Monday, November 03, 2008

Links

At Atomic Nerds, LabRat has a fascinating post on dogs and the sense of "self" :

"We used to assume no animal but humans had a sense of humor, until we thought to thoroughly test that assumption, and we found otherwise. We used to think no other animal used tools, until we looked and found multiple examples. We used to think no other animals had culture, until we looked and found multiple examples across many intelligent and social, but otherwise unrelated species. (Obviously not culture as in Shinto and opera, but behaviors, innovations, and mannerisms that varied with local groups.) If the argument I’ve made suggests that other animals than dogs, perhaps some that are actually less intelligent, have a sense of self… well, I’m really not all that convinced we’ve looked all that well."

RTWT of course.

If you have a team of falcons you may be able to get a paid trip to Afghanistan.

Anne Price sent this link to serious wolf hunting with eagles. Not for the faint- hearted.

The politically correct set in England want to ban all Latin usage in English, including "et cetera". One proponent is worried that non- native English speakers might mistake "e. g." for "egg."

Lord Whimsy goes mushroom hunting in the temperate rain forests of Washington, here and here.

2 comments:

Peculiar said...

Wow! I've been watching eagle hunting videos longer than most, but this one produced an audible "Holy shit!" I like the soundtrack too, though Kazakh it ain't.

Neutrino Cannon said...

I would have to check with my linguistics studying friends, but I'm reasonably sure that if one takes this mad scheme to its logical extent and cleanses English of all cognates, loanwords and derivations not coming from the British Isles, they would be reduced to communication in grunts and monosyllables. It would be like Newspeak with a brain injury.

-R.A.W.