I love cats.  They just have such cute faces.  But sometimes I wonder about their intelligence.  I own a eighteen pound old tomcat and at times he seems to demonstrate Einstein like intelligence.  He can weave and jump off walls and drink out of the tap. But lordy can he be stupid.  Everything he does seems to revolve around his stomach.  His reality is food, especially human food.  This cat eats and watches TV, he only watches certain shows, all food shows.

Get a load of this Fat Cat

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

 

The brain of the domesticated cat is about 5 centimeters (2 inches) long and weighs 25-30 grams (0.9 to 1.1 ounces).  If a theoretical cat is taken to be 60 cm long with a weight of 3.3 kg, then the brain would be at 0.90% (0.91%) of its total body mass, compared to 2.00% (2.33%) of total body mass in the average human. Within the encephalization quotient proposed by Jerison in 1973, values above 1 are classified big brained, lower than 1 are small brained.  The domestic cat is attributed a value of between 1 – 1.71 relative to human value that is 7.44 – 7.8  The largest brain in the cat kingdom are those of the tigers in Java and Bali, of which the largest relative brain size within the pantera is the tigris.  It is debated whether there exists a causal relationship between brain size and intelligence in vertebrates. Correlations have been shown between these factors in a number of experiments, however correlation does not imply causation. Most experiments involving the relevance of brain size to intelligence hinge on the assumption that complex behavior requires a complex (and therefore intelligent) brain, however, this connection has not been consistently demonstrated.

The surface area of a cat’s cerebral cortex is approximately 83 cm² whereas the human brain has a surface area of about 2500 cm².  A theoretical cat weighing 3,500 grams has a cerebellum weighing 5.3 grams, this 0.17% of the total weight comparible to 4.22% in the human.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

 

Although the House Cat can be really dumb at times, they are just so bloody good looking that I forgive their transgressions and just want to cuddle with the little bugger.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

 

 

Cape Horn

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

 

9 de Julio Avenue (or Avenida 9 de Julio, in the local tongue) in downtown Buenos Aires, Argentina, is not just any street. Nine lanes wide, with gardened medians between the opposing flow of traffic, this is the widest street in the world. Only those with a quick pace and long legs will be lucky to get to the other side before the traffic lights at the intersection changes. A pedestrian crossing this street usually requires a few extra minutes and two to three traffic light rotations. 9 de Julio Avenue is only 1 km long but 110 meters wide.

The avenue’s unusual width is because it spans an entire city block, the distance between two streets in the checkerboard pattern used in Buenos Aires. The avenue runs to the west of the Río de la Plata waterfront, from the Retiro district in the north to Constitución station in the south. It has up to seven lanes in each direction and is flanked on either side by parallel streets of two lanes each.

The street runs far in both directions and connects the unique sections of the metropolis. Some of Buenos Aires’ main landmarks can be seen along the way; most notably, the Obelisk, that sits in the middle of 9 de Julio, the original French Embassy, the statue of Don Quixote, the Teatro Colon and the former Ministry of Communications building – the only building that sits on the avenue itself at the intersection with Moreno street.

                                                                                                                     

                                                                                                                    

                                                                                                                        

The avenue was first planned in 1888, with the name of Ayohuma; but the road was long opposed by affected landlords and residents, so work did not start until 1935. Even the French government refused to submit the embassy building for demolition, and local preservationists opposed the move as well, as the building is widely hailed as an architectural masterpiece. The initial phase was inaugurated on 9 July 1937 and the main stretch of the avenue was completed in the 1960s. The southern connections were completed after 1980, when the downtown portion of the tollway system was completed. Clearing the right-of-way for these intersections required massive condemnations in the Constitución area.

                                                                                                                      

                                                                                                                     

                                                                                                                       

                                                                                                                      

 

                                                                                                                    

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

The different colours of the pins on the first map indicate which research group reported the sighting.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

 

Two new movies have the emancipation President saving America from the hordes of undead.

Abraham Lincoln all of a sudden has become a movie hero that fights monsters.  Not just any monsters, but Vampires and Zombies.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

In this flick the 16th President takes on a vampire conspiracy that emanates out of New Orleans.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

In this film during the events of the American Civil War, United States President Abraham Lincoln must save his nation from an outbreak of the Confederate undead.

Some recent photos of the Berg we call The Peg

                                                                                                                                                         

Winnipeg has some big balls

                                                                                                                                                            

Someone put suds in the fountain at Donald St. and Broadway

                                                                                                                                                            

Roof action at the Tavern United downtown

                                                                                                                                                           

Woodward building

                                                                                                                                                           

Osborne Rapid Transit station

                                                                                                                                                        

Living on the edge of a golf course along the Red River

                                                                                                                                                            

ArtSpace building in the Exchange district

                                                                                                                                                            

Tourists on the Water Taxi

These people rappell down to the floor of the cave where the scorpions and deadly snakes are waiting. Why?

 

The Cave of Swallows, also called Cave of the Swallows (Spanish: Sótano de las Golondrinas), is an open air pit cave in the Municipality of Aquismón, San Luis Potosí, Mexico. The elliptical mouth, on a slope of karst, is 49 by 62 meters wide and is undercut around all its perimeter, further widening to a room approximately 303 by 135 meters wide.  The floor of the cave is a 333-meter freefall drop from the lowest side of the opening, with a 370-meter drop from the highest side,  making it the largest known cave shaft in the world, the second deepest pit in Mexico and perhaps the 11th deepest in the world.  A skyscraper such as New York City’s Chrysler Building could easily fit wholly within it.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Opened up by water erosion in a fault on an impermeable limestone plain and with a roughly conical shape, the cave has been known to the local Huastec people since ancient times. The first documented exploration was on 27 December 1966 by T. R. Evans, Charles Borland and Randy Sterns.

Temperatures in the cave are low. Vegetation grows thickly at the mouth, where rains can cause waterfalls cascading into the cave.  The cave floor is covered with a thick layer of debris and guano on which “millipedes, insects, snakes, and scorpions” live.  There is also a narrow sinkhole in a fault of lower Cretaceous limestone which goes down at least a further 512 m.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

                                                                                                                                                                                                           

And then there are the crazy thrill seekers who want to parachute down into the cave where the scorpions and deadly snakes are waiting.  Why?  Why?

                                                                                                                                                                                                             

The cave is a popular vertical caving destination. The high side of the mouth is covered with heavy foliage, so cavers most often fix their ropes on the low side, where bolts have been fixed into the rock and the area is clear of obstructions.  Rappelling to the floor takes about twenty minutes, in which time abseil equipment and rope can heat up to hazardous levels. Climbing back out may take from forty minutes to more than two hours. A person without a parachute would take almost ten seconds to freefall from the mouth to the floor, hence the pit is also popular with extreme sporting enthusiasts for BASE jumping.  An average-sized hot air balloon has been navigated through the 160-foot (49 m) wide opening and landed on the floor below.  Base jumpers can get out in about 10 minutes via an extraction rope.