On the fridge in a client's house was a promotional notepad from Harris Teeter. The top of each sheet of brown paper was labeled "Shopping List" and had three items preprinted below, with a checkbox next to each one:
Milk
Bread
Harris Teeter Rancher's Beef
Then there were lines below it to write in your own items. Which didn't make sense to me. What else do you need from the grocery store besides milk, bread, and Harris Teeter Rancher's Beef? Toilet paper? No way. The only thing your digestive system is going to poop out after a juicy, mouth-watering slab of Harris Teeter Rancher's Beef is a thank you note.
These three items are the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria of good taste, and they just landed on Deliciousness Rock. If there is going to be a fourth item, it should be More Harris Teeter Rancher's Beef, with the checkbox already checked.
July 31, 2007
July 30, 2007
Four Stages of Pop Culture Savviness; Turtles
Four Levels of Pop Culture Savviness
An arbitrary list, although nowhere near as arbitrary as most of the lists, or anchors, on VH1 shows.
1. You find out about the latest trends directly.
2. You find out about the latest trends from your hipster friends. Not that anyone in this stage uses the word hipster.
3. You read about the latest trends from television shows or newspaper articles.
4. You see headlines about the latest trends from newspaper articles or your kids, and don't care enough to pay attention.
I have sunk to level 3. I was never cool enough to be at level 1. Level 2 used to be my home, but now my friends have adult lives and must not have time to keep up. For how else to explain the lack of notice about the "I Love Turtles" kid?
I heard of him from my new source of coolness, The Washington Post Style section (article link). The story is one of the WP's semi-annual "What hath the Internet wrought?"pieces.
I fear though that I am on the beginning of spiral to level 4, a abysmal pit sheltered and disconnected from anything cool. I don't get the I Love Turtles kid. The only thing humorous about it is that it vaguely echoes the "I Didn't Do It" episode of the Simpsons.
If that doesn't sound cranky enough (level 3 people have gobs of self-awareness, clinging to it as our way of staying the irreversable descent into uncoolness), here is why I don't think the clip is funny, at least on the first viewing: it's too fast.
There isn't enough time to let the mind process the absurdity of the situation and laugh. It's a 20-second joke compressed into 17-seconds. Watch it first, then imagine the clip with a pause after the reporter asks him the question, and another pause after the boy answers. Old Man Walther would find that funnier.
That's why I enjoyed the description in the article more than the video. The article teases and extends the funny details of the video that fly by upon the first viewings. The timing of the video may also be why it became a viral video. The details fly by so fast that one may have to watch it several times to find it funny, incorporating another detail into the jokework after each viewing until they gain a familiarly in the mind so we can process everything all in one moment and laugh.
If you watch the video once and didn't think much of it, watch it a dozen times and let me know if/when it becomes funny.
There are a few mashups of the video, which I find funnier than the original, partially because the timing is expanded. The Bill O'Reilly interview is one of the funny ones.
An arbitrary list, although nowhere near as arbitrary as most of the lists, or anchors, on VH1 shows.
1. You find out about the latest trends directly.
2. You find out about the latest trends from your hipster friends. Not that anyone in this stage uses the word hipster.
3. You read about the latest trends from television shows or newspaper articles.
4. You see headlines about the latest trends from newspaper articles or your kids, and don't care enough to pay attention.
I have sunk to level 3. I was never cool enough to be at level 1. Level 2 used to be my home, but now my friends have adult lives and must not have time to keep up. For how else to explain the lack of notice about the "I Love Turtles" kid?
I heard of him from my new source of coolness, The Washington Post Style section (article link). The story is one of the WP's semi-annual "What hath the Internet wrought?"pieces.
I fear though that I am on the beginning of spiral to level 4, a abysmal pit sheltered and disconnected from anything cool. I don't get the I Love Turtles kid. The only thing humorous about it is that it vaguely echoes the "I Didn't Do It" episode of the Simpsons.
If that doesn't sound cranky enough (level 3 people have gobs of self-awareness, clinging to it as our way of staying the irreversable descent into uncoolness), here is why I don't think the clip is funny, at least on the first viewing: it's too fast.
There isn't enough time to let the mind process the absurdity of the situation and laugh. It's a 20-second joke compressed into 17-seconds. Watch it first, then imagine the clip with a pause after the reporter asks him the question, and another pause after the boy answers. Old Man Walther would find that funnier.
