Through etsy I made a contact with a woman who lives in Morocco who will be buying me some tiny silver charms in the shape of hands of fatima (also know as hamsa). The hand of fatima is a folk symbol used by both Jews and Muslims throughout the Middle East and North Africa to thwart the evil eye. It protects one from the envy of others.
I am in love with this symbol, not because of its alleged power, but because of the multitude ways it is artfully rendered. Sometimes the hand can been seen on the arched doors of houses. I have three hands of fatima that I bargained hard for in the medinas of Tunisia. Well, one was actually negotiated on a beach in Mahdia, but that's beside the point.
As my ex-pat contact and I talked about what hands of fatima the souks in the medina have available at what price, I was hit by a serious wave of envy. Ironic really. She's the one who needs these amulets, not me!
If I could be anywhere in the world today, I'd be with my honey in Tunisia.
We'd either be soaking up the ancient ambiance of the grain storage structures in Ksar Ouled Sultane while I paint with my one armed friend Miled ...
..or we'd stroll the jasmine scented streets of Sidi Bou Said
... before heading south where life is even slower and dustier.
The desert frontier spirit lies deep within my soul.
3 Leaves 3 Hearts Embossed Organic Fall Foliage Cards (set of 3)
I will be making more of these! Just as soon as my hand recovers... last night my hand wound up smack in the middle of the large and powerful set of jaws belonging to the Baronnes von Roughenhausen. It was an accident while playing her favorite game. I went to throw, she went to catch. It hurt like you wouldn't believe. I have two puncture wounds, one on the palm of my right hand where my thumb meets my wrist (prime area for paper pressing) and the other on the knuckle of my ring finger. Newfssance was sorry and immediately came to lick the tears from my face, then laid down in her sitting pretty, perfect Newfoundland pose.
I finally wrote a shop announcement too:
Love the earth? Me too.
My passion for primates led me to study them and in doing so, I learned of their precarious position on earth. So many are endangered because their habitat is being destroyed everyday. That's why I make green gifts.
I specialize in two things: monkeys & handmade paper. I make boxes, cards, and bookmarks from cereal boxes, junk mail and newspaper inserts with some flower petals, leaves, glitter, and post-consumer yarn thrown in.
Monkeys are not made from 100% post-consumer material, but your purchase of them helps fund organizations like the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and the Jane Goodall Institute.
When you buy from me, you are supporting a sustainable planet.
I'm finding my groove with the paper making enterprise now so I have developed a little routine. I make 8 sheets before 10 am, then watch The View. While watching, I do a blog post, then hit etsy. Mr. Field Notes comes home for lunch, then I referee Fight Club and make another set of 8 sheets in the afternoon. Somewhere in there I prep photos in Photoshop for adding items to my store. Now I've joined Facebook at the request of my sorority sisters. Yes, I'm a sorority girl! Anyhow, yet another thing that takes up time GAH!!!!
So the hot topic conversation I walked in on after cleaning up my paper making area this morning was TOILETS - and specifically Toto brand toilets. I have watched The View in the mornings off and on for years. I really like the hot topic bickering and even though I liked Rosie as the host the best, Whoopie is growing on me. "Toto is known for toilets," she asserted this morning. Damn right they are. And I know this brand! They are all over Japan. I never saw another brand there.
So what's so special about Toto toilets? First, you have to understand that Japanese toilets are just different. And, we have to distinguish between the squat toilets and the "western" ones. Toto makes both, but Whoopie & Co. were not talking up the squat ones. Although they can be messier, they do have merits. You'd just never see one in an American house. Wow that would be a real shocker! Anyhow, if you've never used a squat toilet before, you haven't lived.
Squat toilets are actually pretty cool, and if you are going to have to hover over a toilet seat anyway because it's "dirty" then I can tell you from personal experience that hovering over a squat toilet is much, much more comfortable. You have to pay attention though, because if you don't direct your stream just right, you'll pee on your shoes. There's a technique to aiming too - otherwise you'll splatter your shoes, ankles, legs - all over. Aiming is something all Japanese women and men around the world have learned, but we western women just have no clue how to pee properly.
That's a lesson I learned the hard way when I had to pee in the Sahara desert by the side of the road in southern Tunisia. No rest areas, and no cover. That wasn't the worst part. Only after I succeeded in making a mess of myself did Mr. Field Notes point out I should have peed on one of the scroungy looking "bushes." I don't know if I would have believed him though. Afterall, he was the one who tricked me into thinking the gizmo for keeping sand off the road was a freaking camel parking lot! GAH! I grew up seeing the snow versions of them! He had me; he really had me. He is a major tricky head. You have to watch out.
