Welcome!
Pharaoh – just being a dog!
Dogs live in the present – they just are! Dogs make the best of each moment uncluttered by the sorts of complex fears and feelings that we humans have. They don’t judge, they simply take the world around them at face value. Yet they have been part of man’s world for an unimaginable time, at least 30,000 years. That makes the domesticated dog the longest animal companion to man, by far!
As man’s companion, protector and helper, history suggests that dogs were critically important in man achieving success as a hunter-gatherer. Dogs ‘teaching’ man to be so successful a hunter enabled evolution, some 20,000 years later, to farming, thence the long journey to modern man. But in the last, say 100 years, that farming spirit has become corrupted to the point where we see the planet’s plant and mineral resources as infinite. Mankind is close to the edge of extinction, literally and spiritually.
Dogs know better, much better! Time again for man to learn from dogs!
Welcome to Learning from Dogs
Vested interests, perhaps.
I’m being very brave and stepping into the climate change cauldron!
Learning from Dogs has been posting a wide range of items for well over five years. Indeed, today’s post is number 2,238!
Over those five years, my position regarding climate change or global warming has been pretty clear: a belief in the proposition that man’s behaviours are changing the very climate of our planet. For instance, a little over a year ago I posted under the title Sceptical about global warming? It opened:
Learning from Dogs is not a blogsite about climate change!
Why, you may ask, do I start today’s post with that sub-heading? Because, I am conscious that many of my posts do touch on this subject. For example, just two days ago there was Breaking news. Then there was the piece about the climate implications for Phoenix, Arizona. Followed the next day by the changes in the flow of the jet stream across the North Atlantic with all the weather implications for North-West Europe.
Indeed, as the heading to today’s post makes clear, this is also about the changes going on to our planet.
Learning from Dogs is about a different way of living and behaving. A campaign, if one wants to call it that, to show that the way that modern man is living is corrupt. Not with a big ‘C’ but still in the sense of living a dishonest life. Learning from Dogs attempts to show that our wonderful dogs, a source of so much love and pleasure for so many millions, offer us an example of a life in and of this planet.
If there was ever a time in the history of man when we needed being reminded of our frailty and vulnerability, it is now. As the following so starkly illustrates.
Peter Sinclair of Climate Crocks recently republished an item from Skeptical Science that opened up as follows:
A new study of ocean warming has just been published in Geophysical Research Letters by Balmaseda, Trenberth, and Källén (2013). There are several important conclusions which can be drawn from this paper.
- Completely contrary to the popular contrarian myth, global warming has accelerated, with more overall global warming in the past 15 years than the prior 15 years. This is because about 90% of overall global warming goes into heating the oceans, and the oceans have been warming dramatically.
Then last week-end, Dan Gomez, friend for over 40 years, sent me the following:
Weather Channel Founder: Global Warming Science ‘Not Valid’
Meteorologist John Coleman, who co-founded The Weather Channel, says the claim that human activity is leading to global warming is no longer scientifically credible.
Instead, the “little evidence” there is for rising global temperatures points to a “natural phenomenon,” Coleman asserts.
In an open letter to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), he wrote: “There is no climate crisis. The ocean is not rising significantly. The polar ice is increasing, not melting away. Polar bears are increasing in number.
“Heat waves have actually diminished, not increased. There is not an uptick in the number or strength of storms.
“I have studied this topic seriously for years. It has become a political and environmental agenda item, but the science is not valid.”
Coleman says he based his views on the findings of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (not to be confused with the U.N. panel), a body of scientists and scholars who assess the science of global warming.
“There is no significant man-made global warming at this time. There has been none in the past and there is no reason to fear any in the future,” says Coleman, who was the original meteorologist on “Good Morning America.”
“Efforts to prove the theory that carbon dioxide is a significant greenhouse gas and pollutant causing significant warming or weather effects have failed.
“There has been no warming over 18 years.”
The U.N.’s IPCC argues that their research shows man-made global warming will lead to extreme weather events becoming more frequent and unpredictable, the Express in Britain reported.
Climate expert William Happer, a professor at Princeton University, expressed support for Coleman’s claims.
