Jump to content
Head Coach Openings 2024 ×
  • Current Donation Goals

    • Raised $2,716 of $3,600 target

Recommended Posts

  • 2 weeks later...

Came across my reading feeds this morning ... not sure why. 

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-curious-case-of-the-bog-bodies?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Always end up with suggested reading items that are off the norm of my regular reading trends.  Helps me stay well-rounded and also occasionally provides some really interesting reading that sparks additional interest or reading ... also provides a nice "distraction" for the day too.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/02/sunday-scaries-anxiety-workweek/606289/?utm_source=pocket-newtab\

Of interest is the coverage of the four-day work week.  I recall when I used to have a T/Th teaching schedule, most of my week was crammed into three days and I probably did about 40 hours worth of work TWTh with some bits and pieces on Mondays and Fridays.  For the most part, it left my Sat/Sun open to really be "time off" from work.  I also found, interesting that I didn't have the "Monday Scaries" which might be assumed if it were just a question the last day before starting the work week.  Now, with a MWF teaching schedule ... especially when I teach 7:30 or 8:30 am classes, my weekends seem to be barely recognizable as weekends; especially with so many kid events tossed in for consideration.  It's much harder to "bundle" the work like I used to do with a TTh schedule and the work seems to be much more spread out over the five days plus weekend than jam-packed in three.  I'm seriously debating trying to get back in to the TTh teaching schedule again to see what that might do to my "Sunday Scaries."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
On 3/4/2020 at 8:04 PM, Irishman said:

I am curious if this trend is similar among other animals that stay in groups like lions, elephants, etc.

https://www.earthlymission.com/gps-tracking-shows-how-much-wolf-packs-avoid-each-others-range/

In some cases, humans?  Especially gangs and to a larger degree countries?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-the-beatles-wrote-a-day-in-the-life?utm_source=pocket-newtab

FTA:

“A Day in the Life” isn’t a song to sing, as are “Eleanor Rigby” (ideal for both car and karaoke), “Hey Jude” (written to soothe John Lennon’s young son, no lullaby works better at children’s bedtime), or “In My Life” (a perennial at weddings and funerals and, I can’t help mentioning, rock’s analog to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116). Nor is “A Day in the Life” guided by melody like so many Beatles creations. It’s an elaborate production, filled with sophisticated George Martin and Geoff Emerick musical trickery (distortion, echo, dubbing, reverb). An orchestra plays, and then one singer’s voice gives way to another’s—John’s worldly reflections transitioning to Paul’s sketch of domestic memoir, and then back again—before orchestral cataclysm and a final resting place.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

A very curious read indeed ...

https://aeon.co/essays/why-dont-rats-get-the-same-ethical-protections-as-primates?utm_source=pocket-newtab

FTA:

In the late 1990s, Jaak Panksepp, the father of affective neuroscience, discovered that rats laugh. This fact had remained hidden because rats laugh in ultrasonic chirps that we can’t hear. It was only when Brian Knutson, a member of Panksepp’s lab, started to monitor their vocalisations during social play that he realised there was something that appeared unexpectedly similar to human laughter. Panksepp and his team began to systematically study this phenomenon by tickling the rats and measuring their response. They found that the rats’ vocalisations more than doubled during tickling, and that rats bonded with the ticklers, approaching them more frequently for social play. The rats were enjoying themselves. But the discovery was met with opposition from the scientific community. The world wasn’t ready for laughing rats.

That discovery was just the tip of the iceberg. We now know that rats don’t live merely in the present, but are capable of reliving memories of past experiences and mentally planning ahead the navigation route they will later follow. They reciprocally trade different kinds of goods with each other – and understand not only when they owe a favour to another rat, but also that the favour can be paid back in a different currency. When they make a wrong choice, they display something that appears very close to regret. Despite having brains that are much simpler than humans’, there are some learning tasks in which they’ll likely outperform you. Rats can be taught cognitively demanding skills, such as driving a vehicle to reach a desired goal, playing hide-and-seek with a human, and using the appropriate tool to access out-of-reach food.

The most unexpected discovery, however, was that rats are capable of empathy. Since the 1950s and ’60s, behavioural studies have consistently shown that rats are far from the egoistic, self-centred creatures that their popular image suggests. It all began with a study in which the rats refused to press a lever to obtain food when that lever also delivered a shock to a fellow rat in an adjacent cage. The rats would rather starve than witness a rat suffering. Follow-up studies found that rats would press a lever to lower a rat who was suspended from a harness; that they would refuse to walk down a path in a maze if it resulted in a shock delivered to another rat; and that rats who had been shocked themselves were less likely to allow other rats to be shocked, having been through the discomfort themselves. Rats care for one another.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A very curious read indeed ...

https://aeon.co/essays/why-dont-rats-get-the-same-ethical-protections-as-primates?utm_source=pocket-newtab

FTA:

In the late 1990s, Jaak Panksepp, the father of affective neuroscience, discovered that rats laugh. This fact had remained hidden because rats laugh in ultrasonic chirps that we can’t hear. It was only when Brian Knutson, a member of Panksepp’s lab, started to monitor their vocalisations during social play that he realised there was something that appeared unexpectedly similar to human laughter. Panksepp and his team began to systematically study this phenomenon by tickling the rats and measuring their response. They found that the rats’ vocalisations more than doubled during tickling, and that rats bonded with the ticklers, approaching them more frequently for social play. The rats were enjoying themselves. But the discovery was met with opposition from the scientific community. The world wasn’t ready for laughing rats.

That discovery was just the tip of the iceberg. We now know that rats don’t live merely in the present, but are capable of reliving memories of past experiences and mentally planning ahead the navigation route they will later follow. They reciprocally trade different kinds of goods with each other – and understand not only when they owe a favour to another rat, but also that the favour can be paid back in a different currency. When they make a wrong choice, they display something that appears very close to regret. Despite having brains that are much simpler than humans’, there are some learning tasks in which they’ll likely outperform you. Rats can be taught cognitively demanding skills, such as driving a vehicle to reach a desired goal, playing hide-and-seek with a human, and using the appropriate tool to access out-of-reach food.

The most unexpected discovery, however, was that rats are capable of empathy. Since the 1950s and ’60s, behavioural studies have consistently shown that rats are far from the egoistic, self-centred creatures that their popular image suggests. It all began with a study in which the rats refused to press a lever to obtain food when that lever also delivered a shock to a fellow rat in an adjacent cage. The rats would rather starve than witness a rat suffering. Follow-up studies found that rats would press a lever to lower a rat who was suspended from a harness; that they would refuse to walk down a path in a maze if it resulted in a shock delivered to another rat; and that rats who had been shocked themselves were less likely to allow other rats to be shocked, having been through the discomfort themselves. Rats care for one another.

 

  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/new-caledonian-crows-are-even-smarter-and-scarier-than-we-thought?utm_source=pocket-newtab

FTA:

In a 2018 paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, a team of researchers showed evidence that New Caledonian crows, which have been observed making several types of tools out of sticks, may be able to build tools from memory — even if they have only seen the tool itself and haven’t ever seen the tool being constructed. This suggests that crows can form a “mental template” of tools based on other crows’ tools and their own past tools, which would explain why New Caledonian crows’ tools could have improved over time.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, foxbat said:

Thank you for those lists.  I've already a number of those titles, the most recent being Station Eleven.  Not a bad book, but a bit meandering IMHO.

Currently re-reading The Silmarillion, and it's still as wonderful as it was the first time I read it many years ago.

 

  • Disdain 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...