If you're in the desert, pee on a bush. But, if you're in Japan, pee on a Toto.
Platform shoes are a must in Japan. I think they were invented there.
This is the prettiest bathroom I saw in Japan. It was at a Buddhist temple; I forget the name. All I remember is that it's the one with the perfect bell. I love the green slippers lined up. They're there so that you can cover your feet when you use the bathroom. In temples, you have to remove your shoes so it's really handy they set these out for visitors. I made sure the ones I used were lined up again when I was done.
In temples, gardens, and any place frequented by tourists, there is a ratio of about 8 Japanese squat toilets to 1 western style one. If you insist on sitting down, you might have to wait. Oh, and another great thing about the squat toilets is that the flush lever is at the floor so you can flush easily with your foot and be out of there without touching anything gross.
Western style Toto toilets made in Japan are fancy. They make American toilets look like we take craps in the Stone Age. Heated seats. Built in bidet, with customizable spray intensity and water temperature settings. Sanitizing seat dryer. Full flush and half flush. The price tag? $3,369.00 (and that's on sale) See more here. These toilets are standard in Japanese hotels. Most people in Japan, however, have squat toilets at home. As far as I can tell, having one of these Toto "washlets" at home is a real status symbol. By the way, some of the Toto Washlets will raise and lower the seat for you.
Here's a *very typical* cartoonish Japanese TV commercial for the Toto Washlet. You gotta see it.
The Toto Washlets make my Australian toilet (at right) look like something from Roman times. The only special thing about it is it's full/half flush - and it's unfortunate brand name: Caroma. Seriously, they named their toilet c-aroma. It is a wonderful, environmentally responsible toilet. Even my dad is envious, and if you knew him, that says a lot!
Apparently first person shooter games are not all bad. Among young women who are not players of those types of video games, ten hours of playing them for an hour or two a day over a one month period increased spatial cognition. What's more, the gain persisted for at least five months.
Spatial cognition is often measured by performance on tests of mental rotation, pictured below. You've got to decide which of the 3 comparison shapes on the right matches the standard shape on the left. (If you want the correct answers, leave a comment.)
The research used this type of problem to test spatial cognition.
Performance on such tests is associated with skill in math, science, and engineering - and - also gender. In fact, spatial intelligence is one of the last areas of marked gender differences. Boys routinely out-perform girls on these tasks. But why?
It has been assumed that there is an underlying genetic difference between males and females in spatial ability. Some evolutionary psychologists even assert that man the hunter would have been more successful in the hunt with better spatial cognition, thus the evolved gender difference. Maybe so, but it is also possible that spatial skills are achieved through practice. Boys are often steered to the kinds of tasks that promote spatial skills.
First person shooter game play increases mental rotation skill, the authors think, by encouraging spatial attention. Spatial attention refers to paying attention to quick and often subtle changes in one's field of view. First person shooter games require the player to visually scan and quickly spot moving targets on screen to shoot them. That this activity resembles hunting does not escape my evolutionary mind...
But back to the real story.
This skill can be practiced and we've got a specific activity that can help girls achieve gains in spatial cognition. What's disappointing is that even with the 10 hours practice, women in the study still lagged behind men. I imagine that all it takes is more practice. I would just be great if girls didn't have to play shooter/hunting games to achieve spatial performance on par with boys.
I am sure there are other tasks that would achieve the same effect, without the violence. Although I am not technically in a STEM field (science, technology, engineering, math), I do perform better than the average male on mental rotation tasks and better even than one super above-average male - he he - you know who you are Mr. Field Notes ;-) you kick my butt at Super Scrabble all the time so I get to lord this one over you! When I read about studies like this, I wonder how my developmental experience can shed any light on what it takes to get girls interested in STEM fields and excel in them. I don't know what the answer is, but I can tell you that I did play video games, including first person shooter games.
**By the end of the calendar year, I will send a tangible, physical gift to each of the first five people to comment here. The catch? Each person must make the same offer on her/his blog.**
Over the weekend I broke out my brand new blender and made 15 or 16 sheets of paper. It's the first time I've made paper in about 10 years. Although it was fairly easy to pick up where I left off, I still have to learn exactly how much pulp to use for each sheet. I also forgot how long it takes for the paper to dry, exacerbated of course, by the thick sheets! Even in this dry climate, which has been unusually wet lately, it takes at least 2 days for the sheets to dry enough to press. And now I have twice as many dog feet to watch out for during the drying process. I can dry them on a rack, but then they don't dry flat. That's something I will have to experiment with.
