The second set of photographs by Russian photographer Andy Seliverstoff.
The first set of these stunning photographs was last week. I shall repeat the background to the photographer that was also published a week ago.
Little Kids and Big Dogs
Andy Seliverstoff is a 58-year-old professional photographer from St. Petersburg, Russia. A few years ago some of Seliverstoff’s friends asked him to take photos of their daughter Alice in a park. They had their gigantic Great Dane, Sean, with them, so they decided to incorporate him into the photos. After seeing the results, he knew he was on to something special.
Seliverstoff did another shoot with a child featuring big dogs, and told BuzzFeed News that he was “deeply touched” by the work. That was four years ago and he’s been a dog photographer ever since.
The project has become his passion, which he chronicles in a book called “Little Kids and Their Big Dogs.“
All of the photos are taken in St. Petersburg. Its extensive parks and colder climate help create some spectacular shots.
Seliverstoff said the goal of the series wasn’t just to create beautiful pictures, but to capture the interaction between the children and the animals.
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Beautiful almost beyond words! These were sent to me by Dordie from next door. Dearest Dordie has sent me another set of stunningly magical photographs that I will be sharing with you from next Sunday for a few weeks.
As I have frequently mentioned, I so enjoy having guest posts being sent to me.
They give you, dear reader, a break from yours truly and so very often they offer a new and interesting perspective on dogs, on us, and on the world.
This week there are three guest posts, in various guises, lined up and, who knows, there may be a couple more heading in.
But to the first of those guest posts.
Well, technically, more of a reposting today than a pure guest post. That reposting is of a most fascinating post published by Patrice Ayme on the 25th. January. It was called WE ARE MATHEMATICS. But there were parts of Patrice’s post that I struggled with so I am offering it to you with a rather long introduction.
I hope you enjoy it.
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Smack!
The sound of an object falling to the floor of the shower, suddenly and without warning, nearly caused me to jump out of my skin.
I was washing my hair and had my eyelids tightly closed lest the shampoo suds got into my eyes. Inadvertently, I had felt my right elbow dislodge something from the top of the small corner shelf that held the bar of soap and the bottle of hair shampoo.
I let the flowing warm shower water rinse the suds from my face, opened my eyes and looked down. The object that had made such a sudden, loud noise was a plastic brush maybe three or four inches long. It had fallen to the wet shower floor some five feet below the corner shelf where the brush normally lived.
As I stared down at the brush, the warm water cascading comfortably down my body, I reflected that in the space of a fraction of a second my mind had computed the distance that the unknown object had fallen and offered me a sense of the speed it must have been traveling when it hit the floor.
Now don’t get me wrong! I didn’t come up with a precise answer to that question of how fast the brush was going but in that moment of thought I sensed both the distance the brush had fallen, five feet; plus or minus, and the effect of gravity in accelerating that brush even over such a small distance. (Later I calculated the brush hit the shower base going at around 10 fps.)
Now it would have never occurred to me that my brain was capable of almost instantaneous calculations, as in mathematical calculations, if I hadn’t read in the previous twenty-four hours a recent essay from Patrice Ayme. An essay that convinced me completely that, in Patrice’s words:
The world is not as astonishingly understandable, as Einstein would have it. Neuronal grid cell studies show that we are the world. Understanding the world is understanding ourselves.
The world is not just written in mathematical language, as Galileo found out. We are made mathematically. We think mathematically, because we are made of math. We are mathematics.
Patrice had opened my eyes, more accurately opened my mind, to something that was then immediately clear to me and will be to you, dear reader: Our brains have an intuitive and instinctive sense of space. Not space in some abstract sense of the term but space in the sense of spatial awareness.
Think how easily, how quickly, you understand distance. Whether it is a measure of distance in your own home or assessing how far away that bird is flying towards and setting down on a high branch of a tall pine tree.
Think how even with our eyes closed we can navigate around a familiar part of our lives. Think how the sailors of ancient times (and trust me not so ancient times) used ‘Dead Reckoning’ (DR) to navigate safely and securely across vast oceans.
Our brains could only do this if they were computing these spatial assessments mathematically.
OK, that’s enough from me. Here’s that essay from Patrice.
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WE ARE MATHEMATICS
Mathematically Built Brain: The Example of Grid Cells, Incarnating Algebraic Geometry.
