In the north of Scotland, where the Highlands jut out to touch the Shetland Islands, there is the County of Caithness, previous home of a tribe of Picts, the Catti, from which it takes its name.
On the border with the County of Sutherland, the last reliefs stand out, preceding the vast flat expanse that gently accompanies to the sea.
Here, Mount Morven and its neighbors form what, from above, appears just like the silhouette of a cat’s footprint. And it is precisely among these heights that an old and abandoned castle is said to be hidden, not shown on any map. Since it is known that all legends have a fund of truth, it will not surprise you to know that this castle does exist, and is the seat of the most renowned academy of historical-scientific studies in the feline world: the Royal Clowder Society of Caithness. The manor is a massive structure of gray stones, with four cylindrical towers to delimit the vertices, surrounded by a wide and deep moat, always full of water, and this make it seem almost floating on its surface, a characteristic that it has maintained to this day.
The history of the origins of this institution is ancient and quite adventurous, so let me tell you about it.
that is to say: the art of the interpretation of the residuals on the bottom of the tuna can
Hi to everybody!
Today I’ll teel you about a new discipline that I invented some time ago.
A day, observing the tuna that remains on the bottom of the tuna can, after humans had poured it into my bowl, I asked myself: what if these residues could mean anything?
Let me explain well: you will surely know disciplines such as tasseomancy, through which you can foresee a glimpse of the future only by observing, with an expert eye, the tea grounds.
Based on this, I wanted to create my own version with the tuna “grounds”, but mind you: all this has been created just for fun and it hasn’t any scientific base (apart from the analysis of the data collected in terms of number of events), moreover it doesn’t take into account of any rules valid for the other divinatory practices.
As scientist, obviously I don’t rely on what the tuna tells me to decide about my days, I encourage you to do the same.
After all these premises, I am pleased to inform you that, after few weeks of data collection, I have come to the development of the principles for the divination practice of my invention which I have called “Tuna-mancy”.
The Tuna-mancy is the art of interpret the bottom of the tuna can, as long as your cat allows you to leave some in the can before forcing yourself to pull out till the last fillet (which I’m sure you always do …).
In order to obtain a result as much as possible not altered by external perturbations, it needs to read the bottom of the can after quickly turning it upside down and letting down the biggest part of the content, without shaking too much. It would be ideal to put all the tuna, or at least the biggest part, in the bowl at the same time.
You photograph that remains, before giving also this to your friend cat.
Now you have your photo, and you can compare it with the example images illustrated in this article.
I precise you that all the considerations here are derived from metal cans of about 6 cm of diameter, that contain tuna (without sauce or jelly). Any adaptation to other cans or contents could cause the result to vary unexpectedly and unpredictably.
Oh, I almost forgot: I am a cat… so, the indications are valid only for your four-legged friend!
I have to confess you that, to decide what “omen” associate to every tuna residuals configuration, I collected a lot of photo of cans (what an effort to eat all these tuna… no, it’s a joke! I have eaten normally and I monitored a period long enough to have a significative number of events) and then… well, then I invented the prediction, basing on the sensations that every distribution of residues gave me.
However, considering as a whole the data collected from all these cans, I can tell you that I did a good job: generally, I obtained a correspondence quite accurate of my life-style (obviously, not including the unexpected events!).
I briefly explain you how I classified all the evidences I got, showing you in the meantime what I obtained for my case.
First of all, I noticed that the residual quantity can vary from “zero residual” to a big quantity.
This became the base principle for a first differentiation of the indications the tuna will give you.
So, overturn the tuna can and see: how much residues have remained? I give you an help for the evaluation…
Good morning to all of you who follow my adventures,
now it is almost winter and it has already snowed here. In this period, there is nothing more satisfying than staying at home and enjoying the warmth of a crackling fireplace … even better if in the company of an old connection.
I would like to tell you just what we talked about yesterday, Professor Dorito Orangie Rocwood and I, for close friends Rocky, a dear friend of mine and companion of countless archaeological adventures. He is one of the leading experts on Mesoamerican feline civilizations at the time when the Mayan civilization flourished, as well as a profound connoisseur of those areas.
He has come to bring to my attention an artifact unearthed in his last excavation of him, not far from El Caracol, which apparently looks like a terracotta cube, but we are both convinced that for the representations that have been painted on it, it can represent some form of scientific equipment.
However, I will not digress by getting lost in the details of our ramblings, there is still a long way to go to arrive at the deciphering of what we have currently renamed as “ArtùRockynism” (the name should be a kind of fusion of our names and word “mechanism”).
Our reflections were helped by the warm crackle of the fireplace, accompanied by an energising hot drink. We left out the usual tea for something more invigorating: an excellent coffee (accompanied by delicious tuna biscuits).
