The PBS series Nova has a wonderful program about dogs with the above title that looks at the amazing things we are learning about them. It was broadcast on October 12 and will be available for free viewing online for only a week after that. Don’t miss it, especially if you are fond of dogs.
I particularly enjoyed it because there were lots of scenes in which they showed dogs that were exactly like Baxter, the Wonder Dog.
Those tiny bottles of shampoo and conditioner that hotels provide would last me about two weeks but I usually stay just one or two days and I suspect that the rest will be thrown away, which seems awfully wasteful of both shampoo and plastic. Do hotels expect you to leave the remnants behind or are you doing them a favor by taking the partially used bottles with you, saving them the trouble of throwing them away? It seems vaguely wrong to take them home with me without being given explicit permission and I have personally vacillated between taking them and leaving them. It would be nice if hotels left a little note telling guests like me who worry about such trivialities what to do.
But now apparently some hotels are going to be providing full-size bottles that are refillable, so that the ambiguity is removed.
That’s a welcome development. Now if they could do something about the waste of the remnants of those little bars of soap …
A soccer player scores a goal with a header from inside his own half.
What is surprising is why the goalkeeper was so far out of position. You can see him in lime green right at the beginning near the opponent’s goal and could not get back in time to guard his own goal.
On Friday, September 23, I will be leading a discussion on these ideas, especially the work of Frans de Waal, Paul Bloom, and Peter Singer on the implications of the theory of evolution.
It will take place from 12:30- 2:00 pm in Nord 310B on the CWRU campus.
The event is free and open to all. Drinks will be provided and you are encouraged to bring your own brown bag lunch.
At least as far as internet speeds go, just behind Romania.
If it seems extraordinary to you that the country that pioneered the internet should lag so far behind now, Tim Karr explains that the prime cause is the lack of competition here, thanks to the ability of the telecommunications giants to pressure regulators.
In the years that followed the signing of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, lobbyists working for powerful providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon pressured a compliant FCC to tear down all of the important safeguards established by Congress.
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While the U.S. blindly followed a path of “deregulation,” other nations in Europe and Asia beefed up their pro-competitive policies. The results are evident in our free fall from the top of almost every global measure of Internet services, availability and speed.
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The lack of competition has turned America into a broadband backwater. In the aftermath of the FCC’s decisions, powerful phone and cable companies legislated and lobbied their way to controlling 97 percent of the fixed-line residential broadband market — leaving the vast majority of consumers with two or fewer choices of land-based providers in any given market.
The absence of true consumer choice has driven prices up and services down.
For reasons that are not clear to me, the Plain Dealer wasted a huge amount of the limited space in its front section to a story about a fancy lakefront property that was on sale for nearly $20 million. The item read like a huge, free, real estate advertisement and fell into the category of what is known as ‘real estate porn’, that showcases the absurdly extravagant homes of the wealthy.
But what struck me was that the 38,000 square foot house built on 160 acres consisted of five bedrooms, nine bathrooms, and seven half bathrooms.
Why would you need sixteen bathrooms for a private home that has just five bedrooms? Do rich people need to go to the bathroom a lot and so must have one handy at any moment?
I see from the news today that yesterday was the Emmy awards show. I do not understand the appeal of such shows for viewers and am curious as to why people watch them at all. Surely it can’t be to see the stars since we see them all the time in their performances themselves. The shows apparently have some moments of comedy and some music and dance but most of the time seems to be spent announcing the nominees, showing clips from their performances, and the acceptance remarks of category winners. Surely this must get stale about fifteen minutes into the proceedings?
It is true that I do not watch TV or go to many plays much, which may explain my lack of interest in the Emmys and the Tonys. But I do watch films a lot and my disinterest extends to the Oscar awards show as well.
Do viewers of these shows see it as a quasi-sporting event and root for particular people to win, thus enjoying the suspense of seeing if their ‘team’ won?
I am genuinely curious.
The Northeast Ohio Center for Inquiry is having its 2011 Humanism Award banquet on Friday, September 30th 2011 at 7:00 pm at the Crowne Plaza Independence, 5300 Rockside Road, Independence, OH 44131.
The award is being given to Page Stephens, PhD, “who, as cofounder and seventeen year president of the now-disbanded South Shore Skeptics, was instrumental in cultivating a burgeoning skeptics community on the southern banks of Lake Erie and proved himself a staunch defender of science over pseudoscience.”
The featured speaker is the well-known biologist blogger P. Z. Myers.