Dogs are animals of integrity. We have much to learn from them.
Author: Paul Handover
Health warning. If aircraft and flying don’t give you a buzz then give this post a miss!
There’s a Forum in the UK that is subscribed to mainly by private pilots but also has a decent share of members from all walks of aviation including pro pilots and Air Traffic Controllers. Love of iconic events in flying is often talked about.
Recently there has been a thread about the last flights of the Concorde including links to radio calls between aircraft and London Controllers.
By Paul Handover
This may be Part 2 of an unending series! It simply beggars belief that no one in Government (I bundle at least the US and UK Governments together, in this regard) appears to have sufficient trust in their peoples to acknowledge the very significant risk of much worse to come.
Nouriel Roubini (aka Dr Doom) has just published a convicing argument that Mounting Job Losses Will Hurt Consumption, Housing, Banks’ Balance Sheets, Public Finances and Lead to Protectionist Pressures
Here’s just a small extract from the article:
If you include partially employed workers and discouraged workers who left the U.S. labor force, for example, the unemployment rate is already 16.5%
(Not sure if the above link can be accessed if one is not a (free) subscriber to RGE Monitor’s regular updates so the full article is included at the end of this post.)
But it’s the same old, same old. Politicians don’t understand the huge damage that is being done to democracy by an apalling lack of political integrity.
Probably one of the highlights in my life was watching the Apollo 11 flight to the moon and back. I took a week off from my job at ICI in Sydney, rented a TV and hardly slept during the whole event.
For those who shared those feelings of excitement as man reached out beyond his home planet, NASA has some wonderful archives including the Apollo 11 audio in real time.
America and mankind at its best.
By Paul Handover
I refer to the English sense of humour. There seems to be nothing like it from any other part of the world.
The roll call of British comedians is long and glorious but some of the strangest humour (from a non-English perspective) is typified by Monty Python and David Adams, the latter writing The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
From which very funny book comes the following quote,
There is an art to flying, or rather a knack. Its knack lies in learning to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, that provides the difficulties.
By Paul Handover
There are many commentators out there who are doing a great job in challenging the drivel that is being put out by governments. There is Simon Johnson and James Kwak of The Baseline Scenario, two very expert guys albeit with a tendency to be a little too technical for the masses.
And then there is Karl Denninger who Blogs as Market Ticker. He is blunt and brave, clear and courageous. His latest video is typical of the man.
It’s the reason that there are links to both sites on this Blog.
By Paul Handover
Even after being a private pilot since 1981, aviation still gives me a huge thrill. How about this, courtesy of the Daily Mail newspaper in England.
By Paul Handover
It’s very fashionable to attack politicians for showing a lack of integrity. Or is it the whole political apparatus? But slowly over the years, as more and more water flows under the bridge, it’s becoming more difficult to come to any other conclusion than that politics is corrupt, dysfunctional (in terms of societal needs) and motivated by the need to gain and maintain power.
Is there any evidence to the contrary? It would be great to see it.
It all seems a very long way from:
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
By Paul Handover
Integrity is the parent of Trust and having friends that you trust is one of life’s great riches. (Indeed, isn’t a friend, by definition, someone you trust?) Anyway, nearly 30 years ago I met this great Californian, Dan G., at a dealer meeting being held by Commodore Business Machines in New Jersey where their headquarters used to be. I was giving a sales pitch extolling the virtues of my word processing program that Commodore had agreed to market through their dealer network. I used the word “‘fortnight” which every good Englishman will know means two weeks. Dan interrupted me by calling out, “Hey Handover, what’s a fortnight?” The rest of the talk seemed to descend into a very funny expose of all the differences between our two versions of the English language. George Bernard Shaw is attributed as describing the Americans and the English as ‘two nations divided by a common language‘ which seems to me a very apt observation.
Anyway, this is a complete digression to the point of this posting. In my email box this morning is a most beautiful description of Dan coming across Bighorn Sheep. I can do no better than to reproduce it in full.
Much too late to make me realise the inadequacies of my own parenting skills, I learnt an important lesson when training my GSD (who is called Pharaoh, by the way). That is that putting more emphasis into praise and reward for getting it right ‘trains’ the dog much quicker than telling it off. The classic example is scolding a dog for running off when it should be lots of hugs and praise for returning home. The scolding simply teaches the dog that returning home isn’t pleasant whereas praise reinforces that home is the place to be. Like so many things in life, very obvious once understood!
Absolutely certain that it works with youngsters just the same way.
Despite being a very dominant dog, Pharaoh showed his teaching ability when working with other dogs. In the UK there is an amazing woman, Angela Stockdale, who has proved that dogs (and horses) learn most effectively when being taught by other dogs (and horses). Pharaoh was revealed to be a Beta Dog, (i.e. second in status below the Alpha Dog) and, therefore, was able to use his natural pack instinct to teach puppy dogs their social skills and to break up squabbles within a pack.
When you think about it, don’t kids learn much more (often to our chagrin!) from other kids than they do from their parents. Still focusing on giving more praise than punishment seems like a much more effective strategy.
As was read somewhere, Catch them in the act of doing Right!
By Paul Handover.
Learning from Dogs 