Mr. Field Notes also had to dismantle the entire kitchen to make room for my little paper processing plant. At least we've got a huge kitchen. This would never have been possible during the dark days of grad school. Those were also the cramped kitchen days. Now we've got a bright airy kitchen. I love it. We can work together in the same space - him making complicated Indian meals and me making paper. It will be a lot of fun and good bonding.
For the paper making, I'm using a slightly different technique so the sheets are smoother than before. I am eager to see how the colorful paper looks with this new technique. Over the weekend I didn't have any truly colorful paper to add to the pulp so all of the sheets are on the neutral side. With nothing to jazz them up, I decided to press leaves into the pulp. I think they make very neat cards with an organic feel. I think I'll add them to my etsy store as a set with different leaf imprints.
The example card pictured here is from my old collection. The new collection is still being flattened :-)
Thanks to my blogpal Sciencewoman, I was alerted to Blog Action Day's topic: the environment.
As I started to write a comment on her post, I realized I had a lot more to say than could appropriately be considered a comment. Plus, my comment may have come off as a bit snarky.
So here goes. I have some opinions about how best to help the environment through small actions, but I also have a big one in particular that I haven't talked about very much. It's not bound to be a popular one, but I think it is the morally right decision to make. It's the issue of having kids - reproducing.
One of the best things you can do to reduce your personal impact on the environment is to not have kids. If you make the choice to not reproduce, you won't create a kid who grows up in this throw away American culture. Americans burn through the most natural resources of any group of people in the world. Why would you want to add another one to the planet? It's selfish.
Think of all of the stuff you buy and then throw away when you have kids. Thousands of diapers. Toys, clothes, bedding, bottles, etc etc. Then there's all of the extra driving you will do to cart them to and fro.
You are not off the hook if you adopt from another country. You're still raising the little one in this consumer culture. Sure, you can do your best to instill your values, but even if your child grows up to consume less than you do, you have still added another resource consumer to the planet when you didn't have to.
There is no way you can produce a child and have no added strain on the environment.
I don't blame anyone for wanting to have kids. As an evolutionary psychologist I understand the fundamental drive to reproduce. But we are not solely creatures of blind desire, we can make choices that aren't in the best interest of our genes.
The remarkable thing about this photo is that it was NOT staged.
Normally if one is already on one of the two pillows, and the other wants to sleep on the unoccupied pillow, the desirous one moves along to a different spot.
If little Max is the desirous one he makes a big show of wanting to sleep on the open pillow. He'll stand around and stare off in all directions. He wants Katy to move, but she won't. He eventually trundles off, disgusted.
If the desirous one is BIGG Katy, she occasionally just flops down on the open pillow. She doesn't much mind sleeping next to Max. But he *hates* it. He always gets up and moves.
This photo captures the rare exception. He actually stayed.
(If you look closely, you might be able to notice that his paw is actually resting on her!)
Wow, the etsy blog community certainly is active! And they love data as much as I do. The post I wrote about the results of my marriage of science and art (market research) has 14 comments - and counting.
That's more than the number of congrats comments I received for finishing my dissertation (9) and also the Video Packing Professor post (9) about how to pack for three weeks with just a carry-on backpack. Oh, and people had a lot to say about my Snakes in Primate Vision too (9).
What does an unemployed social science researcher do with her morning when she's bored and looking for ways to boost sales of her hobby art?
Market research.
I sat with a pen and paper this morning and collected data on variables that might be correlated with sales on etsy. I chose 5 variables I could get quantifiable numbers for: * number of items for sale * number of items sold * number of people who identify they like the items in the shop (i.e. number of hearts) * average price of items in the store * average number of views for each item in the store
I spent about 2.5 hours collecting the data, 10 minutes setting up the SPSS spreadsheet, and 10 seconds analyzing it. Hmmm. Looks a lot like the time budget break down for doing dissertation research.
I just wanted to see whether any interesting correlations turn up that might help me decide where to allocate my efforts - i.e. Do I need to concentrate on getting more things into my store? Do I need to get more people to view the items, or do I need to get more people to know about my store and "heart" it? Maybe I need to offer less expensive items. Who knows, thus, the market research.
