Fun with stats: Holiday Edition

From John Battelle's Searchblog, we have some self-described “fun stats for the holiday:”

If you were expecting something more directly apropos of the holiday season, consider a few of these gems courtesy of New American Dream:

* A typical middle income family earning around $45,000 a year saw its debt burden grow by 33.1% between 2001 and 2004, even after adjusting for inflation.

* Recent statistics show that in November of 2003 54% of consumers were still paying off credit card debt left over from the previous holiday season.

* The amount of household garbage in the United States generally increases by 25 percent between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day, from 4 million tons to 5 million tons.

* 50 million Christmas trees are purchased in the U.S. Of those, 30-plus million get carted to the landfill every year.

* The National Mental Health Association cites the financial stresses of the holiday season as one cause of the ?holiday blues? which, for many, transforms the holidays into a time of anxiety and depression.

So folks, lay off the credit card debt for a bit, and spend some more time with your family and friends, both furry and not so furry.

Maybe give a little something to your local animal shelter, too. You can find shelters and other organizations near you on Petfinder.



Weekend Cat Blogging #81: A CatSynth Channukah

Here at CatSynth we get into the holiday spirit with the traditional lighting of the channukah candles in our not-so-traditional music-inspired menorah:

The astute observer might see Luna in the background of the photo above. She keeps a good distance from the candles, as is appropriate. However, we'd like to remind everyone not to take any chances with candles this holiday season, especially with animal friends. Please make sure all candles are lit on safe, non-flammable surfaces (such as granite) and observed at all times.

For safer holiday kitty fun, Luna got some new toys in the appropriate blue and silver colors:

Not exactly a dreidel, but still fun!

Our family has a tradition in which we try to guess which candle is going to last the longest. In the photo below, the likely candidate is number six (third from the right, the center candle doesn't get numbered).

Sure enough, in the end the sixth candle was the last one alight. Watching the candles go out is fascinating. The flame dims to just a point, then sometimes flares up again in a last push before flickering and going out in a beautiful puff of smoke.

Hmm, this is starting to sound a little depressing, isn't it? Better hop over Tiggy the Tiny Tiger for some more feline holiday cheer!

Catsynth pic: cat in Serge

From m/n/m/l we have a cat under a Serge synthesizer kit. Looks like a comfy little spot.

m/n/m/l has some interesting music available on CD and for download. Judging from the quote on the website, I am guessing m/n/m/l shares my frustration with low CD and download sales:

June 2006

people from all over coming here. USA, Germany, China. But why?? read, look at pictures? download a couple tracks?

sales from downloads and CD's was up during the winter, lately it's dead again. don't really feel like spending all my time doing marketing marketing marketing,too much else going on now anyway.

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[Music] of the (Blue) Spheres

It has been a while since I have completed one of graphic-art images like the Green Kitties piece posted a while back.

If the previous one was “green”, this one is definitely “blue.” It is actually inspired by an evening on the Singapore waterfront several years ago, which including a sculpture/installation with blue spheres and illuminated pools.

This work was created using a combination of Poser and Bryce (in which the final render was done, along with everything except the figure).

It is interesting to compare how both works combine abstract geometric elements with “realistic” figures.







Coups in the news

Augusto Pinochet, disgraced former dictator of Chile, mass murderer, and cat hater died this weekend at the age of 91. His death has been met with celebration by many in Chile, and at least quiet celebration by many around the world. At least here at CatSynth, Fidel Castro will get a much better reception when the time comes.

Pinochet might have been proud of a couple of coups this week in Fiji and Lebanon







Winter food ideas from our WCB friends…

With the extremely cold nights and now the driving rain, winter is again upon us. My least favorite season, but an excuse to stay in and work on projects. Also to cook warm comforting food, like the Mexican Black Bean Soup With Sausage from our weekend-cat-blogging friends at whatdidyoueat.

