Tag Archives: videos

Thoughts

Two mothers, six kittens

The wonderful (and unique) thing about our two cats, Mitzi and Trixie, is they share responsibility for their two litters of kittens. They each gave birth to three kittens, a few days apart, and soon afterward, began to take care of them together. They groom and feed each others’ kittens, regardless of who they are, and the six kittens play together and sleep together all the time. I haven’t heard of another case like this.

We expected this somewhat, though. Mitzi and Trixie are sisters, and they’ve always cared about each other, although they do argue from time to time. We got them when they were close to two months old, and they’ve been together ever since. They’ve eaten together, played together, slept together — done everything together. I think they were even courted by the same tomcats. Before they gave birth, I recorded a video clip where they were comforting each other, and that’s another thing I hadn’t seen or heard of in cats until then.

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Thoughts

Our newborn kittens

Our two cats, Trixie and Mitzi, gave birth to three kittens each — Trixie on May 16th, and Mitzi on May 20th. They each gave birth to two tomcats and one kitten, all of them adorable. They’ve been growing nicely and are starting to cause mischief, as six kittens put together will usually do.

I filmed this short video when they were about two weeks old, on June 2nd. They’d all opened their eyes by then, but were still unsure on their feet. You’ll be able to see each of them more clearly now than in the birth video posted previously.

Enjoy!

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Places

A tourism film from 1964, promoting Miami Beach, culled from the travelfilmarchive channel on YouTube.

For one who grew up in the area, it’s interesting to see how the place has changed since, and how many resorts popular then still exist (or don’t) today. Some scenes in the film are natural, some are staged and awkward, but it is fun to watch.

It’s also worth noting that the same studios that made cartoons (Van Beuren Films, Castle Films) also made travel films.

Miami Beach in 1964

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Thoughts

A neat talk by Peter Tyack at TED, entitled “The Intriguing Sound of Marine Mammals“, in which he explains the effect of human noise on the sounds made by marine mammals, and what’s being done to correct the situation. A few tidbits:

  • Better propeller designs decrease propeller noise by up to 90%
  • Insulating the engine chamber from the hull reduces engine noise by up to 99%
  • Slowing down the ships by 50% decreases overall noise and reduces fuel consumption by 30%

There’s also a cool cartoon at the end of the talk, called “Good Vibrations”, made by Jeremy Clapin.

Marine mammals, underwater sounds and shipping noise

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Thoughts

The pattern behind self-deception

Michael Shermer, the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine and the Executive Director of the Skeptics Society, gave a talk at TED about self-deception — how our mind (sometimes) plays tricks on us. A couple of interesting tidbits:

  • Dopamine antagonists decrease the patterns we see
  • Dopamine agonists increase the patterns we see

Wonderful stuff!

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