Here's what I found out:
If you can't read SPSS output correlation tables, this is what I found out in plain English: The number of items sold is very strongly associated with the number of people who "heart" your store, and that is associated with the average number of views your items get. Also, the more items you have for sale in your store, the more sold items you end up with. Price doesn't matter at all. And interestingly, just because you have a lot of items in your store, that doesn't mean you're going to get more people taking a look. There was a big fat zero correlation between number of items in a store and the number of views.
All of this tells me I shouldn't waste money willy-nilly listing a ton of items until I figure out how to get more views and especially hearts.
If I can't make money teaching or doing research for this academic year, then I am at least going to try to make the art thing a paid endeavor.
As far as I can tell, greater visibility on etsy can be achieved if you:
* post to etsy forums: What generated a lot of views for me was to open a discussion with a simple question about "are my prices too high?" Price point is something everyone worries about to some degree so it's a good conversation starter. And, people have to go to your store in order to answer the question.
* list items over the span of hours & days: Each time you list a new item, a photo of it gets put on the etsy homepage where it gets some visibility. If you list everything at once, people who scan etsy's homepage, but not during the 4 minutes you posted, will miss you.
* get involved in arts & crafts blog circles: Do this in the same way you would to attract fellow bloggers to your blog - leaving comments on their blogs. Don't just leave throw away comments like "You are so right!" or anything that doesn't make people think you have something unique to offer. You've got to leave thoughtful, insightful comments that make people want to click on your profile to see what you have to say on your own blog.
* put up etsy mini on your blog: It takes a minute and any traffic to your blog will see what you have on offer at your store.
These simple things can add up to greater visibility.
Last night my SIL sent a fun email about how my little niece, who isn't even one yet, put her toys away at bedtime. It got me thinking about what our routine is around here.
No kids yet, but we do have our hands nearly full with two dogs, one of whom is a puppy who *loves* toys. Each night we watch Toy Parade, which is a much quieter alternative to Fight Club.
Toy Parade: Katy brings us one of her toys at a time, usually when we're trying to finish watching a movie. She flops down in front of us and mouths the toy for about 30 seconds before getting up for another one. The average is about 8 toys a night. She never puts them away. I get to do that in the morning.
Fight Club: Both dogs run at full speed from the front of the house to the back until dog tired. The little ones yaps, snarls, and barks his fool head off at the big one the whole time. The big one fake bites, tries to run the little one into walls and furniture, play bows, and swats him over the head. Rarely does Fight Club escalate into a brawl. It's a noisy affair that often happens twice a day - once after breakfast and once after Mr. Field Notes goes back to work after lunch.
This is her preferred method
for carrying her bunny: Squeaky toys always get carried like this so she can squeak them when she walks by:
Just moments ago I put up a new side bar for my Etsy store. I call it recycled ideas because many of my creations are made from materials I have recycled or ideas I get from elsewhere.
It took all day and weeks of prep to get my store front launched. Phew. I became photographer, catalogue copy writer and image editor.
I've got two types of product: monkey stuff: Fimo guys, non-sock sock monkeys & a non-monkey sock monkey handmade paper stuff: boxes, cards, bookmarks
Mountain gorillas in the Congo are having a rough time of it again as reports indicate that a rebel Congolese general led his soldiers into the protected Virunga National Park, home to 73 mountain gorillas who live on the Congolese side. This is very bad news for the survival of the critically endangered gorillas. Park guards have been run out of the area, leaving no one to enforce the codes of the park. Already this year 10 mountain gorillas have been killed and more will likely follow given the intrusion into the park.
Sometimes I wonder if it's a hopeless situation for mountain gorilla survival. They have everything going against them in terms of the factors that matter in conservation biology. They are few in number, which means they are at an increased risk of birth defects and aberrant genetic mutations that arise from inbreeding. They also live in populations that are geographically isolated from other populations which means they can't easily breed outside their group. They are huge. They need more area to acquire the food they need, plus they are easy targets for hunting.
The only thing they have going for them is celebrity status in the conservation world, but there is only so much that can be done to keep armed rebel forces out of their habitat. Guards carry weapons, but there are too few of them to do anything in these crisis situations. I don't know what the answer is, after all, TIA. My family makes regular contributions to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, an organization that from the inception of the Virunga National Park, has outfitted armed guards to safeguard the gorillas. Even if gorillas don't make it in the long run, at least the guards and their families have employment and are taken care of.
