Ok, this might not be a very efficient way to start a fire, but it sure is one of the most fun we’ve seen!
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14Jul
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14Jul"Today, as part of Google Calendar Labs, we're opening up Google Calendar as a gadget container." Trick out your cal http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2009...
Rob Diana liked this -
14Jul@jamesward When I saw FlexMonkey I thought you had a GreaseMonkey for Flex, which would be awesome! :) http://www.jamesward.com/blog...
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14JulOops, S3fm needs a "index.html" http://s3.amazonaws.com/s3fm...
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14JulKeep hoping to see a post on the Prototype blog about the cool work + future vision for where ProtoScripty are going :)
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14JulRT @rsanheim "The (non-human) baby I've been building the past few months - Zeus, the Contegix cloud" http://blog.thinkrelevance.com/2009...
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14JulS3fm is a new Amazon S3 Ajax file manager that looks kinda cool http://s3.amazonaws.com/s3fm/
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14Jul
We humans think we are mighty clever when we come up with amusing captions for pictures of cute kitties. It turns out they’ve got us wrapped around their little claws.
Researchers in Britain have discovered cats are able to tailor their purring sounds to manipulate humans. There are significant differences between their ’standard’ purring, which humans often find comforting, and the sounds they make when they want feeding.
The “feed me” purr incorporates a sound with a similar frequency to a human baby crying. The result is that people unwittingly feel obliged to respond. It’s not clear whether this is because it stirs our natural parental instincts, or because it is such an urgent and unpleasant sound that we feel obliged to respond to silence it. However, the trickery even works on people who don’t own cats.
The trick is pulled off by the cat using the muscles surrounding its vocal chords to alter the pitch of the sounds it makes. This technique – which isn’t possible in most animals – is why cats are able to purr. In the process, the cat’s vocal chords get freed up to make high pitched noises which means they can make both sounds at once, allowing the vocal chords to embed a cry in an otherwise comforting purr. Were the cat to simply make the crying sound, humans would be more likely to simply shoo it away.
Dr Karen McComb of the University of Sussex asked cat trainers to record the sounds of 10 cats in different situations, then tested the sounds on 50 volunteers to see how they responded. She told the BBC that while a normal purr contains a quiet cry, the cats appeared to have learned to intentionally exaggerate the cry once they realized it would get a response.
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14Jul@marklucovsky Let me know when you are settled in and your work is public... would love to hear about what you are up to :)
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14JulReminded again of this classic cartoon on Enterprise Java http://twittch.com/24/ (via epreston)
Michael R. Bernstein liked this