“No chemical compound in the atmosphere has a worse reputation than CO2, thanks to the single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control [of] energy production,” Happer said.
“The incredible list of supposed horrors that increasing carbon dioxide will bring the world is pure belief disguised as science.”
What Dan had seen was an article in the UK Daily Mail that, in turn, was echoed on the US WesternJournalism blogsite. Here’s how that Daily Mail story opens:
Climate change has been proven to be a lie, according to a leading meteorologist.
John Coleman, who co-founded the Weather Channel, claims that the belief humans are causing climate change is not backed up by science.
In an open letter attacking the UN, the 80-year-old from San Diego, said that what ‘little evidence’ there is for global warming points to natural cycles in temperature.
‘There is no climate crisis,’ he wrote. ‘The ocean is not rising significantly. The polar ice is increasing, not melting away. Polar bears are increasing in number. ‘Heat waves have actually diminished, not increased. There is not an uptick in the number or strength of storms.
‘I have studied this topic seriously for years. It has become a political and environment agenda item, but the science is not valid.’
The WesternJournalism post runs with the story explaining (in part):
John Coleman, the original meteorologist for ABC’s Good Morning America and the founder of The Weather Channel, which launched in 1982, wrote an open letter to the UCLA’s Hammer Forum urging them “to re-examine their plan” for their forum, scheduled for this past Thursday, after they announced their experts, both of whom believe in climate change science.
Coleman has made his position against climate change science clear in the past.
“There is no significant man-made global warming at this time, there has been none in the past and there is no reason to fear any in the future. Efforts to prove the theory that carbon dioxide is a significant ‘greenhouse’ gas and pollutant causing significant warming or weather effects have failed. There has been no warming over 18 years.”
The Weather Channel founder cites professors from Princeton University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard Smithsonian Observatory, and the University of Alabama, along with “9,000 Ph.D scientists” who agree with him.
“Yet at your October 23 Hammer Forum on Climate Change you have scheduled as your only speakers two people who continue to present failed science as though it is the final and complete story on global warming/climate change. This is a major mistake.”
Coleman urged the UCLA group to reconsider, noting he is not a “flat Earther,” or a “paid shill of the Koch Brothers.”
In a discussion yesterday with Dan, he was of the clear mind that, yes, the climate is changing, as it always has over eons of time, but that the degree of change that is directly attributed to man’s affairs is minute. Then all around me I see sign after sign, read article after article, that we, as in mankind, are relentlessly ‘fouling our own nest’ and the time left for us to learn how to live sustainably on this planet is fast running out.
Can we get to the truth? The topic will be continued tomorrow!
The intelligence of dogs?
Fascinating article in the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper.
This post was written last Monday in the hope that I will be back home from my ‘op’ by today, or more accurately expressed as hoping I was back home yesterday.
Friend, Chris Snuggs, sent me an item that appeared in The Daily Telegraph about measuring the intelligence of your dog. Here’s how it opened:
Quiz: how intelligent is your dog?
Take our special test to gauge your pet’s brainpower
Canine brains: test your dog’s intelligence Photo: Alamy
By Andrew Bake
7:00AM BST 25 Oct 2014
We all love our dogs. They repay us with affection, loyalty, fun and amusement, and we boast of their beauty, athletic prowess and impeccable behaviour. But while we can subtly promote our own academic achievements, and hint heavily at the brightness of our children, it is hard to prove – really prove, beyond reasonable doubt – that our canine companions are as intelligent as we know in our hearts they must be.
There is no doubt that some breeds are more intelligent than others, the result – as so much else about dogs – of selective breeding for many generations. But human classification and stereotyping of breeds has also evolved – not always fairly – and there are exceptions within breeds. So it is perfectly possible for an ostensibly airheaded Chihuahua to perform very well in intelligence tests, while a supposedly sagacious German shepherd will fail to distinguish “sit” from “fetch”.
Behaviour that seems to demonstrate intelligence in dogs is often the result of a combination of breeding and intense training. It is often suggested that Border collies are outstandingly bright, and that may be so: but they have been bred for generations to respond rapidly to complex commands; and sheepdogs – the rock stars of the obedience world – are trained from puppyhood, in many cases at the side of their parents.