That's why I enjoyed the description in the article more than the video. The article teases and extends the funny details of the video that fly by upon the first viewings. The timing of the video may also be why it became a viral video. The details fly by so fast that one may have to watch it several times to find it funny, incorporating another detail into the jokework after each viewing until they gain a familiarly in the mind so we can process everything all in one moment and laugh.
If you watch the video once and didn't think much of it, watch it a dozen times and let me know if/when it becomes funny.
There are a few mashups of the video, which I find funnier than the original, partially because the timing is expanded. The Bill O'Reilly interview is one of the funny ones.
July 29, 2007
Flickr Photos: Alaska
I just started sorting through them. If you are curious, here is the first day. Family, I'll burn them on a CD for you once I'm done.
“So, how's your life going?”
“HORRIBLE!”
“Oh. So you have cancer or live in Iraq?”
“Well, no, but....I just want to whine, okay?”
Plants. I water my plants as often as I update my blog. My plants are dead.
“Oh. So you have cancer or live in Iraq?”
“Well, no, but....I just want to whine, okay?”
Plants. I water my plants as often as I update my blog. My plants are dead.
Mouse. WHY WON'T YOU DIE. We have a mouse or mice scurrying between the walls of our house. My roommates bought some cruelty-free traps, which are akin to small tubes that the mouse is supposed to walk right into and close the door behind him.
That would work great, if this were some country rube mouse who was born in a stack of hay and lived under the knot of an apple tree. “Golly gee, there's some cheese in that there fancy hole. I'm gonna go git me some!”
Not going to work for city mouse. Centuries of rough living and brutal Darwinism have weeded out any sense of fear or compassion for our cheese. City mouse is tough, sophisticated, and intelligent. He gnaws through our bread bags and poops on our counter without fear. I came home one day and turned on the kitchen light to see him rappelling down to the stove from the ceiling. He froze when I saw him, and then tossed a smoke bomb to cover his tracks.
This mouse isn't going to walk into a slender metal box labeled “Conto Mouse Trap” just because it has a mote of cheese at the end. This mouse can read. Yet my roommates think I'm the unrealistic one just because I'm willing to do what is necessary: buy a comfy chair, a sniper rifle, and a pair of night vision goggles.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. It's a post-apocalyptic computer game that takes place in Chernobyl. I kept getting killed by packs of rabid dogs. By the time I open my inventory to toss them a treat, they tear me apart. Hey, quit it! I walk your friends in real-life.
In a way, they are like the dogs I walk. Except my dogs try to kill me indirectly by licking the sunscreen off my arms.
Poker. @#$%^&**#A#$@. I'm too angry to play poker regularly. I overestimate my emotional fortitude, get frustrated with the natural downs of the game, and ended up not playing my best or having fun. I wish I could teach a robot what I know. A robot me would kick ass. And I'd be a robot, which is a reward unto itself.
What would you do if you were a robot? First, I'd walk in all in the scary neighborhoods. With my wallet hanging from my neck, like Flavor Flav with a MBA. Then I'd get a few lasers, because every robot needs a few lasers. Next, I'd hit on a some guys. I already have a come-on line. “What is this 'love' you talk about?”
Finally, I'd find President Bush, and give him a good, robot kick in the balls. “Crappiness does not compute, Bush.” [whack] Then I would go on the morning talk-show circuit and tell everyone that robots have gained sentient life, and our first duty was to deliver a clear and decisive message unto President Bush's nut sack. Read that as you may. I'd also hint that we would not hurt the vice-President, as we wouldn't harm one of our own.
It would be total bull, as I would be the only sentient robot, but we all know how the media is liberal and doesn't ask tough questions. I'd wave goodbye, announce I'm leaving for my homeland, Japan, and then lie in hiding and hopefully watch a wave of change brought upon us by The Little Robot That Could (Children's book I would have pre-written before the event. A robot has got to make money too. Especially after being banned from playing poker)
July 26, 2007
July 25, 2007
Happy Birthday, Michele!
"Happy Birthday To You,"
"Happy Birthday To You,"
"I'm Feeling Horribly Uncreative Today,"
"Repeat Line One or Two!"
"Happy Birthday To You,"
"I'm Feeling Horribly Uncreative Today,"
"Repeat Line One or Two!"