Bonobos live in the Congo too, but rebel forces don't seem to be causing problems in their limited habitat, otherwise we'd be hearing about it too, right? Wrong. Bonobos don't have the cache that gorillas have. Who knows what's happening in bonobo habitat, but at least in the capital of Kinshasa, some semi-wild, semi-captive bonobos living at a research center have it pretty good. A blog of note this week, Bonobo Handshake, is devoted to reporting what happens at the research center. The researcher, Vanessa Woods, posts fantastic videos of her interactions with the bonobos. I have added the blog to my links.
Yesterday we found a mouse in Katy's bag of dog food. Yuck. It was a scrappy looking mouse too. Perhaps it had been injured by the kitten/cat that has taken up residence under our back deck. We haven't seen the cat lately. I think Katy scared it off. Good thing too; it had been giving Katy the heebie-jeebies* every time she went outside.
That the mouse ended up in Katy's food is poetic, but I doubt Katy would have offered the mouse any sort of refuge status. Katy is a part time cat. She really is. She bats her toys around in the air while playing on her back - arches her back to stretch like a cat... I swear she purrs sometimes.
The mouse probably came in through the basement. In any case, I thought if there's one mouse inside, there are probably more, so we high tailed it to the Safeway close to our house. We chose to walk. It's not that far and the rainstorm that swept through left the area looking and smelling wonderful.
Today is garbage day so we put out the garbage last night before we left to get the mouse killer. Mr. Field Notes gathered up the weeds he had pulled and then collected all of the trash that blows into our yard. Living on a busy street means that we frequently have garbage in our yard - usually plastic bags, fast food containers, and scraps of paper. Once we found a beer can - which reminds me...
... that Katy found a half-full beer around the corner while we were walking her earlier this week. Before we knew what she had done, she grabbed it by putting her mouth completely around the top - like you would if you were trying to drink it while simultaneously showing off how capacious your mouth is. She was so incredibly goofy looking and had Newfed up the can so much that we couldn't really return it to the lady she lifted it from (someone who had set her beer down on the sidewalk while she was moving boxes into the house she was moving into). We were walking toward the campus recycling center so I figured we could just let her have the beer until we got there. So, there we were - two giggling people flanking a giant dog with a Tecate hanging out of her mouth.
Yeah - so back to the stuff that washes up on the shore that is our yard. Last night in addition to finding the usual trash, Mr. Field Notes also found a half-used package of blue construction paper. Seriously the best thing that has ever washed up in our yard!!! why am I so excited about this? Well, I have been meaning to make some more of my totally gorgeous handmade paper but lacked the supplies to make what I want to make - lavender colored paper with bits of lavender and lavender seeds embedded in it. I want all of it to be post-consumer recycled waste which means that if I want the paper to be colored purple, I need blue and red paper for the pulp. I can use the Netflix envelope flaps for the red and now I have the blue! Sweet - now I can make 100% post-consumer waste recycled handmade paper :-)
I have been making boxes out of cereal box type cardboard (post-consumer waste!) which I then cover with the paper I made out of junk mail and newspaper inserts. The beautiful boxes are nearly 100% post-consumer waste. The only parts that aren't recycled are the glitter I added to the paper to make it sparkle and the beads I use on the pull top.
* heebie-jeebies: Slang,. Uneasiness or nervousness; the jitters. [Coined by William De Beck (1890-1942), American cartoonist, in his comic strip Barney Google.]
Last night while eating (I emphasize that because with this particular dog, that's an important part of why what follows is so W.E.I.R.D.)...
... Max abruptly ran away at full speed barking his fool head off and trailing a slew of crap behind him.
He ran from one end of the house to the other, crapping and barking the whole way. He appeared to be completely oblivious to the presence of anyone.
We let him outside immediately where he zipped around the backyard, still barking but not crapping, still oblivious to the presence of anyone. We could not catch him. Unfortunately he found a spot to escape and ran off to the front yard. Fortunately he seemed to want to run a perimeter so he came back around the backyard gate that I had opened to get out so I could meet up with him in the front yard. Mind you, at this point, I am not completely oblivious to the fact that I am barefoot and in PJs.
Max ran through the gate still barking like a madman and uncatchable. He ran around the yard and came back to the gate area, where between our gate and the neighbors house there is a space of about a foot where we installed chicken wire to seal up the yard. He didn't see the barrier. He threw himself into it at full speed and literally bounced off of it, leaving behind an impressive dent. He did this at least four times.
Finally he calmed down. What set it all off is still a mystery.