Andrew Bake closes his piece, thus:
So how can we arrive at a reasonable estimation of our dog’s mental abilities? The Telegraph canine intelligence test combines observation of the subject’s regular behaviours, some of which may have been influenced by training, habituation and what might loosely be termed upbringing, with a series of simple staged exercises which attempt to measure the dog’s ability to think sequentially and to respond to challenges.
Putting the scores from the two together will produce a fair estimate of general intelligence: good enough, at least, to boast about in the park.
No special equipment is needed — though patience, a new dog-toy and a supply of dog-treats will undoubtedly come in handy.
Then at the bottom of the article is a link ‘Let’s Play‘ that takes you to the test questions.
Enjoy!
Lights out for the first time!
My first general anaesthetic in nearly 70 years!
Today, I have an appointment with a urologist surgeon at the Rogue Regional Medical Centre in Medford, about an hour south of where we live in Merlin. All being well I should be out the same day but will need to take it easy for a couple of days thereafter. I’m curious about the experience of having a general anaesthetic; the first one I have had.
Also this week I need to get my head down and commit to another month of writing under the NaNoWriMo banner.
Last November, participating in the National Novel Writing Month was critical in me completing a draft start of 56,000 words of my book Learning from Dogs. Despite it not being a novel and despite me wanting to continue the draft rather that start another writing project, NaNoWriMo have accepted me for a second time. I’m very grateful because, fingers crossed, by the end of this coming November I should be within reach of my target of 120,000 words for a non-fiction book.
November also brings along a ’70’ birthday for me, a birthday for Jean later on in the month and our wedding anniversary in the middle of the month.
So you know where this is leading, don’t you!
Creative blog writing is going to be a little thin on the ground for the next four weeks – (What was that you said? Something about creative writing frequently being thin on the ground?!)
There will be a post every day but if I get squeezed for time I will repost something previously published in this place. I will also republish items of general interest that catch my eye on the broader front of the big-wide-web!
Going to close today by sharing a photograph of the recent solar eclipse. There have been many published but this one seemed especially beautiful. It was part of a set over on the EarthSky blogsite.
Sunset partial solar eclipse, with sea birds, from the beach in Englewood, Florida, overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. Photo by K. King.
Returning to the land – a guest essay.
A question of a possible catastrophe
Note: As tomorrow’s post will explain, the next few weeks will be encroaching seriously on my blogging time. So it was very timely to receive this guest essay from John in the last couple of days and even more generous of him to give me permission to republish it.
It will make an interesting comparison to an item from Dan Gomez being published on Thursday.
ooOOoo
Notes on Dealing With Imminent Catastrophe
We know that our world economy is leveraged at least twenty-five times beyond any earthly material foundation. Regardless of this reality, we have made an artificial global economy more real than our physical world. This situation only makes sense when we recognize that we’re being encouraged to re-establish our awareness of reality. It’s a final exam time for a leading edge species of clever monkeys.
Nature has tolerated human activities for millions of years. Now that our demographics ravenously swarm the globe, belch poisons into the five mile band of air that sustains surface life on earth, dumps wastes and toxins into streams, rivers, lakes and oceans, and arrogantly refuses to understand obvious warnings; Nature is reacting.
For those who are inclined to either or choices, in accordance with the physical Law of Entropy, the decision is between pursuing constructive or destructive actions. For those who are more spiritually oriented, there is no question. In either case, we know what needs to be done.
Our first order of business is to stabilize our inclusive global economy through green initiatives that are operated for profit without damage to the eco-system. Yes, this sounds impossible the first time we think about it. Can we come up with a better plan? Not really, when we stop and honestly consider our situation. We’re poised on the brink of a material, economic and cultural collapse created by human beings.
Wars continue to be waged world wide over territory and rapidly diminishing fossil fuel resources. We have essentially lost trust in each other as equal members of a common community we call Earth. And, we are rapidly losing faith in the unsustainably inflated symbol of trust we call Money.
