day, or the anniversary of her adoption.

Here is her official adoption photo from Santa Cruz County Animal Services, back in 2005:

This photo had not yet been posted when I went to the shelter on June 9, 2005. I was browsing the kennels and this charming little black kitty came up and greeted me. It was perfect, I knew I really wanted a black cat. It turned out she had just come up for adoption after being surrendered to the shelter by her previous family. I played with her for a bit, and said I would think about it overnight, even though that wasn’t really necessary. The next morning, June 10, I called the shelter to hold her for adoption, and I picked her up and brought her to her new home that afternoon.

She has been such a joy for the last three years. I get verkempt thinking about how I found the ketzela and brought her into my life.

We have since left behind that first home. But she has truly shined in her new life as an elegant and sophisticated city cat:

Please join me in wishing Luna a happy 3rd Gotcha Day!



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Weekend Cat Blogging: Sunshine

A very busy weekend, in the midst of a very busy and tumultuous couple of weeks. But we take a few minutes to relax in the sunshine that comes in the studio window:

And what is even better than relaxing in the sun? Getting pets and scritches at the same time!

Weekend Cat Blogging #157 is being hosted by sher the adorable black kitten Laura at What Did You Eat?.

The Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos will be hosted by The Cheezits: Colby & Cheddar (mmm, thats making all of us here at CatSynth hungry).

The Carnival of the Cats will be hosted at Pets Garden Blog. And of course the Friday Ark #194 is at the modulator.

We say goodbye to Lilly this week. She was loved very much, and her family misses her.

And Luna’s Gotcha Day is coming up this Tuesday, June 10.



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My kitten plays better keyboards than me

YouTube via hamsterdunce, posted at matrixsynth:

An outtake of a recent video interview I made for SonicState.com when my Himalayan kitten (Dusty) steals the show and starts playing synth music behind me that actually sounds pretty friggin’ good. That jerk. It’s bad enough that he’s better looking, but I figured I at least had all the talent up in here’s.”

And this YouTube response from stretta:

And it’s Tuesday, so check out more Cats on Tuesday.



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Primary Highways: Montana and South Dakota

Well, this long process is nearly at it’s end. And this time, we really mean it, there are only two states left, Montana and South Dakota. I had an opportunity to visit both as a kid in 1988. It was only as I prepared to write this article that I realized this was twenty years ago!

We came into Montana at night on I-94, which we previously mentioned in this series when we visited Indiana and Detroit. The night sky in Montana is an amazing experience, as is the complete darkness if one stops the car and turns out the lights. A little eerie, actually. I grew up the suburbs north of New York City, so such clear and dark nights were a new experience.

I-94 ends quietly at junction with I-90 near Billings, the largest city in Montana. I don’t remember much about it.

We did visit Yellowstone National park, which is mostly in Wyoming. But the northern entrance, featuring the Roosevelt Arch, is in Montana:

We discussed Yellowstone in more detail when we wrote about Wyoming. But I didn’t mention the fact that I was there during the massive fires of 1988, that burned about one third of the park. The smoke and the various closures certainly colored my visit. I do need to go back again and experience Yellowstone as an adult and without the fires.

From Yellowstone, we traveled north and east, stopping in the town of Butte. Though quite small, I recall it looking rather large as one approached from the east at night on I-90. We at CatSynth would not deign to make jokes about the town’s name.

Ultimately, we headed north on US 93 to reach Glacier National Park. This was an altogether different experience from Yellowstone. Not only were the skies clear, but landscape was more the standard forests and lakes and mountains one associates with Rockies:

Among the striking features of Glacier Park are its lakes, such as St. Mary Lake (pictured here) and Lake McDonald. Lake McDonald in particular is quite deep, as it is formed from a valley between mountains, though not as deep as Crater Lake in Oregon. The park does of course have Glaciers, but they have been retreating quite dramatically, victims of climate change.

Our trip back from Montana took us through South Dakota on I-90. The main feature of I-90 in South Dakota were the frequent billboards advertising Wall Drug, which we of course did have to stop at, after having fun with the concept for the preceding hours. We did of course visit the more monumental attractions, including the dueling carved mountains of Crazy Horse and Mount Rushmore.

We ultimately continued east on I-90 to Chicago, the hometown of the likely winner at the end of this long contest.