I could not avoid a digression on the creation of the most iconic instrument for its preparation, the moka, and on the underlying physical principles, which I would like to share with you.
First of all, Rocky clarified to me the origin of the name, which derives from a city in Yemen, Mokha to be precise, which is said to have been one of the earliest and most renowned coffee production centers.
The creator of this device, which would bring “coffee like that of the bar” into the homes of Italians, was Alfonso Bialetti. The year in which this portent saw the light was 1933.
It is said that the idea came to him after watching his wife do the laundry with the lessiveuse, a sort of ancestor of the washing machine. It essentially consists of a large metal container, in the shape of a cauldron, having a tube in the center that ends with a flat disk perforated along the circumference.
The part that rests on the fire, or in any case on the heat source, consists of a double bottom, the upper part of which is perforated. The water, with which it was filled together with the cloths, under the action of heat, is brought to a boil state in which, due to the action of the thrust of the steam produced and the convective motions that push the hottest part, the one on the bottom in fact, to go back. Since the upper wall of the double bottom has a hole, the water enters inside and goes up along the tube and then falls back, through the perforated end part, onto the laundry, covering it with hot water and detergent, the lye).
I try to represent you a small scheme of how the lessiveuse is made in the illustration below.
As CCEO (Cat CEO) of this website, for some time now I have been looking for the best way to communicate data graphically, both internally to our staff and for the articles we prepare for you. It already seemed all seen and seen again and, therefore, super boring … when I had the intuition to stop squeezing my brains and go to my humans to ask opening a tuna can. And here, like a flash, the most innovative idea that I could have imagined up to that moment during all my investigations sparked in my mind, clearing up any doubts: I had to make the TUNAGRAMS!
I cannot describe my enthusiasm after having that happy intuition, it will suffice to say that I left the tuna for a moment to go and confer with my humans and tell them this fantastic idea.
Obviously they were thrilled and, at that point, my work as a cat-magnificent inspirer, supreme genius inventor of amazing creations, was over: I could quietly go back to my tuna can.
I let them produce, going to dispense my beneficial purring from time to time to motivate them. In truth, also to check that everything was going smoothly, without jams due to stagnation of the project … not that my humans are lazy, that was absolutely not the meaning, and I admit that perhaps I could have expressed myself better… Let’s say that in all projects it happens to run aground in some rock and I was always ready to throw them a rope to free them.
After a month of hard work, I am pleased to present you the first tunagrams we created (I call them “the first” because new ones could surely come out !).
I almost forgot: the background of the tunagrams is orange (because it’s my favorite color!), but you can also choose the white one.
Initially, the “ScatterTuna-gram” was born, essentially a scatterplot, that is a graph in which highlighting the relationship between two continuous numerical variables x and y (note: a continuous numerical variable is a variable represented by numbers, integers or decimals, often deriving from measurements).
To give you an example, I propose the ScatterTuna-gram of the hypothetical relationship that I expect there will be between the increase in the quantity of my tuna cans in relation to the increase in the number of articles that we will publish on Astro Artù: the graph clearly shows a linear and positive relation between the two variables.
today I want to tell you about a discovery I came across while I was in Versailles. I went to see a particular painting, entitled “Chat Angora Blanc” by Jean-Jacques Bachelier, which portrays Madame Brillant. According to my family tree, she could be an illustrious ancestor of mine. Here you can see the painting I am referring to and, in fact, it seems to exist a great similarity between us.
As I was telling you, I had gone to visit the places where my ancestor lived and I was struck by the light of the chandeliers in the hall of mirrors: the light was breaking up into many rays of different colors and while this thought was spinning in my head, I went out to admire the garden.
Immersed in my thoughts, I almost didn’t end up immersing myself in the Latona fountain, where I caught a glimpse of a rainbow admist the water droplets from the splashes of the fountain. Back home, I decided to resume my studies on optics, a subject I’m very passionate about, and to write this article, the first of a long and interesting series dedicated to the light and its mysteries.
Here we see the passage of the light beam from material 1 to material 2.
Since the materials have different optical properties, a variation in the angle of the light beam is obtained.
I’m sure you all know about jellyfish, but I’d bet a whisker that there is someone among you who hasn’t heard of the “immortal jellyfish” yet.
Well: ypu know that I don’t like to leave anyone behind, so let me briefly introduce the topic, giving you some information about what a jellyfish is scientifically. I apologize in advance if I will use terms that may seem difficult to understand, but they concern scientific names that cannot be omitted in the description. If you need more information, you can read up on the encyclopedia, on any other book or website you prefer.
Jellyfishes belong to the phylum (definition used for the classification of living beings which generally indicates the type to which an animal belongs) of the Cnidarians. Cnidarians, also known as Coelenterates, are animals that possess a radial symmetry and live in water. It’s interesting to know that the term “Cnidarians” derives from the Greek word knídē, which literally means ‘nettle’, a name that fully captures one of the best known characteristics of these living beings, namely the fact that they are highly stinging.