A green economy is our best solution for the multiple problems that plague us. Here’s why and a few suggestions about how we go about the process. Essentially, our critical need for renaissance is a process of education, formation and transformation.
When we return to the land as a global priority, the use of solar energy can replace massive industrial electrical generators running on fossil fuel derivatives. Most industrial generators may be easily converted to bio-diesel fuel. Industrial diesel generators worldwide can be converted to bio-fuel overnight. No mechanical adaptation is required.
Electric cars already set speed records at Europe’s classic racetracks. Solar electric cars are on the horizon. A bio-diesel engine to power a golf cart costs about $500 today and is available from Amazon.
There’s a natural need for co-operation when we return to the land and collectively re-establish our financial roots. First, we recognize that each of our actions affects the well being of the earth and its inhabitants. Second we realize that we are responsible for the well being of the Earth which sustains our being.
Third, we re-establish our natural connection with the unity of a living universe. We begin with the community gardens and farmer’s markets that are already operational, and rebuild accordingly.
When we are foolish, we act independently for our personal well being. When we are wise, we act together for the well being of the earth and each other. Growing our own food not only assures that what we eat will be free of chemical by-products; it also makes us aware of how fragile our consumer supply lines have become. Recycling our food waste as fertilizer completes a natural growth cycle.
By the way, a back yard greenhouse can produce enough bio-fuel to operate a diesel vehicle and a solar panel array can generate enough energy to charge your electric car. How much money does this save each year?
We don’t need nuclear reactors that sometimes melt down and sicken us with a continual stream of radiation carried by the tides and the winds of an integrated planet. We don’t need the wastes of nuclear reactors that poison the earth for millennium.
We don’t need nuclear weapons capable of destroying most, if not all, of the life on earth in an all out suicidal war. The only creatures to survive the holocaust of nuclear war would need to be radiation resistant; shielded deep underground or deep under the sea.
Harnessing wind, water and geothermal energy are wiser ways to keep our world energized in a green economy. A combination of habitats and communities powered by solar and geothermal energy will produce a new building boom as we shed the skin of our former infrastructure and a green architectural industry emerges.
Recycling the components of our technological world not only reduces our industrial waste, it decreases the cost of manufacture. Similarly, adapting and reusing what we already have decreases our personal expenses and reduces our demands on the earth.
These are only a few of the ideas which are already possible. Many more are already in the process of becoming our greater reality.
Still think such a massive transformation is impossible? If so, please know that you remain in our prayers.
There is hope for tomorrow. Science consistently opens new doors. Faith in the Nature of God of which we are each an infinitesimal part makes us unified and strong as a consciously aware biological species.
John Hurlburt
an old lamplighter
ooOOoo
Picture parade sixty-seven.
The second wonderful set of photographs sent to me by Dan Gomez.
Continuing the theme of how our pets react to mentioning the word ‘vet’!
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Aren’t they just wonderful!
Another set in a week’s time. You all take care of yourselves meanwhile.
Saturday special!
Enough of the world of spying and whistleblowing and back to stuff that is really important!
Many will recall that on the 10th October, under the heading of Utterly beyond words!, I wrote about a deer befriending us to the point that Jean was able to stroke its neck as it was feeding. The post included this photograph.
Then, unbelievably, the wild deer continues feeding as Jean fondles the deer’s ear.
Inevitably, being the softies that we are, we have continued to put out feed, in the form of cob or cracked corn, most days.
The word among the local deer population clearly has been passed around!
For here’s a photograph taken automatically on the night of the 19th October.
Time of the shot was a little before 5am.
Then on the 22nd, just three days ago, these photographs were taken shortly after 10am.
More food and it isn’t even supper time!
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Come on ladies, eat up! You never know when a dog will charge around the corner!
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That’s more like it!
One fear that Jean and I had was that they would become vulnerable to an attack by our dogs. But the deer have quickly wised up to when dogs are being let out of the front or kitchen doors and are off like darts into the forest just a few yards away.
We treasure seeing them each day.
Spying and security: Further thoughts.
My follow-up to yesterday’s post.
