Learning from Dogs

Important lessons from former East Germans.

Have you ever noticed how the most ardent supporters of capitalism and free markets are those who’ve experienced a world without them?

How those who speak out most poignantly against health care reform in the U.S. are those who’ve experienced nationalized health care?  No?

Angela Merkel

If you can, then, take a moment and think back to the coverage, the news, the sound bites.  Take a look, perhaps a second look, behind the headlines and I venture that you will find endless examples of this phenomenon.    It is those who have done without freedom of choice, free markets, and self-determination who treasure it most, who most understand its value, who’ve lived with the consequences of its absence.

We need look no further than Chancellor Angela Merkel and her recent victory in Germany’s national election.

Chancellor Merkel grew up in communist East Germany and is now leading Germany out of recession with tax cuts and reduced government spending.

We should be listening to what the world is telling us.  Very hard, and very quickly.  We don’t want to have to lose it before we appreciate what we have.

By Sherry Jarrell

How clear, crisp September days echo 1940.

I was born in London some 6 months before the end of World War II.  The echoes of that tragic event in human history rang around the torn roadways and ripped buildings of London for many years, certainly for sufficiently long that I was able to remember as a young boy, away on his bicycle, the bomb sites and and the gaps where once buildings had stood.

Sometimes, when the September weather is as it was during the Battle of Britain, it’s almost as though those echoes can still be faintly heard.  Maybe all Londoners over a certain age hear them?

Read more about September days

There are cars, fast cars, extremely fast cars and the Bloodhound SSC.

Thanks to a thread on Flyer Forums for this.

Richard Noble of Thrust SSC fame is at it again.  This time fitting a ‘car’ with the engine from the Eurojet Typhoon fighter.  The ambition is to break the 1,000 mph hour mark and up the land speed record set by Thrust SSC by more than 30%.  Thrust SSC set the world land speed record in 1997 at the astounding speed of 763.035 mph (1221 km/h) or Mach 1.02.

More details about the project may be read here.

One aspect of the engine caught my eye,

In the middle of the BLOODHOUND SSC is the MCT V12 800 bhp race engine which doubles as our APU delivering hydraulic power as needed, starting the EJ200 and of course pumping the High Test Peroxide (HTP) through to the Falcon rocket. The pump has to move a ton of HTP through to the rocket catalyst in 22 seconds and at 1200 psi.

As someone said on the Flyer Forums, “So they’re not going for maximum mpg then…“

By Paul Handover

Expansion or replacement of the traditional book?

My guess is that most people still value the convenience and sheer pleasure of holding and reading a traditional paper book.  It is difficult to think of a more pleasurable activity than browsing the shelves of a book-store or library.  But the eBook also is carving out a valuable niche, it appears.

Thus it was a delight to come across a ‘store’ devoted to eBooks.  Based in Paris, that virtual store is called Mobipocket.  New to me but, perhaps, not to many others (I can sometimes be a little behind the new technology drag-curve!)

Nevertheless, a veritable labyrinth of virtual book shelves with prices often well below print prices.  Here’s the WikiPedia background.

By Paul Handover (who has no commercial interest in promoting Mobipocket, not even a cent is earnt if you click through.)

When the original Post on Barnstorming was published on this Blog on September, 18th, we had an enormous response from viewers and the Post had one of the highest ever figures.

Anyway, the producers have just announced,

Announcing the Houston Premier of Barnstorming October 17! We will be screening the film at the 1940 Air Terminal Museum, Hobby Airport, Houston, Texas. Showtimes are 11:00 am and for the fundraising “Hobby Hangar Hop” in the evening. For more information visit the museum website!

Cool building, by the way.

Houston Air Museum

High speed military aircraft at low level – all in a day’s work.

Most private pilots love to watch the professionals at work, whether it’s in the cockpit of an airliner or fast military jets.

Does this not get the blood stirring?

Read more about fast jets!

Baseline Scenario publishes an interesting post and triggers a wise comment.

Regular readers of Learning from Dogs will know that we greatly admire the job done by Simon Johnson, James Kwak and others over at Baseline Scenario in debating this global economic crisis.

The comments that flow in are fascinating and often deeply educational.  Not surprising! Baseline Scenario has nearly 12,000 readers!  But many of them show the level of anger and frustration felt by so many.

Anyway, a Post published by them on September 24th reminded me that hope is so much a more profitable emotion than anger.  The Post starts like this,

Read more of this Post

The fragility of the economy shows in many areas.

Last Thursday, the mere hint of a fairly insignificant surplus in U.S. oil reserves pushed down current oil prices and energy-related futures and other speculative plays.

Oil prices have fallen sharply as weak US home sales data and high US oil inventories prompted doubts about a potential recovery in fuel demand. Source: BBC News, 24th September.

Can you imagine the reaction to an announcement of a new source of U.S. oil reserves?  Or of renewed off-shore drilling capacity?  Relaxed EPA standards? Additional refinery capacity?

Our energy prices would be cut in half and we’d be so much less likely to war with oil-rich nations on whom we now depend for the functioning of our economy and who, indirectly or not, limit our economic and personal freedoms.

By Sherry Jarrell

John Goodwin of HSUS teams up with an unlikely partner in the battle against dogfighting.

Thanks to Trish for pointing the Blog to this article in Yahoo Sports.  It concerns a surprising success.

Maybe it was one of the times John Goodwin found a more receptive audience while lobbying politicians

John Goodwin

for stricter sentencing against dogfighting.

Maybe it was one of the times a law enforcement training session was packed with police.

Maybe it was while he was riding along on what is an increasing number of raids on dogfighting operations.

Whenever it was, there was a moment over the past two years that Goodwin, the anti-dog fighting expert at the Humane Society of the United States, realized that of all the unexpected things, a silver lining had formed in the ugly clouds of the Michael Vick scandal.

Read the full article here.  More on John Goodwin here.

By Paul Handover

Fascinating research coming out of Duke University

This Post was stimulated by a link sent to me by Chris Snuggs, who will be joining the author’s team at Learning from Dogs in due course.

The link was to an article published in Time Magazine on September 21st and is available in their online version.

Brian Hare of Duke

The article is about the extraordinary social skills that have been developed by dogs over the millennia that they have been associated with man.  It featured Brain Hare (sort of seems an appropriate name!) Assistant Professor, Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke.

The article is also rather timely as only a few days ago, there was a Post on this Blog about the befriending of a man with a wild wolf, or was it the other way around!

Back to the Time magazine article,

“Understanding a pointed finger may seem easy, but consider this: while humans and canines can do it naturally, no other known species in the animal kingdom can. Consider too all the mental work that goes into figuring out what a pointed finger means: paying close attention to a person, recognizing that a gesture reflects a thought, that another animal can even have a thought.”

Read more about Dogs