He looked seriously deranged through it all. And even in the end, his mane was so full of burrs that he was the perfect canine image of the madman with messed up hair. Both ears were firmly attached to his neck. We still haven't successfully removed all of the burrs. They cover his head, ears, neck, feet, belly.... Mr. Field Notes succeeded in detaching his ears from his body.
An obvious trigger for the sudden freak-out would have been Katy making a move for his food. He's very possessive of his food and even if Katy had made a move, which in itself would be surprising, his response would have been to attack her, not tuck tail and run off so scared that he trailed poo. Even so, Katy was not the trigger - she was calmly eating her food when it happened. It was as if a monster so grand and horrifying the likes of which no one has ever seen suddenly appeared out of nowhere to frighten the living daylights out of Max and only Max.
Our vet had no idea about what could be the problem but he suggested we take Max off the Rimadyl he started last week for his arthritis. I don't have any good guesses about what the problem was. He does have a history of subcutaneous cysts, tumor like lumps that are harmless, but now I'm wondering if he has a tumor on or near his amygdala. That would go a long way to explaining his increasingly aggressive behavior.
A sampling of killer art - all made from recycled objects - that I found on etsy.com:
From GeekGear, to the right, a working desk clock made from an old computer circuit board and floppy disc. Sweet. And a steal at under 30 dollars. GeekGear also makes nifty miniature notebooks out of floppy discs.
To the left from KillTaupe, a picture frame made from recycled cans of Squirt soda - perfect to show off the little squirts in your life.
From retrograndma, below, a purse made from a research methods textbook. What a clever idea!
Need an environmentally friendly alternative for a school notebook? Below, check out the notebooks ivylanedesigns makes from cereal and other packaged food boxes.
This is exactly the kind of art that adorned a restaurant called the Friendly Toast in Portsmouth, NH. Seeing these whimsical pups reminds of the ambiance of that place. The decor is really the reason to visit, unless of course you fancy greasy homefries.
****
And finally, below, an idea I wish I had thought of (because I certainly have lots of the raw materials hanging around) - envelopes made from old calendars.
These ones in particular are made by jessprkle from an old Gorilla Foundation calendar.
Earlier today Mr. Field Notes casually mentioned that he thought he had reached an archived page when he checked my blog. Evidently it's been a while (a week) since I last wrote something.
Where has the time gone? I'd say its a toss up between having three different guests stay with us in the past week and working on projects in preparation for the launch of my web-based store. Today was supposed to be the big photo shoot for my inventory but 1/4 the way through the shoot the batteries for the camera died. The back up set was also dead.
While they recharged I imported more video footage (of the dogs playing) onto my laptop. I already had several GBs of the dogs on my laptop when we got back from Japan, but I didn't have enough to fill an entire DVD. Now that I have enough dog footage to burn a DVD, I will. First I've got to edit it! Then I can dump the files so I can make room for the footage I shot in Japan months ago. It's just about the right time to revisit Japan too.
Now that the camera batteries are recharged I could resume the shoot but unfortunately the light has changed enough to make it pointless. Tomorrow morning should be just right.
Strange But True: Males Can Lactate This article from Scientific American caught my attention today so I'm sharing the link. I'd write my opinion of the topic but I am busy working on another project today!
From Science Daily: "Alex, the world renowned African Grey parrot made famous by the ground-breaking cognition and communication research conducted by Brandeis scientist Irene Pepperberg, Ph.D., died at the age of 31 on September 6, 2007."
The obit/press release is well done in the sense that although I am familiar with this remarkable bird's story, I still learned a number of new things!
The M-F pool opened its doors for a dog only swim day so of course we had to take our water dog Katy there. She's waded around in the fountains on campus before and splashed around in puddles - even tracking the flow of water down a street to its source - a broken pipe.
But she has not swum anywhere since she left her lakeside home in the mountains when she was 14 weeks old. We thought that if we brought her to the pool that she'd just dive right in. She's a Newfoundland. They are bred for water rescue and have the huge fully webbed paws to prove it.
You can lead a water dog to water but you can't make her get in. She spent the first 20 minutes running around the edges of the pool and was obviously nervous about getting in. We put her in the pool twice but she seemed slightly panicked so Sleyed pulled her out right away.
She watched the other dogs splash around and paid close attention to the retrievers. They were the only ones actually swimming.
She put her paws in a couple of times and stared at the water. We waited with baited breath for the moment she'd go in on her own.
Finally someone accidentally tossed a floating frisbee over and that piqued her interest. She slid in, got spooked, and swam a U-turn back to safety where Sleyed pulled her out again.
