New Crescent Moon Mews

Savannah by Ray McCarty ~ raymccartyart.com ~

New Crescent Moon Mews, my sweet sexy Pussycats... strong gusting winds on the tame prairie today, and definitely nice and warm... the New Moon was on Tuesday, and likely significant as far as the overall human psyche. The number of those individuals living and reaching for their highest natures is leaping exponentially while those who have decided on the dark side are also growing in strength... and the great divergence is upon us because this will become more and more obvious.
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Authoress news and mews ~

Okay, this Big Cat i-searched Old West Saloon art for a short story, which could turn into a long story, but that’s another story... she discovered this current-day, western-cool artist, Ray McCarty, who has, unknown to him. painted some of her future heroines... or, how the Kougar envisions them before her mind’s eye. Curiously, the painting above, titled Savannah, bears a strong resemblance to this Big Cat when she was younger. Talk about a more than interesting synchronicity.

The Kougar is reading through and ‘improving’ RED LIONESS TAMED. Yeah, all that editing and crafting experience as an author is paying off... sorta... except, this

Yes, we authors at SHAPESHIFTER SEDUCTIONS are looking at ways to spiffy up, and make the blog more roomier.
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Featured at TITLE MAGIC ~

Thursday, September 29, 2011
Fixing a Flat
by Pat Cunningham

I’m going to quote Stephen King today, because knowing a successful author at the top of his game still has to deal with writing problems makes me feel better. In an interview Uncle Stevie once described writing as akin to digging artifacts out of the ground: sometimes you get the whole pot or bowl, sometimes it comes out chipped or cracked. Sometimes it comes out completely broken. Sometimes you only get shards.
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AUTHORS/ ASPIRING AUTHORS ~

From UNKNOWN COUNTRY ~

What Turns Women On?
Wednesday, September 28, 2011

This is something that all single men yearn to know, as they practice the "lines" they'll use when they meet a new woman. But it turns out that it's not so much what you SAY that matters, but your tone of voice when you say it (and there's not much you can do about that).

Women are turned on by low male voices. In the same way that bright plumage attracts female birds, because it denotes a healthy bird, a deep voice may instinctively attract women, because it denotes healthy masculinity (with lots of testosterone).

Not only that, they're more likely to remember what was said to them when it's said in a low voice. In the September 20th edition of the New York Times, Sindya N. Bhanoo quotes psychologist Kevin Allen as saying, "If you want to drop your voice, you should be prepared to be judged by the details that women remember. It could backfire. It's not really a trick that men can play."

Opera has this wrong: In almost all operas, the tenor gets the girl. But backstage, it may be the basso who wins.
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AND... SCI FI/TIME TRAVEL AUTHORS ~

From UNKNOWN COUNTRY ~

Time is NOT Like We Think it Is
Tuesday, September 27, 2011

One of the main dogmas of physics is that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, but at the CERN collider, some subatomic particles seem to have exceeded this speed, breaking all known laws of physics. Neutrinos sent through the ground from CERN toward a laboratory hundreds of miles away seemed to show up a tiny fraction of a second early.

In BBC News, Jason Palmer quotes researcher Antonio Ereditato as saying, "We tried to find all possible explanations for this. We wanted to find a mistake--trivial mistakes, more complicated mistakes, or nasty effects--and we didn't. When you don't find anything, then you say 'Well, now I'm forced to go out and ask the community to scrutinize this.'"

This breakthrough could eventually lead to a future discovery of how to time travel.
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Big Cat by-the-numbers ~

1:11 am... 2:22 am... 4:44 am... 3:33 pm... it’s all about the Koala Bear... adorable, cuddly and fierce for his mate...

29 September 2011

Secret of koala bellow revealed
By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC Nature

~ bbc.co.uk/nature/15088320

The loud, grumbling bellow that emerges from a male koala sounds very unlike that of a cute, laid-back creature.

Now scientists have discovered the anatomy behind the strange sound that males make during mating season.

Male koalas have very long vocal tracts - structures in their throats that produce the sounds.

Their vocal tract anatomy is so unusually specialised, in fact, that they are able to make sounds that make them sound far larger than they are.

The study, reported in the Journal of Experimental Biology, used medical imaging to reveal that a male koala's voice box, or larynx, sits very low in its throat. This "descended larynx" was thought to be a uniquely human feature - something that allows us to make the sounds we need for speech.

It was only in 2001 that scientists found that red deer also had a descended larynx. Its discovery in koalas now supports the theory that it evolved in even more branches of the evolutionary tree, probably to allow males to distinguish themselves vocally from females.

The researchers studied the koalas at a sanctuary called Lone Pine in Queensland, Australia.

As well as recording their bellows, the team also carried out a medical scan on one male koala, which revealed the marsupial's strange vocal anatomy.

"A permanently descended larynx hasn't been documented in marsupials before," said Ben Charlton from the University of Vienna, Austria, who led the study. "It was believed that only humans had [this, and] that it was an essential adaptation for the creation of vowel sounds."

Dr Charlton explained to BBC Nature that the thing that made koalas "sound big" was not the just the very low pitch of their bellows, but the "quality" of the sound coming from their long vocal tract.

The effect works like a musical instrument; when an animal's "voice box" vibrates to make a sound, this sound echoes inside the tube that is its vocal tract. The dimensions of the tube change the sound.

So a violin and a cello can make a sound that is exactly the same pitch, but the cello sounds very different - richer and larger.

The sound of a koala's call, the researchers found, would "predict" a vocal tract length of 50cm. This is almost the entire body length of a koala. So when they bellow, the animals sound bigger than a bison.

The medical scans also revealed a muscle deep in the koala's chest that the researchers think might pull the voice box even further down into its chest cavity as they bellow, enabling them to exaggerate their size even more.

Dr Charlton explained that koalas had evolved to "sound big", "probably because it's important for intimidating other males."

There is also some evidence that the bellows attract females.
Red deer stag (Image: Simon King/ NPL) Red deer also have a descended larynx, a feature which had been thought to be unique to humans

David Reby is a psychologist from the University of Sussex in the UK who specialises in mammal communication. He led the team that, 10 years ago, discovered male red deer had a descended larynx.

Dr Reby explained how this study in koalas added to the wider evolutionary story of vocal communication. Finding out why male koalas evolved to make such deep, grumbling bellows could help us understand why male and female humans have very different voices, he said.

"Men have a 20% longer vocal tract than women," Dr Reby said. "To find out the evolutionary origin of this, we need to better understand how these [differences] evolved in other species.

"That's why Ben's work is really exciting, because he's not only studying other mammals but also marsupials."

The scientists would ultimately like to take live scans of the animals as they bellow - internal snapshots of what happens as they produce sound.

Dr Reby commented: "It would be difficult, but if we could get some good footage, we'd be able to figure out what was really going on."
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The most powerful weapon is the human soul on fire. ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

~ Happy Snappy September ~

~ MAY YOU ALWAYS HAVE ENOUGH ~

And, May you live the dreams of your heart, not in interesting times...

New Crescent Moon kisses from the Kougar...