Yesterday, the central theme of my post was the essay from Tom Engelhardt where he interviews Laura Poitras on the back of the recent release of her film Citizenfour. You will recall that I closed the post as follows:
On first reading the TomGram I found myself nodding vigorously, metaphorically speaking, with the whole thrust of the essay.
Then what appeared to be small uncertainties started appearing in my mind.
Those will be the subject of tomorrow’s post.
To set the background to what follows, you need to know a little about my own military experiences; which is not saying very much!
I was born in London six months to the day before WWII ended; at least the European side of things. When I got to the age of being vulnerable to a call-up if circumstances so dictated, I thought I would influence things by volunteering to join the United Kingdom’s Royal Naval Reserve or the RNR. The world in the early 60’s especially in Europe was far from stable. Thus, I signed up with London Division, RNR that was headquartered on HMS President, moored on the River Thames in the centre of London.
HMS President.
I served as a Radio Operator in the RNR from 1963 to 1968. Inevitably, as a radio operator I was security cleared and, in time, as I was promoted up the ranks, allowed to handle traffic up to but not including “Top Secret: Captain’s Eyes Only”.
In 1968 I decided to emigrate to Australia and resigned from the RNR. The parting advice was that the knowledge I had acquired prevented me, for my own safety, from entering any country hostile to NATO for a period of a further 5 years. Including the Soviet Union; naturally.
At the end of 1970, living and working in Sydney, I was planning to attend Expo70 in Japan and then travel on to Helsinki, Finland. One look at the atlas made it clear that a wonderful way of travelling westwards was via the Russian Trans-Siberian express.
So off I trotted to the British Embassy in Sydney to seek advice about entering Russia in this fashion. One of the military guys, on hearing about my concerns, laughed his head off and said, “The Russians will know more about you than we do!” Then, becoming more serious, he added: “My friend, if you ever find yourself in a difficult corner anywhere in a country hostile to the West, just find a way of transmitting your RNR Service Number to us and we’ll take care of things”. To this day, well over 40 years later, I still remember my service number.
Returning to the subject of the American security ‘apparatus’, Laura Poitras answered a question from Tom Engelhardt that seems very pertinent.
TE: To ask the same question another way, what would the world be like without Edward Snowden? After all, it seems to me that, in some sense, we are now in the Snowden era.
LP: I agree that Snowden has presented us with choices on how we want to move forward into the future. We’re at a crossroads and we still don’t quite know which path we’re going to take. Without Snowden, just about everyone would still be in the dark about the amount of information the government is collecting. I think that Snowden has changed consciousness about the dangers of surveillance. We see lawyers who take their phones out of meetings now. People are starting to understand that the devices we carry with us reveal our location, who we’re talking to, and all kinds of other information. So you have a genuine shift of consciousness post the Snowden revelations.
What struck me was the point about a changed consciousness. That is healthy. Without doubt.
The technology available to the governments of countries with regard to the gathering of all sorts of data represents a place where we haven’t been before. Inevitably, learning how best to govern that data, with both a small ‘g’ and a large ‘G’, is going to be a traveled road where some wrong turnings are made from time to time.
If the Edward Snowden affair has accelerated that learning process, then that seems nothing but good.
Mind you, not everyone applauds Mr. Snowden.
Fred Kaplan, a serious political scientist, published a critical article, Sins of Omission, recently on the Slate web news site from which I quote:
If all I knew about Edward Snowden were his portrait in Laura Poitras’ documentary, Citizenfour, I’d probably regard him as a conscientious, brave young man, maybe an American hero. But Poitras, a very talented filmmaker who flipped from journalist to collaborator in this story long ago, has chosen to leave a lot out.
Snowden’s claim as a whistleblower, exposing the National Security Agency’s violations of civil liberties, rests on some of the documents that he leaked, which reveal that the NSA’s domestic surveillance was far more extensive than anyone had imagined—and, in a few instances, conducted in defiance of orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
However, many other documents—which he downloaded at the NSA facility in Hawaii and turned over to Poitras and the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald in Hong Kong—go far beyond exposures of spying on Americans.
