Cat beards (and a contest)

some good ones here

Why Evolution Is True

Here’s a new meme: cat beards (more links below the photo).

Send me a picture of you making a cat beard with your moggie; if you’re a winner (there will be only one), you get an autographed book with a picture of your cat drawn in.

WARNING!!!: You know the risks you’re taking by doing this.

You can see more cat beards at The Laughing Squid, which also provides moar links:

Cat Beards is a purrrfect photo meme where people position their cat’s chin in front of their own face and make it look as if they have a furry beard, mouth and all. Some of the photos have been around for a few years, but the meme has only recently really taken off. You can view more photos of mutant cat beard people online at Cat-Beard.com, Know Your Meme and by searching around in the Instagram

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Farewell, Commander Hadfield!

Why Evolution Is True

Chris Hadfield, the commander of the International Space Station (and, if you didn’t know, a Canadian), is going home in a Soyuz spacecraft in two days.

Since December 21 of last year, Hadfield has entertained all of us with his fantastic pictures of Earth (posted on his Twitter account), his repartée.  And now he tops it all: he’s recorded a lovely music video as a farewell. It’s based on David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” and has some backing from Ground Control.

From ars technica:

Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield would be notable solely for his work on the International Space Station. But… he may have the greatest YouTube account on Earth (and beyond) despite uploading only 17 videos. He’s demonstrated how to open a soda on the ocean floor, explained the process ofusing the toilet in space, and modeled interstellar wristwear among other videos.

. . …

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Tall Poppies And Google Teacher Academy

Rebekah Madrid

It was from my Australian friends that I learned the phrase “Tall Poppy Syndrome“.* So it’s somewhat appropriate that I try to write about my time at Google Teacher Academy in Sydney with a measure of humility and gratitude and quickly followed with how I’m supposed to change the world.

Sitting in the room.

Never underestimate the power of teachers meeting face to face, sharing quality time together to develop their thinking and networks #gtasyd

— tombarrett (@tombarrett) May 8, 2013

In a conference room in Google HQ Australia, I look around a room and saw strangers, twitter acquaintances, and friends. There were fifty-two educators from 13 countries, directly influencing 32,727 students, 40,311 teachers, and therefore indirectly influencing 410,885 students. These were amazing teachers who want to do amazing things for their students. In other words a powerful bunch of educators.

Nominally it was a tech conference (here’s…

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Caturday felids: Doctor Who kittehs

Why Evolution Is True

I’ve never watched a single episode of Doctor Who, but I know that many readers love this series, which I think has been on television for nigh on five decades.  Here are a series of cat photos related to the show, and your job is to guess the relationship.  These were contributed by Who-loving reader Grania.

There is no prize except your satisfaction in getting the right answer.

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Google Street View discovers new cat species!

Why Evolution Is True

It’s Felis bipedus, spotted on Google Street View and posted here.

I have no idea how this happened, but I’m sure a tech-savvy reader can explain. It apparently involves the compression of images by the Google Street View cars, a vehicle that I never thought about.  Matthew Cobb, who sent me the photo and links, also noted that “There’s an art form whereby people tool around on street view and see what they can find. Some are funny, others beautiful, others bleak.”  You can see examples here and here.

The second link explains how they make the street views, a process involving a fleet of hybrid automobiles that cruise the world, each carrying nine cameras on a single pole, with pictures snapped every 10-20 meters. The photos are electronically stitched together, probably explaining the moggie above.

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