UK readers, note that tomorrow at 21:00 British Summer Time (BST), BBC2 television will be presenting a very important show:
For some reason the Scots have to wait until 23:20.
There’s a clip on the website, and on another page you can read about the special feline-directed GPS technology—a technology so sophisticated that it can pinpoint a moggie to within inches. What a great thing science is!
h/t: Michael
For some reason the Scots have to wait until 23:20.
Maybe because of the fact of separatist sentiments among some Scots, just to punish them for their anti-unionism.
Its always been fairly common for Scottish schedules to differ.
I remember Armando Ianucci commenting somewhere “My childhood was ruined by the phrase ‘Except for viewers in Scotland who have their own programmes'”.
(BTW he’s Scottish, not Italian)
It is actually a programme by Rory Bremner about the upcoming independence referendum.
All GPS units will be eternally “recalculating” due to the laws of physics involved with attempted herding of cats.
Is this related to the findings/results published a while ago about (some) cats hunting significantly more prey than expected? I wouldn’t be surprised if the reserachers turned their work into several reports AND a TV documentary.
I think Nova or Discovery channel did something similar with urban raccoons. I vaguely remember watching it on TV. With the racoons, one interesting finding was that their ranges contracted; they didn’t range as far from home as their rural cousins. I think the combinaton of lots of garbage food and hazards like roads both contributed to the change in behavior.
Not sure but they followed 50 cats in one village – that is some density – & found that while most did not venture over 300 yards or so (ca 270 m) from home, many visited other houses & ate their cat food.
Maybe its a village-city thing or a US-UK thing, but I am somewhat more surprised that the villagers let their 300 cats out to roam on a daily basis vs. that a village had 300 cats. I know lots of people who have cats but few with cat-doors (or who just put them out for hours).
Great! Now we get to get a cat’s eye view of some Maggie cleaning himself.
Tastefully edited of course.
And I didn’t say Maggie, curse you autocorrect.
Oooo, can’t wait to watch this. Thanks for letting us know! 🙂
It sounds like a purr-fect program (sorry).
I hope Jerry will forgive this off-topic bit, but Alan Sokal, of Sokal hoax fame, has recently published a long article at Logos called “What is Science and Why Should We Care?”(http://logosjournal.com/2013/sokal/).
The contents should greatly please all fans of WEIT–Sokal argues that “science and religion are fundamentally incompatible ways of looking at the world” and that “It makes no sense to use one set of standards of evidence in physics, chemistry and biology, and then suddenly relax your standards when it comes to medicine, religion or politics.”
Is it possibly related to this Comic(?) The Oatmeal made not long ago? http://theoatmeal.com/comics/cats_actually_kill
I’m both looking forward to and dreading this show. We considered fitting Fortran with a GPS but decided we might be better off not knowing where she goes.
66, 77, 90 or 95?
Looks like a great programme, can’t wait to see it. For those who can access it, a taster here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22567526
Greetings,
Fascinating programme!
They found that the cats didn’t kill that many creatures – about 0.5 kills per cat over the week of the study. Mainly, they thought, because the cats were visiting each other’s homes and eating left-overs!
The cats appeared to “time-share” the area – some cats whose territories appeared to over-lap due to crowding would split the 24 hours: one cat would do daytime, the other night, in order to avoid conflicts, particularly actual physical fights.
Perhaps the most fascinating discovery amongst a number of interesting information was to do with purring.
There are two types – unsolicited (when owners stroke their cats) and solicitation (when the cat is expecting something).
The latter differs from the former in that it features a sudden spike which happens to be at the same frequency as that of a baby’s crying – a fascinating adaptation to cohabitation with humans perhaps!?
I wonder what Prof. Coyne would make of that?
Kindest regards,
Jaems
Two citations/quotes for the group
An amusing one from H. L. Mencken on Christianity/theology
“The effort to explain the unknowable by putting it into terms not with knowing”
And (IMO) completely inane (although proferred by one of the great minds in the history of theology, the towering religious authority, St. Augustine
“Si comprendis, non est Deus” (If you can understand it, it is not God).
Jeeze Christ! IMO Readers on this group can see through that last one. And see it leads nowhere. (St. Augustine and the Mysterians 😇) And also IMO A post modern statement/lingo, put forth, three hundred years before the modern age 😯