July 24, 2007
The Thing from Another World
DC's free, outdoor movie festival Screen on the Green started last week. Tonight's movie was "The Thing from Another World," a 1951 science-fiction flick about an alien that crashes at the North Pole and terrorizes a small army outpost there.
The movies at Screen on the Green are older flicks and they vary in quality, but all of them have surprised me in some way. Last year, I was watching a ho-hum musical with decent songs and a typical presentation, when out of nowhere three of the main characters dress as baby triplets and then sing a song about how they want to kill each other. It was like watching a 2048 future episode of Jerry Springer.
SPRINGER: "Ton-Ton, why do you want to kill your siblings, Ixy and Granger?"
TON-TON: "Cause they be taking all my neural implants, Jerry! Mmm, hmm."
"The Thing from Another World" was interesting for a few reasons. It was the first alien to appear in a movie, starting a long and continuing chain of movies that use aliens as metaphors for foreign threats. And this blood-thirsty plant-based monster that wears a belt and lumberjack pants is definitely a threat.
When the military in the base take a "It looks scary, kill it" policy, the dispassionate, head scientist argues that their lives mean nothing in comparison to the knowledge they could gain from the alien, and they need to address the alien as a friend, not an enemy. At which point the scientist might have well rolled himself in butter and breadcrumbs, because that whiny, out-of-touchy pencil neck just put himself on the Monster Menu, under Main Course.
Also, I suspect several of the movie's stylistic techniques inspired "Alien" and other future sci-fi action movies.
The dialog was surprisingly snappy and fast-paced, similar to an Aaron Sorkin-written show. The military characters, who drove the action in the movie, talked in clipped sentences and overlapped the beginnings and ends of each other sentences. It held up well and must have been innovative 55 years ago.
They track the monster is a Geiger counter, which beeps faster the closer the monster is. That trick is still being used in movies to heighten tension. Finally, the movie tries to portray the alien as having some intelligence, like when the alien shuts off the station's oil supply so they freeze to death.
It's not believable though. The alien looks really stupid. He's not even wearing a smoking jacket. Then he walks very, very slowly into an obvious trap. That must have felt good: travel millions of miles to conquer the Earth, and then get outwitted by a group of high school graduates who are squatting down ten feet in front of him and waiting for the monster to walk into an electrical fence.
I first assumed the alien was a metaphor for a looming foreign threat, but now I wonder if it's more of a retelling of World War II. The characters are unaware of the threat at first. The scientists argue strongly that they should try to reason and engage the alien first. The military adopts a more practical approach, deciding early that it is an enemy and trying to kill it before it can cause more damage.
In the end, the scientists are proven wrong, but it is science that allows them to destroy the alien.
The movies at Screen on the Green are older flicks and they vary in quality, but all of them have surprised me in some way. Last year, I was watching a ho-hum musical with decent songs and a typical presentation, when out of nowhere three of the main characters dress as baby triplets and then sing a song about how they want to kill each other. It was like watching a 2048 future episode of Jerry Springer.
SPRINGER: "Ton-Ton, why do you want to kill your siblings, Ixy and Granger?"
TON-TON: "Cause they be taking all my neural implants, Jerry! Mmm, hmm."
"The Thing from Another World" was interesting for a few reasons. It was the first alien to appear in a movie, starting a long and continuing chain of movies that use aliens as metaphors for foreign threats. And this blood-thirsty plant-based monster that wears a belt and lumberjack pants is definitely a threat.
When the military in the base take a "It looks scary, kill it" policy, the dispassionate, head scientist argues that their lives mean nothing in comparison to the knowledge they could gain from the alien, and they need to address the alien as a friend, not an enemy. At which point the scientist might have well rolled himself in butter and breadcrumbs, because that whiny, out-of-touchy pencil neck just put himself on the Monster Menu, under Main Course.
Also, I suspect several of the movie's stylistic techniques inspired "Alien" and other future sci-fi action movies.
The dialog was surprisingly snappy and fast-paced, similar to an Aaron Sorkin-written show. The military characters, who drove the action in the movie, talked in clipped sentences and overlapped the beginnings and ends of each other sentences. It held up well and must have been innovative 55 years ago.
They track the monster is a Geiger counter, which beeps faster the closer the monster is. That trick is still being used in movies to heighten tension. Finally, the movie tries to portray the alien as having some intelligence, like when the alien shuts off the station's oil supply so they freeze to death.