He did that maybe 5 more times before she gained enough confidence to JUMP in.
After that it was all over - the NEWFyness took over!
Before we knew it she was jumping in, retrieving the frisbees, and trying to race the retrievers to the toys.
She's a smooth swimmer - very graceful and obviously STRONG.
She's fairly maneuverable too, but the labs definitely had her beat for speed in the water. She's a B-52 bomber and they were the MIGs.
The photographer from our newspaper was there to capture her Newfyness. He got a great dive - the classic limbs fully extended belly flop into the water. So gorgeous!
At one point she posed for him - stood right in front of his camera with her mouth and jowls full of frisbee. She held the pose for several seconds. What a ham.
Here she is hamming it up for me.
I definitely love the Newf.
What?! We have to go home? Just 1 more dive, PLEASE!!!!
Oh fine - I guess we can go home now. (She got a CHEESEBURGER)
NO say some researchers who have tested toddlers and nonhuman apes in the same cognitive tests - such as indicating which container has more raisins in it or retrieving food hidden inside a box. Other researchers say YES, human two year olds are more able to infer the action of another and to use imitation to solve problems.
I haven't read the studies, both published recently in Science, but they sound like the usual findings: One group finds evidence that apes can solve problems by watching someone solve a problem; another groups finds no evidence for it.
So what gives?
I'm always a little suspicious of these experiments for two main reasons.
On one hand is the issue of the nonhuman participants. How old are they? Apes show progressive cognitive development like humans (and for that matter other animals) do, and the apes mature a bit slower. Often the researchers compare the performance of adult great apes to human toddlers. When researchers don't find evidence that tots and apes can solve the same problems, sometimes it is because the two species are not at the same developmental stage.
On the other hand, sometimes researchers test apes who have not grown up in an enriched, human enculturated world. Of course apes can't solve the problems tots can solve if they haven't been exposed daily to the problems and especially the tools and materials of human culture. I suspect this is the reason the researcher mentioned in the press release didn't find that apes could solve the imitation problem. They used apes housed in wildlife sanctuaries in Uganda, Congo, and Indonesia who probably did not spend their early developmental years surrounded by human culture.
I can see why they would conduct these cognition tests (largely of social learning/imitation) with relatively naive apes. If it turns out the naive apes learn by imitation then we'd be able to infer that imitation is something innate to apes, not uniquely human, and that it probably evolved long before apes diverged into the species present now.
A similar sort of experimentation is going on now with dogs and wolves with regard to understanding gesture. Dogs, and puppies, can quickly learn to read human gestures but can wolves? If wolves can't respond correctly to human gestures, such as going to the location of hidden food, then we can infer dogs evolved the ability to read human gesture. It also might mean humans have selectively bred dogs to be responsive to human nonverbal communication.
We'll never know whether wolves and nonhuman apes' cognitive performance is matter of nature or nurture or both unless they are raised in human homes like puppies and babies are.
I'm assisting the local newspaper with a study they are doing on what community amenities (new high school, city pool, traffic control, new police station, etc) taxpayers might be likely to approve in the future. It's a special series on the cost of community development.
I've been roped into putting up the online version of the study. They are not paying me for my time and expertise. I've done more than just format the online stuff; I've also served as a sounding board/consultant for the logistics of doing research, how to best answer the questions they have, and I imagine when the time comes, the data analysis. Instead, they are allowing me to direct participants to my own research when they finish the online portion of the study. If I manage to get 200 participants (essentially for free) through this route, I'll consider it a success and a fair deal. I really should be compensated monetarily, I think. For certain, if I am asked to do data analysis it won't be for free.
So, I whipped together a brand new study - the next in line for my "research program" on the subject of my dissertation. It's exciting to have another study going live. With any luck I'll find another piece of evidence for my theory, and if not, then I'll have a reason to keep working on the area. In any case, I need to find a subsidiary line of research on a new or related topic on nonverbal behavior.
I'll ask you, dear readers, what questions do you have about nonverbal behavior or body language?
Pale skin once signaled wealth. It implied that person didn't work long hours outside engaged in manual labor. While that may still be true in some parts of the world, in the United States tanned skin has come to signal what pale skin once did. A person with tanned skin signals they have the wealth and leisure to travel to sunnier locales, especially during winter.
Weight and wealth go hand in hand too.
But whereas in other parts of the world poverty is associated with an emaciated physique, in the United States it's the opposite. Poor people are fat. That's not just a gut instinct captured for political commentary in a cartoon like the one above - it's born out in the data.