Judging from Snowden-derived stories in the Guardian and the Washington Post, some of these documents also detail NSA intercepts of email and cellphone conversations by Taliban fighters in Pakistan; assessments of CIA assets in several foreign countries; and surveillance of cellphone calls “worldwide” that (in the Post’s words) allows the NSA “to look for unknown associates of known intelligence targets by tracking people whose movements intersect.” In Snowden’s first interview abroad, with the South China Morning Post, he disclosed that the NSA routinely hacks into hundreds of computers in Hong Kong and China. Just last week a story co-authored by Poitras in Greenwald’s new publication, the Intercept, revealed—again, based on Snowden-supplied documents—that the NSA has undercover operatives in Germany and China.
Whatever you think about foreign intelligence operations, the NSA’s core mission is to intercept communications of foreign governments and agents. If Snowden and company wanted to take down an intelligence agency, they should say so. But that has nothing to do with whistleblowing or constitutional rights.
As the Mission Statement on the NSA website explains, in part,:
The National Security Agency/Central Security Service (NSA/CSS) leads the U.S. Government in cryptology that encompasses both Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) and Information Assurance (IA) products and services, and enables Computer Network Operations (CNO) in order to gain a decision advantage for the Nation and our allies under all circumstances.
The Information Assurance mission confronts the formidable challenge of preventing foreign adversaries from gaining access to sensitive or classified national security information. The Signals Intelligence mission collects, processes, and disseminates intelligence information from foreign signals for intelligence and counterintelligence purposes and to support military operations. This Agency also enables Network Warfare operations to defeat terrorists and their organizations at home and abroad, consistent with U.S. laws and the protection of privacy and civil liberties.
I read, “to gain a decision advantage for the Nation and our allies under all circumstances” as meaning maintaining a positive security for the Nation. My home nation as it happens.
While the scale may be beyond comparison, the principle of maintaining a secure nation or home strikes me as no different as locking the doors of our house when we go off somewhere. And that’s even with nine dogs in the house!
Given that what any ex-head of GCHQ might say, the recent words from Sir Iain Lobban, as reported by the BBC, were not extreme; far from it.
Sir Iain Lobban.
A dimly lit bunker beneath Whitehall – perhaps a suitable venue for a man to say farewell to a 31-year career in what had been one of the most secret parts of the British state.
Sir Iain Lobban was joined by an assortment of spies and securocrats including former heads of GCHQ and the current chief of MI6. It was a venue not chosen by chance.
As he leaves his position as director of GCHQ, Sir Iain used his speech to try to connect the work of today’s GCHQ with its predecessor at Bletchley Park which supplied vital information to Sir Winston Churchill who, from the same bunker, directed Britain’s wartime efforts.
Then, the mission was intercepting and breaking the Enigma code used by the German military to communicate. Dealing with today’s threats, Sir Iain argued, involved going online.
“Those who would do us harm don’t want to be found. They choose certain routers or applications to hide in the darkest places of the internet. We have to enter that labyrinth to find them. We work to crack their defences,” he told the audience.
Sir Iain took aim at those who saw spy agencies polluting a free internet. “We all now know that the beautiful dream of the internet as a totally ungoverned space was just that – a beautiful dream.
“Like all utopian visions, it was flawed because it failed to account for the persistence of the worst aspects of human nature.
“Alongside the blessings – the comprehensive information, the communities of interest, the commercial opportunities and efficiencies – there are the plotters, the proliferators and the paedophiles.”
Being reported later on as saying:
“The people who work at GCHQ would sooner walk out the door than be involved in anything remotely resembling ‘mass surveillance’.” he asserted.
“Secret does not have to equal sinister,” he went on to say, blaming the idea partly on the portrayal of intelligence in popular culture.
Finally, in an article by Jill Serjeant over on Yahoo News, she offers:
Poitras hopes the documentary will allow audiences to reach their own conclusions about Snowden, who is wanted in the United States on charges brought under the Espionage Act and is viewed as either a traitor or a hero.
Only time will tell if the USA is overdoing the ‘mass’ aspect of surveillance, or if it’s right for this age in the affairs of man.
That nothing can be constructed perfectly the first time around is a truism for life at all scales. Thank goodness I’m living in a country where I feel able to offer these thoughts.
Paul Handover