It's not believable though. The alien looks really stupid. He's not even wearing a smoking jacket. Then he walks very, very slowly into an obvious trap. That must have felt good: travel millions of miles to conquer the Earth, and then get outwitted by a group of high school graduates who are squatting down ten feet in front of him and waiting for the monster to walk into an electrical fence.
I first assumed the alien was a metaphor for a looming foreign threat, but now I wonder if it's more of a retelling of World War II. The characters are unaware of the threat at first. The scientists argue strongly that they should try to reason and engage the alien first. The military adopts a more practical approach, deciding early that it is an enemy and trying to kill it before it can cause more damage.
In the end, the scientists are proven wrong, but it is science that allows them to destroy the alien.
July 22, 2007
No Spoilers!
I bought a popular book at midnight on Friday, and finished reading it late last night. The title? I'm not telling. That would be a spoiler. Unlike lesser publications like the New York Times, Pancake City likes children and is 100% spoiler-free. Did I like it? Maybe. Maybe not. I shall not risk tainting anyone's experience by offering my opinion on it.
The previous sentence does not mean it is an experience that one would want to be untainted, and it doesn't mean one wouldn't want it untainted either. Also, as you can tell, double negatives are great for covering all your spoiler bases.
Here is my story about why I am fervently anti-spoiler. Over eight years ago, I went to see Citizen Kane with a good friend of mine. Right before the movie started, I spoiled the ending for her, assuming that she knew it already. What is worse is that I had the ending spoiled for me after reading a Washington Post movie review of it that said, "By now, everyone knows that...[famous ending that I didn't know]"
I felt guilty that I stole from her the pleasure of making that discovery on her own. From that day, I do my best not to even drop hints when someone asks about the plot of a movie, TV show, or plot. If someone really wants that information, they can find it easily somewhere else.
The previous sentence does not mean it is an experience that one would want to be untainted, and it doesn't mean one wouldn't want it untainted either. Also, as you can tell, double negatives are great for covering all your spoiler bases.
Here is my story about why I am fervently anti-spoiler. Over eight years ago, I went to see Citizen Kane with a good friend of mine. Right before the movie started, I spoiled the ending for her, assuming that she knew it already. What is worse is that I had the ending spoiled for me after reading a Washington Post movie review of it that said, "By now, everyone knows that...[famous ending that I didn't know]"
I felt guilty that I stole from her the pleasure of making that discovery on her own. From that day, I do my best not to even drop hints when someone asks about the plot of a movie, TV show, or plot. If someone really wants that information, they can find it easily somewhere else.
July 09, 2007
Randomness
Heard on a cruise ship:
* KID [whining] : "But I'm not hungry though!"
Seen on the D.C Beltway:
* It was a white van for a heating/cooling company. On the back of it was the company name, along with a large foot with a cartoonish, giant toe. The toe was grinning and had a speech bubble coming from his mouth. The speech bubble was empty.
I need to carry a tape recorder with me. There were at least two other things I overheard recently that I would have liked to have remember. One of them was about a unicorn, like "I don't know why the unicorn does that".
* KID [whining] : "But I'm not hungry though!"
Seen on the D.C Beltway:
* It was a white van for a heating/cooling company. On the back of it was the company name, along with a large foot with a cartoonish, giant toe. The toe was grinning and had a speech bubble coming from his mouth. The speech bubble was empty.
I need to carry a tape recorder with me. There were at least two other things I overheard recently that I would have liked to have remember. One of them was about a unicorn, like "I don't know why the unicorn does that".
Poker
I've had trouble adjusting after returning from Alaska. The first few days back I felt directionless and seized on my bad habits as a way of retreating into a familiar routine.
One of my habits is to play online poker. It's healthy in moderation, but often I overdo it, especially when I get frustrated. I mostly play online multi-table tournaments (MTTs) from $4-$30.
They are naturally frustrating. The absolute best players make it "in the money" about 15-20% of the time, at which point about 80-90% of the other players have been eliminated. Having a major cash is even rarer, especially in the low buy-in tournaments that I play, where there are regularly 800-1,000 people playing and you need to make it to the final table (last 9 people) to earn significant money.
A smart, professional poker player once said that to become a better player it to practice Zen Buddhism, whether you realize it or not. He's right. Once you learn the technical aspects of poker, much of what separates the good players from the great ones is how they handle the mental aspects. Frustration. Focus. Staying in the present while incorporating the knowledge of the past.