A new study published in the journal Social Science and Medicine found that where one lives is a better predictor of obesity than income or education. The study used telephone interviews of 8,000 people living in the Seattle metro area. "Obesity rates reached 30 percent in the most deprived areas but were only around 5 percent in the most affluent ZIP codes" according the press release of the study.
Why is obesity related to poverty? The author of the press release implies it might be linked to access to healthy foods or opportunities for exercise; i.e. impoverished neighborhoods don't have a Whole Foods down on the corner or tennis courts, walking trails, or pools. Maybe that's part of the problem. Dependence on fast foods, prepared packaged processed foods and soda pop might be another BIG culprit. Apparently the vast majority of people who drink soda drink the fully leaded kind, and with an average of 2 a day, the calories can add up fast. Perhaps soda is the problem. It certainly costs a lot less than milk. Perhaps people working multiple low paying jobs don't have the time to prepare food at home and instead fall back on what's easy and cheap.
What do you think - - Why is obesity linked to property value?
This morning I touched up the watercolor I did of the mediterranean street. I lightened the color which I think brightens the entire scene up considerably. I also got rid of two dog hairs (thanks Katy!) and fixed some of the bleed overs in the purple stone wall and the brown tower.
What a difference, eh?
You can't really see where I've touch up the bleed over, but you can in the larger versions.
I've penciled out the lines for my next watercolor - a Newfy surfing out to rescue someone. Attached to her leg by a rope is a lifesaver ring that trails behind in the wave. It's very cartoony and will have bright colors.
And I am fortunate to find someone who can be a mentor for me in my apps to TT (tenure track) positions at SLACs (small liberal arts colleges). She's agreed to look over my teaching and research statements to help me improve them. I only wish there were more openings! So far I've only seen one that I am excited about. It's at a top ranked small liberal arts college in MN.
Yesterday I made a sock monkey gorilla while Sleyed sleyed the loom, or maybe he was warping it. In any case, he was in his studio while I was in mine. I started off making a camel sock monkey using one of Katy Newfy's toys as inspiration. Her toy is a Lamiedoodle. I'd take a photo of her camel lamie, but she's slobbered all over it making it look less than photogenic. You can get the idea from this photo I found by googling images of a new one.
So, I set off to sewing. I made the body and limbs first and sewed a little stub of a tail on. When I made the head I realized it was the absolute perfect shape for a gorilla, so the camel, which had a tail, became a gorilla mid way through the project.
Then I sewed on the nose, which I had in reserve from playing around with fabric earlier, so I spose since I had the primate nose already and didn't really feel like making a camel nose to fit on a gorilla's head that it was easy to just turn the little guy into a gorilla. What to do about that tail though??? Monkeys have tails; apes don't! I don't know how many times I have told students that and here I am making an anatomically incorrect gorilla!
When I sewed the ears on I screwed up big time. I made the cut in the wrong place, sewed the ear on in the wrong spot, stepped back and looked - totally asymmetrical in a seriously unappealing way. Her face was also smooshed on one side. Not cute. Well, I suppose if you don't mind that your sock monkey looks like she needs cosmetic surgery or was in some horrific motorcycle accident, I suppose she was cute.
I decided to cut the ear out and reattach it elsewhere. When I did I had to sew up the hole. Her face became even more catawampus. The ear eventually got on in a decent spot, but the poor little 'rilla ended up with a mooshed face on one side. I think she's still pretty cute. She's got some flaws, but hey "imperfections" in this lovingly handmade toy are a testament to her character!
I'm a papermaker, a newspaper editor, and have a PhD in primate social psychology — I guess you could say I am a paper expert! Toddler Field Notes and her two canine companions — both Newfoundlands — make frequent appearances here.
Through etsy I made a contact with a woman who lives in Morocco who will be buying me some tiny silver charms in the shape of hands of fatima (also know as hamsa). The hand of fatima is a folk symbol used by both Jews and Muslims throughout the Middle East and North Africa to thwart the evil eye. It protects one from the envy of others.
I am in love with this symbol, not because of its alleged power, but because of the multitude ways it is artfully rendered. Sometimes the hand can been seen on the arched doors of houses. I have three hands of fatima that I bargained hard for in the medinas of Tunisia. Well, one was actually negotiated on a beach in Mahdia, but that's beside the point.
If I could be anywhere in the world today, I'd be with my honey in Tunisia.
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