This is a warm, protein-rich and spicy comfort food perfect for winter. It isn't that hard to make either, though I think mine came out a little too liquidy. But hey, it's a soup. Garnished with fresh avocado slices and combined with warmed soft tortillas and a red wine for a nice dinner. Plus, one recipe leaves quite a bit of leftover for the week, which probably isn't getting any warmer.



Election detritus

Readers may recall that I was in New Orleans on election night, in the middle of the district of William “frozen assets” Jefferson. Well, his runoff election is today.

Keeping cash in the freezer and taking bribes is one thing, but in my mind the reason he deserves to lose is that he has turned to bashing his opponent Karen Carpenter for her support of gay rights and abortion rights. Whether these represent his true views or a cynical attempt to appeal to socially conservative voters, either qualifies as a reason to vote against him. We'll have to see if at the end of the day his little “Republican” play works…

UPDATE: Looks like Jefferson pretty much trounced Carpenter in the runoff. I would like to think it's because of loyalty in the district, and not because of so-called “values issues.”





Weekend Cat Blogging #79: from the archives

For this weekend, we go back to the archives for this artistic sepia-toned closup of Luna:

The poster behind Luna is of a stabile by Alexander Calder, among my favorite artists. Calder is famous not only for his monumental abstract stabile sculptures, but also his abstract mobiles – his mobiles were influenced in part by the paintings of Mondrian, another of my favorite artists.

I think Luna's profile and sculpture complement one another quite nicely.

Check out more WCB fun over at belly timber Angry Cat Blog. I figure it's best not to ask…







Catsynth pic: actual cat with Octave CAT… and Kitten in Emulator X

Well, here's another cat sitting next to an Octave CAT – wonder why that comes up so much.

Actually I am quite interested in the Octave CAT and Kitten synths, I'm trying (yet again) to bid on one on eBay.

In the meantime, I have been trying several methods to emulate them, including building an Emulator X patch. The Kitten is definitely more feasible because it only has one oscillator and thus no FM – FM is nearly impossible to do on the Emulator platform. However, I did one out of MIDI controllers. So the end result is a “Kitten lite” that contains all the oscillator waveforms (Saw, Triangle and Square/PWM), the two independent sub-octave waveforms, square and sine LFOs, filter with realtime cutoff and Q and envelope mod, and of course ADSR envelope.

While not a real Octave Kitten, it's a nice little playable instrument.





Feline Alzheimer's disease

News of a studly on Alzheimer's disease for readers with ageing feline and human friends:

Ageing cats can develop a feline form of Alzheimer's disease, a new study reveals. Scientists at the Universities of Edinburgh, St Andrews, Bristol and California have identified a key protein which can build up in the nerve cells of a cat's brain and cause mental deterioration.

In humans with Alzheimer's disease, this protein creates 'tangles' inside the nerve cells which inhibit messages being processed by the brain. The team says that the presence of this protein in cats is proof that they too can develop this type of disease…

…”As with humans, the life expectancy of cats is increasing and with this longer life runs the greater chance of developing dementia. Recent studies suggest that 28% of pet cats aged 11-14 years develop at least one old-age related behaviour problem and this increases to more than 50% for cats over the age of 15.”

Perhaps one of the things that makes cats and other companion animals so endearing is that they go through many of the same life stages as humans, from kittenhood/childhood to old age. Having recently observed a 96-year-old relative and a neighbor's 20-year old cat who recently passed away, one can see similarities in both the strong and the sad qualities. The old cat liked to simply rest in her favorite spots in the neighbors garden, staring out into the world. Her physical state deteriorated very quickly towards the end, but I believe she crossed the rainbow bridge quietly and peacefully. My relative is still with us (saw her on my recent New York trip), though her health and mental state has deteriorated quite a bit as well. Again, I find myself thinking of the similarities between humans and cats in this stage of life – though just as with human infants in comparison to kittens, older cats seem to on the whole do a better job of staying independent than their elderly human counterparts.

I wonder if any of the stem cell research on Alzheimer's in applicable to cats…