My biggest challenge with poker is handling the emotional part of the game. I entered about 16 MTTs in the past few days. I played poorly in a few, well in most, and really well in a few. My results: 0 out of 16 cashes.
Intellectually, I know that's part of normal variance, but emotionally, it makes me frustrated and angry. The longer I went without a cash, the more difficulty I had focusing on making good decisions and not caring about the results, which is paramount in poker. My thoughts while playing were often angry and negative, and while they didn't hurt my play as much as usual, it made playing unpleasant. I was irritable after I was done playing too, which makes the whole experience almost ridiculous. Why am I playing a game again?
In a sick way, the emotional struggle is part of my attraction to poker. It's a constant reminder of how much work I need to do to handle my emotions in a healthy way, and an external way of getting rewarded for making these improvements.
What helps the most is having balance in my life--spreading my time out among friends, reading, writing, and hobbies like poker so I don't get too emotionally involved in one area.
All of this is a very roundabout way of saying that I hope to return to posting almost every day as part of the way to live a more balanced life. This was probably boring to read, but I have almost no real-life poker friends, and I have to vent somewhere.
Ironically fast turnaround update: I played two tournaments at midnight after writing this post. One of them was a $10 MTT with 1,485 players. I got 4th. I got really, really lucky to make it that far too--more luck than I had in at least a year--and then a tad unlucky at the end. It was like the exact opposite of the past week compressed into one game. It's a lot easier to take a break from poker after doing well.
One of my habits is to play online poker. It's healthy in moderation, but often I overdo it, especially when I get frustrated. I mostly play online multi-table tournaments (MTTs) from $4-$30.
They are naturally frustrating. The absolute best players make it "in the money" about 15-20% of the time, at which point about 80-90% of the other players have been eliminated. Having a major cash is even rarer, especially in the low buy-in tournaments that I play, where there are regularly 800-1,000 people playing and you need to make it to the final table (last 9 people) to earn significant money.
A smart, professional poker player once said that to become a better player it to practice Zen Buddhism, whether you realize it or not. He's right. Once you learn the technical aspects of poker, much of what separates the good players from the great ones is how they handle the mental aspects. Frustration. Focus. Staying in the present while incorporating the knowledge of the past.
My biggest challenge with poker is handling the emotional part of the game. I entered about 16 MTTs in the past few days. I played poorly in a few, well in most, and really well in a few. My results: 0 out of 16 cashes.
Intellectually, I know that's part of normal variance, but emotionally, it makes me frustrated and angry. The longer I went without a cash, the more difficulty I had focusing on making good decisions and not caring about the results, which is paramount in poker. My thoughts while playing were often angry and negative, and while they didn't hurt my play as much as usual, it made playing unpleasant. I was irritable after I was done playing too, which makes the whole experience almost ridiculous. Why am I playing a game again?
In a sick way, the emotional struggle is part of my attraction to poker. It's a constant reminder of how much work I need to do to handle my emotions in a healthy way, and an external way of getting rewarded for making these improvements.
What helps the most is having balance in my life--spreading my time out among friends, reading, writing, and hobbies like poker so I don't get too emotionally involved in one area.
All of this is a very roundabout way of saying that I hope to return to posting almost every day as part of the way to live a more balanced life. This was probably boring to read, but I have almost no real-life poker friends, and I have to vent somewhere.
Ironically fast turnaround update: I played two tournaments at midnight after writing this post. One of them was a $10 MTT with 1,485 players. I got 4th. I got really, really lucky to make it that far too--more luck than I had in at least a year--and then a tad unlucky at the end. It was like the exact opposite of the past week compressed into one game. It's a lot easier to take a break from poker after doing well.
July 06, 2007
Book Notes: "For the Love of a Dog"
I'm starting a very irregular feature called Book Notes. I have a poor memory and have trouble remembering the interesting facts or bits of trivia I read in great non-fiction books like Blink or Freakonomics.
Book Notes will be a list of some of these facts and bits of trivia. The first book is For the Love of a Dog by Patricia B. McConnell.
The book is about the science behind the emotional life of dogs. Along the way she ties in a lot of human psychology and retells interesting experiments on dogs and other animals. It is an excellent book for anyone who has a dog, or human/animal psychology in general.