A jellyfish develops from a polyp, which lives in colonies anchored on the seabed. Reached maturity, it can generate both other polyps and jellyfish. In detail:
– through a process defined as “gemmation”, the polyp generates other polyps. Generally, they stick to the polyp that gave them birth and increase the size of the colony on the seabed. However, in some cases the polyps can detach from the bottom and live an independent life;
– particular polyps, called gonophores, have the ability to generate jellyfish, which can conceive other polyps through reproduction.
Here is my drawing that schematizes this particular life cycle.
Starting from today, there is a good news: each article proposed on AstroArtù.studio will be associated by an indication of the difficulty of the topics covered, so that everyone can roughly know the level of complexity of what they are about to read.
It goes without saying that topics with high difficulty require a greater amount of previous knowledge to be fully understood, but this doesn’t mean that they can only be read by a few: we’ll always strive to illustrate the concepts in the most understandable way, so that can be approached by the largest possible group of readers.
If you want an advice, I personally believe that the difficulty should not compromise curiosity: if you are interested, read it! No matter how thoroughly you are able to understand what is written, the important is that you have learned that there is something that you didn’t know before.
But how to define the degree of difficulty in a cat way?
Nothing simpler! And here that the word points could only be born “CAT-POINTS”!
As can be guessed, the cat-points is an indicator that associates the degree of complexity with a number of paws. It starts from 1 paw (easy level, green color) to get to 5 paws (very-very difficult level, purple color).
Just for clarity, I show you all the possible cat-points:
I’m sure this will make your reading experience and your new discoveries on AstroArtù better, I’ll put my paw on it!
Some time ago, I received news of the possibility that, in ancient times, an ancient species of tuna could have gone as far as polar latitudes. Obviously, given the abstruseness of all this, I wanted to check for myself and I departed.
It was certainly not an easy expedition and, as expected, no trace of primitive frozen fossil tuna … I was also about to seriously risk not being able to get food for the return trip, if it wasn’t for physics, that still one once got me out of trouble and allowed me to remain unharmed.
On the way back, I was sailing on a river not yet completely frozen when my boat ran into threatening rapids and tumbled down a waterfall. I lost all the food, the tools, the notes… but don’t worry, my memory is iron! Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about my stomach, you have to live on something, what the heck! And science alone, as we know, only satisfies the mind.
I have wandered a lot in the vain search for something edible, but – alas! – at those latitudes, so close to the Arctic Circle, food certainly doesn’t abound and we walk along inaccessible paths. The cold had devastated my paws, but I knew I had to continue at all costs: from what I remembered seeing on the map, not far from the river from which I had escaped there should have been a lake. And lake meant fish, I had to believe it and to proceed at all costs. By that moment, this hope was the only force that moved my paws. Once I regained my strength and got some supplies, I could even reach a town and return to civilization.
I still had to light a few fires before seeing the much coveted stretch of water among the conifers, hunger had exhausted me. Then, you can imagine what anger when I discovered that the lake was completely frozen! Obvious, you say, at those latitudes what did you expected to find? Sure … I knew it very well, but part of me was expecting a stroke of luck…
Usually, the ice is less thick in the center and I might have had a chance to carve it with my nails to make a small hole and catch some fish. However, if I had walked on that hard, frozen surface, the damage to my paws would have been worse than that caused by the fresh snow up to that point, because it added the risk of sticking my pads to the ice itself.
I inspected the shore, looking for something that could help me and suddenly I saw it. No, it wasn’t a mirage: it was just a wooden sled about 1.5m / 2m from the shore. If I had managed to make a good leap, I would probably have been able to reach the center of the lake, also helped by the thrust that I would have given to the sled landing there after the jump.
I have a rather curious habit: I love falling asleep on top of an old TV in my living room. It’s spacious enough to lie down and take a nice nap, without risking that anyone step on my tail.
Unfortunately, given the repetition of certain episodes, I think it is now evident that it is not wide enough to complete my nap without… falling!
Yep, guys: I am forced to admit that, while I’m sound asleep, I relax, I stretch out, I turn around and … I fall (even if I don’t get hurt, because like all cats I always fall on my feet)!
It only happens from time to time and, precisely, it’s all gravity’s fault. But these are other stories: what I want to tell you today concerns the motion of bodies in free fall.
All of us are subjected to the gravity force, which causes all falling bodies to be attracted to the ground with the same acceleration, defined as g = 9.8 m/s2. This scientific conclusion was first formulated by Galileo Galilei, father of the experimental method, and was openly in contrast with what was believed before him, namely that bodies with greater weight could fall faster than lighter ones. Nothing more wrong!
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