Category: Berkeley

Pointing to the Bacon.

“The chimps did badly, able to learn the meaning of a pointed finger only after lots of training. The apparent explanation for these results was that pointing — and the social smarts behind it — required a humans-only level of intelligence and evolved in our ancestors only after they branched off from the ancestors of chimpanzees some 7 million years ago. When Tomasello suggested this idea to Hare, however, Hare demurred. ‘I said, “Um, Mike, I think my dogs can do that.”‘”

TIME’s Carl Zimmer “probes “the secrets inside your dog’s mind.” And what he finds is much like the articles here and here. Like babies, dogs (including Berk) understand pointing because it was evolutionarily advantageous for their ancestors to comprehend our behavior. Put another way, the dogs that watched us verrry carefully in the scavenger days, and ingratiated themselves accordingly, were the ones that often fared better than their more feral (and unobservant) friends.

Back on the Grid.

So, after a deep-end immersion into the Capitol Hill throng (as you might expect, it’s been busy ’round these parts, particularly by grad student standards) and a slow but steady establishing of a new home base here in the Beltway (I’ve secured a dog-friendly 1BR apartment in downtown Dupont, done 99.44% of the unpacking, acclimated the sheltie, and made the requisite investment in Swedish modular infrastructure — hat-tip, IKEA), I think I’m about at the point where I can officially log back on the grid.

All of which is to say, tho’ I’m jumping the gun by a day here — the Comcast guys come tomorrow to wire the new pad, which should greatly facilitate posting — I expect normal updates at GitM should now resume. Hey y’all, good to be back.

Also, speaking of “the grid,” — and since I’m playing catch-up below with the big stories that have occurred over the past twenty days — I’d be remiss if I didn’t include — the Lebowskitron. So now you’re, uh, privy to the new s**t. (And I should get back to the remarks for the Little Lebowski Urban Achievers…)Update: Actually, it was all lies. Not back on the grid yet — hopefully next weekend. Comcast — a company which [a] all DC residents are basically captive to in terms of cable and [b] has notoriously terrible customer service — couldn’t set up my Internet over the weekend because my TV hasn’t arrived yet. (Nor, obviously, could they set up the cable box so that I could just plug-and-play when said TV arrives. That would be way too convenient.)

So, since the Comcast powers-that-be have posited the existence of a deep and unbreakable connection between having a screen to show a TV signal and the Internets, another week of relative quiet, I suspect. But back soon.

Pets versus Bots.

“Sympathetic owners sometimes just retire their new purchases. In other cases, the pets take matters into their own paws. Peter Haney, a university administrator in Lethbridge, Alberta, twice found his Roomba in pieces after letting it clean while his flat-coated retrievers, Macleod and Tima, had the run of the house. ‘No one is talking,’ he says.” They’re only trying to save us from our future cybernetic overlords…From the bookmarks and by way of a friend, the WSJ broaches the thorny issue of the canine-robot divide. As I noted earlier, the Battle for 122nd St., 5D went to Berkeley, whose fearsome arsenal of dog hair apparently convinced my Roomba to give up hope.

Outside, it’s America.

Hello all. After a long week of moving, cleaning, filling up a nearby storage unit, and unpacking the mobile dissertation office, Berk and I are back on the grid: He’s acclimatizing (again) to my parents’ house, and I’m acclimatizing (again) to the strange and seemingly unsustainable environment that is late-stage car culture. In order to procure a bag of dog food, we drove along the highway for two exits, pulled into one of an endless sea of strip-malls with parking lots the size of Morningside Park, and entered a super-air-conditioned palace, brimming over with a cornucopia of All Things Pet-Related. Now, I understand this is highly normal, but it seemed really bizarre at the time. Hey, it’s been awhile.

At any rate, the move out of New York is complete. And, notwithstanding a few more occasional moments of in-transition disorientation, I expect my southern roots will soon reassert themselves (particularly after several more visits to Chick-Fil-A, Cracker Barrel, and the like.)

Prime the FTLs. | Dog Hearts Robot.

“When someone from the audience asked Mary McDonnell, who plays President Roslin, if Barack Obama had approached her to be his running mate, she replied that Hillary had. At which point Douglas quipped: ‘Hillary’s the final cylon.’ Badabum!” The promotional campaign for BSG Season 4 gets rolled out of drydock, including a stop on Letterman’s Top 10. [Text.] Not great, frankly, but it’s redeemed by #5, #1, and the World’s Most Dangerous Band’s mean version of “All along the Watchtower.” If you’re not caught up, Season 3 came out last Tuesday. If you are, Season 4 premieres Friday, April 4.

By the way, the first link is via High Industrial, who’s also recently linked to this great dog-cylon friendship, one considerably more symbiotic than Berk and the now defunct Roomba. (It apparently got distressed by all the dog hair and up and pulled a Marvin. Now it just sits there “recharging” and won’t vacuum a frakking thing.)

Eight for the Sheltie.

So I surreptitiously received some very interesting photos from the Clinton campaign this morning…

Yep, Berkeley, GitM’s resident ombudsdog and Sheltie-American, turned eight today. [3, 4, 5, 6, 7.] As you can see, he finds all the dissermatating a bit of a drag sometimes, but otherwise is his normal spastic self, particularly with other dogs, squirrels, and/or Evil afoot.

Babel Bark.

Blah Blah Blah Berkeley…Scientists in Hungary have apparently developed a computer program that speaks basic canine. “After analyzing digital versions of the barks, overall the computer program correctly identified the kinds of barks the dogs made 43 percent of the time — about the same as humans’ 40 percent…The software identified ‘walk’ and ‘ball’ barks better than people, although people identified ‘play’ and ‘alone’ barks better than the software.“

Hmm. I don’t want to dismiss the advance of science, but that’s a pretty low success rate. (And I’d wager most dog owners can get the thread of their own pet’s barking more often than 40% of the time.) More interestingly, though, “‘I’m pretty sure this could work with any animal vocal signals,’ Molnár told LiveScience” So, when the Dolphin Wars start, you’ll know why.

Which reminds me, longtime readers may remember that Berk and I were part of the test group for the American release of the Bowlingual. Alas, that version of this technology wasn’t really ready for primetime.