"Wolves will always feed their puppies, even if they themselves are starving. Lions eat first, letting their young starve if there is enough food." (pg 22)
"Behaviorists and trainers hear, almost on a daily basis, that a client's dog must have been abused, because she reacts so fearfully to strangers, However, many of these dogs are just shy, and they aren't any more comfortable around unfamiliar strangers than shy people are." (pg 118)
"Researchers have found that people who express no preference for using one hand or the other have higher than expected levels of generalized anxiety disorders." (pg 119) [Well, of course. They don't know which hand to use.]
"In just a few generations, they'd bred a group of rats who were able to move through a complicated maze in no time, especially compared with the "dull" group, who were bred for their lackluster performance. Only there was one problem--it turned out that the "bright" and "dull" rats weren't at all different in their ability to solve problems. The "dull" rats were simply afraid of new environments, and when placed in one were less likely to explore than the "bright" ones were." (pg 123)
(reworded) Pavlov's motivation for wanting dogs to drool was so he could study the extra-large chromosomes that saliva contains. (pg 147)
"Monkeys can learn to be afraid of snakes just by watching a video of other monkeys acting fearfully around them, but they don't make the same association if you edit the video and replace the snakes with flowers." (pg 151)
"On a lighter side, rats have also been found to produce a vocalization during play that for all the world sounds like the equivalent of human laughter. Biologist Jaak Panksepp found that these chirping noises are associated with responses in the brain correlated with pleasure, that they occur during play, and that they can be elicited, believe it or not, by tickling from human caretakers. The tickled rats even began to seek out their human playmates and became socially bonded to them." (pg 215)
"People whose brains have naturally lower levels of dopamine have trouble feeling that anything is 'enough' to satisfy them, and often indulge in high-risk behavior in a desperate attempt to feel contentment." (pg 215-216)
"...the psychologist Nathan A. Fox found that 'exuberant' four-month-old babies (babies who became especially happy and excited by novel events; about 10 percent of the ones studied) had the same level of joyfulness at seven years of age as in infancy." (pg 216)
"Our perception of happiness even seems to be affected by the biology of sleep/wake cycles. In most people, happiness is highest between four and ten hours after getting up, and lowest at the beginning and end off our day." (pg 216) [She later makes the point that research also suggests we have significant influence on our levels of happiness, outside of our genetic baggage]
"The tendency to feel excited and energized when anticipating something was first discovered by Wolfram Schultz, who trained monkeys to press a lever for a food reward. The experiment included a light that came on right before the food was released. Schultz found that the monkeys' brains had the highest levels of dopamine right after the light came on, but before the food was released. That means that the monkeys were more excited when they were anticipating the food than they were when they actually got it." (pg 221)
"However, in dog language, the direct stare and forward movement is a stopping signal, one that means the opposite of what we intend. Your dog is much more likely to come if you turn your body sideways and move backward a bit while you call 'Come!' " (pg 226)
"Lord knows dogs are an evolutionary success story: just compare the numbers of dogs in any given country with the numbers of wolves." (65 million dogs, a few thousand wolves) (pg 246) (This note is for myself. This passage gave me an idea for a skit that takes place a few hundred years ago. A dog pulls a wolf aside and politely hints that the wolf should start being nicer to humans for his own sake. "DOG: Look, all I'm saying is that they got these things called guns, and it wouldn't hurt to lick their faces one in a while.")
"One researcher taught dogs to select the larger of two objects to get a food treat, regardless of the shape or composition of the object." (pg 264)
(reworded) Dogs watched items being placed by a screen, one by one. When the screen was lifted, the dogs stared longer at the objects if it was the "wrong" number of objects than if it were the number of objects they expected. The experiment was originally done with babies, who have a similar response starting around 5-months-old. (pg 265)
(reworded) This is one of my favorite dog experiments. The author mentions it on pg 267.
"Fighters and poker players are famous for being able to control the expressions on their faces, for obvious reasons. Perhaps that's why dogs descended from fighting lines are also often difficult to read--fighters of any species aren't negotiating or communicating. they're trying to disguise their own emotions while looking for an opening to attack." (pg 284)
Book Notes will be a list of some of these facts and bits of trivia. The first book is For the Love of a Dog by Patricia B. McConnell.
The book is about the science behind the emotional life of dogs. Along the way she ties in a lot of human psychology and retells interesting experiments on dogs and other animals. It is an excellent book for anyone who has a dog, or human/animal psychology in general.
