Sentences (#2)
From a fascinating dining companion, rather than a literary source. The Gothic potential is self-evident.
“There are many ways to stress a rat — but the easiest way is to inject it with stress hormones.”
Bonus data-burst from the same expert: According to all the rigorous cognitive tests neuroscientists are currently able to apply, crows are as intelligent as chimpanzees. (Yes, it seems preposterous, which is what makes it worth mentioning. No, I haven’t done any back-up online research yet.)
Source? For science.
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Posted on December 19th, 2014 at 2:19 pm | QuoteThe crow thing is legit at first glance:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2590046/Crows-intelligent-CHILDREN-Study-reveals-birds-intelligence-seven-year-old.html
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Posted on December 19th, 2014 at 2:23 pm | QuoteI’ve watched crows troll my dogs. It’s was quite entertaining.
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Posted on December 19th, 2014 at 3:00 pm | QuoteSome may recall Irene Pepperberg’s cognitive experiments with Alex the Congo African grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus). Not a goth but amazingly intelligent nevertheless, haha.
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Posted on December 19th, 2014 at 3:29 pm | QuoteWe necessarily express our conscious attitudes with facial expressions and hand-gestures. Crows have neither faces nor hands. Therefore, their “intelligence,” whatever it amounts to, cannot be the sort of thing that we ordinarily mean when we use the word. If they were a bit more “intelligent” in their own ghastly crow way, we’d have to seriously consider exterminating them.
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Lesser Bull Reply:
December 19th, 2014 at 3:46 pm
If we are able to. Crows are darn hard to eradicate. At my dad’s orchard, the distance the crows keep from you is nicely calibrated to what you have in your hand. They even seem to be able to tell apart flimsier, less substantial pellet guns from heftier shotguns.
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Michael Reply:
December 20th, 2014 at 3:52 am
not only do crows figure out how to fill a beaker with stones to bring the water level up for a drink but will figure out the most efficient of several methods they make and use tools work in groups through communication we dont yet understand they are a fascinating species i wouldn’t scoff with out investigating. theres videos that will blow you away .
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Nyan Sandwich Reply:
December 21st, 2014 at 7:38 am
Let me guess, you’re in the social sciences?
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Lucian Reply:
December 21st, 2014 at 7:41 am
I bet 50 Cthulhucoins it’s analytic philosophy.
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@Stirner (@heresiologist)
This is the study that Daily Mail article references. Looks legit enough to me, and PLOS One is a very good journal. (It doesn’t have the brand-name recognition of Nature, Science, or Cell, but, in my own opinion, it’s better-run and its peer review system is superior.)
…As for the rats, I’m not convinced. I find that everything stresses rats out. Picking them up to give them an injection would stress them almost as much as the injection itself. It’s pretty easy to tell when they’re stressed, too: That’s when they like to move next to, or behind, large objects.
On a slightly different note, I think that it would be difficult to mimic the immediacy, complexity, and duration of the endogenous stress response with a couple of chemicals injected intraperitoneally. For one thing, it’s next to impossible to give an active rat an intravenous injection, and I think that the kinetics of an i.p. injection would be way off.
It can be surprisingly difficult to run rat experiments properly. Feynman mentioned this towards the end of his “Cargo Cult Science” piece. Young’s careful experiments were highly praised — and Young’s successors, who weren’t as careful and circumspect, are held as “characteristic examples” of cargo cult scientists.
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Posted on December 19th, 2014 at 4:20 pm | QuoteDuring the summer months it is not uncommon to have a murder of crows hanging out in my neighborhood. I sometimes have to listen closely to what I’m hearing because their vocalizations are so varied as to almost sound human. I wonder if they’re talking about me?
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Posted on December 19th, 2014 at 5:10 pm | Quote@jgarveyrose, after a good dose of lysergic acid diethylamide you’ll be able to resolve their vocalizations; you’ll know they’re talking about you.
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Posted on December 19th, 2014 at 5:43 pm | Quote[…] Source: Outside In […]
Posted on December 19th, 2014 at 7:03 pm | QuoteCan’t we do some-sentence-else now? Why aren’t you (ostensibly) interested in only method? Plenty of people who would work with you on that front….
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Posted on December 20th, 2014 at 1:03 am | QuotePerhaps we should start a crow eugenics program through kickstarter. They apparently already have the brain power of a seven year old, so if we increase their brainpower by the equivalent of a few human years they can operate cash registers. At that point I imagine Wallmart and various other stores would be interested in investing in bioengineering crows to be even more intelligent and conscientious, and in developing crow-tailored nootropics.
By the time the hippies manage to get enough backing, caused by growing ressentment triggered by widespread crow-induced unemployment, to punch through the legal machine of these corporate giants the emergence of Crowthulhu would be inevitable.
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Lord Auch Reply:
December 20th, 2014 at 11:15 am
Crowthulhu? What a hoot!
The comedian Adam Carolla has been advocating attack crow battalions for well-nigh on 20 years. If you google for the Loveline video with the relevant terms, it’s quite funny and – possibly – predictive.
Oh yeah, I went to Sapporo a couple of years ago and they’ve got aggressive crows there the size of fattened tom cats … Or maybe they were ravens? Woody Allen wishes he knew how to spell Connecticut, I wish I knew the difference between a crow and a raven.
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Harold Reply:
December 20th, 2014 at 11:55 pm
http://www.isegoria.net/2014/10/caw-vs-croak/
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Peter A. Taylor Reply:
December 20th, 2014 at 8:02 pm
It’s scandalous that crows don’t have the right to vote.
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Alrenous Reply:
December 22nd, 2014 at 9:47 am
Simple crow-powered anti-littering machines already exist. They did something like pay the crow in seeds for delivering bottle caps or cans or something. Worked great, but the Man vs. Nature narrative is so deeply sunk that cooperating with Nature is all but impossible for the West.
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nydwracu Reply:
December 23rd, 2014 at 12:22 am
http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1hb77n/til_that_crows_remember_the_faces_of_dangerous/cau1jgs
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