"Wolves will always feed their puppies, even if they themselves are starving. Lions eat first, letting their young starve if there is enough food." (pg 22)
"Behaviorists and trainers hear, almost on a daily basis, that a client's dog must have been abused, because she reacts so fearfully to strangers, However, many of these dogs are just shy, and they aren't any more comfortable around unfamiliar strangers than shy people are." (pg 118)
"Researchers have found that people who express no preference for using one hand or the other have higher than expected levels of generalized anxiety disorders." (pg 119) [Well, of course. They don't know which hand to use.]
"In just a few generations, they'd bred a group of rats who were able to move through a complicated maze in no time, especially compared with the "dull" group, who were bred for their lackluster performance. Only there was one problem--it turned out that the "bright" and "dull" rats weren't at all different in their ability to solve problems. The "dull" rats were simply afraid of new environments, and when placed in one were less likely to explore than the "bright" ones were." (pg 123)
(reworded) Pavlov's motivation for wanting dogs to drool was so he could study the extra-large chromosomes that saliva contains. (pg 147)
"Monkeys can learn to be afraid of snakes just by watching a video of other monkeys acting fearfully around them, but they don't make the same association if you edit the video and replace the snakes with flowers." (pg 151)
"On a lighter side, rats have also been found to produce a vocalization during play that for all the world sounds like the equivalent of human laughter. Biologist Jaak Panksepp found that these chirping noises are associated with responses in the brain correlated with pleasure, that they occur during play, and that they can be elicited, believe it or not, by tickling from human caretakers. The tickled rats even began to seek out their human playmates and became socially bonded to them." (pg 215)
"People whose brains have naturally lower levels of dopamine have trouble feeling that anything is 'enough' to satisfy them, and often indulge in high-risk behavior in a desperate attempt to feel contentment." (pg 215-216)
"...the psychologist Nathan A. Fox found that 'exuberant' four-month-old babies (babies who became especially happy and excited by novel events; about 10 percent of the ones studied) had the same level of joyfulness at seven years of age as in infancy." (pg 216)
"Our perception of happiness even seems to be affected by the biology of sleep/wake cycles. In most people, happiness is highest between four and ten hours after getting up, and lowest at the beginning and end off our day." (pg 216) [She later makes the point that research also suggests we have significant influence on our levels of happiness, outside of our genetic baggage]
"The tendency to feel excited and energized when anticipating something was first discovered by Wolfram Schultz, who trained monkeys to press a lever for a food reward. The experiment included a light that came on right before the food was released. Schultz found that the monkeys' brains had the highest levels of dopamine right after the light came on, but before the food was released. That means that the monkeys were more excited when they were anticipating the food than they were when they actually got it." (pg 221)
"However, in dog language, the direct stare and forward movement is a stopping signal, one that means the opposite of what we intend. Your dog is much more likely to come if you turn your body sideways and move backward a bit while you call 'Come!' " (pg 226)
"Lord knows dogs are an evolutionary success story: just compare the numbers of dogs in any given country with the numbers of wolves." (65 million dogs, a few thousand wolves) (pg 246) (This note is for myself. This passage gave me an idea for a skit that takes place a few hundred years ago. A dog pulls a wolf aside and politely hints that the wolf should start being nicer to humans for his own sake. "DOG: Look, all I'm saying is that they got these things called guns, and it wouldn't hurt to lick their faces one in a while.")
"One researcher taught dogs to select the larger of two objects to get a food treat, regardless of the shape or composition of the object." (pg 264)
(reworded) Dogs watched items being placed by a screen, one by one. When the screen was lifted, the dogs stared longer at the objects if it was the "wrong" number of objects than if it were the number of objects they expected. The experiment was originally done with babies, who have a similar response starting around 5-months-old. (pg 265)
(reworded) This is one of my favorite dog experiments. The author mentions it on pg 267.
"Fighters and poker players are famous for being able to control the expressions on their faces, for obvious reasons. Perhaps that's why dogs descended from fighting lines are also often difficult to read--fighters of any species aren't negotiating or communicating. they're trying to disguise their own emotions while looking for an opening to attack." (pg 284)
July 05, 2007
Not Posting for Two Weeks Pays Off Again
Blog of the Weekend, I have my eye on you.
Thanks, Blog of the Day. I'm off to make a cake.
Thanks, Blog of the Day. I'm off to make a cake.
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