Understanding how the cognitive functions of the brain arise from its basic physiological components has been the final frontier in logic and rational science for thousands of years. (As I tried to explain yesterday, the superstitious religious fanatics tried their best to bury all of science, and the scientific mindset, the essence of humanity; they nearly succeeded!)
The 2014 Nobel was given to John O’Keefe (a “half”!), the rest jointly to May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser “for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain.” I will develop here the philosophical viewpoint, which is broader (O’Keefe’s career was steered by the influence of Hebb, the famous psychologist, who got the idea of the outside patterns imprinting the neurocircuitry of the brain).
Here is Hebb: “Let us assume that the persistence or repetition of a reverberatory activity (or “trace”) tends to induce lasting cellular changes that add to its stability.[…] When an axon of cell A is near enough to excite a cell B and repeatedly or persistently takes part in firing it, some growth process or metabolic change takes place in one or both cells such that A’s efficiency, as one of the cells firing B, is increased.”
Well it turns out that evolution has had even more imagination than that. I will even propose Patrice’s Neural Theory, a vast generalization.
Galileo famously said the language of nature was written in mathematics. It turns out that it is much more than that. Our brain is mathematically organized. What Descartes consciously discovered, a coordinate frame in which to set-up calculus, is automatically generated in the brain. This is the meaning of grid cells.
Grid cells are neurons that fire when an animal moving of its own free will traverses a set of small regions (firing fields) which are roughly equal in size and arranged in a periodic triangular array that covers all of the available environment. They were discovered in 2005 by a couple (literally) of Norwegian researchers, the Mosers, and rewarded by the Nobel Prize in 2014 (shared with O’Keefe, from London, who invented the basic experimental technique, and discovered “place cells”)
Once set, navigation can be done in the dark, blinded. Scientists’ discovery that rodents, bats and nonhuman primates have a system in the brain for so-called “dead reckoning navigation”… “Dead reckoning” refers to the ability to navigate without external cues. The term comes from ship navigation. A crew will “take a sighting” via cues such as the stars or landmarks to determine where the ship is on a map. Then, when the ship moves, ‘dead reckons’ to update location on the map paying attention to speed and direction. The Greco-Romans already had such systems, with little paddled wheels counting the distance covered over the sea. It turns out that ‘dead reckoning’ is enabled by the grid cell system, inside the brain.
Recording Of Grid Cells Activity Inside Rat Brain (Jeffery Lab and others.)
“The importance of grid cells lies in the apparently minor detail that the patches of firing (called ‘firing fields’) produced by the cells are evenly spaced. That this makes a pretty pattern is nice, but not so important in itself – what is startling is that the cell somehow ‘knows’ how far (say) 30 cm is – it must do, or it wouldn’t be able to fire in correctly spaced places. This even spacing of firing fields is something that couldn’t possibly have arisen from building up a web of stimulus associations over the life of the animal, because 30 cm (or whatever) isn’t an intrinsic property of most environments, and therefore can’t come through the senses – it must come from inside the rat, through some distance-measuring capability such as counting footsteps, or measuring the speed with which the world flows past the senses. In other words, metric information is inherent in the brain, wired into the grid cells as it were, regardless of its prior experience. This was a surprising and dramatic discovery. Studies of other animals, including humans, have revealed place, head direction and grid cells in these species too, so this seems to be a general (and thus important) phenomenon and not just a strange quirk of the lab rat.”
We should have looked for Plato’s cave. It turned out that this cave has been built, is being built inside our heads all along! This cave is built-in two ways: automatically (grid cells) and as a response to the environment, by.us, from the outside, from the environment, in.
(So it matters what our brain experienced before to mold afterwards what comes in anew from the outside! No experience is a neutral experience!)
That cave is both a topology (what’s near and what’s not, the logic of place), and a basic geometry (the grid and its grid cells). To have a grid built automatically is the equivalent of having a reference frame in mathematics. It makes sense if one wants to make mathematics!
And not just mathematics, but even Infinitesimal Calculus! It is indeed clear that animals such as dogs have a mastery of calculus: experiences have shown this, and anybody with a dog throwing a stick sideways in water will see the dog running along the shore a bit, and then jump in the water, so as to minimize the time to reach the stick, a typical calculus problem. Dogs can do calculus, because they can make algebraic geometry in their brains, having a reference frame made of these grid cells! (If they had no grid cells, they would not be able to do calculus.)
Thus Descartes rediscovered, consciously, something which had been found, evolved and calculated by evolution half a billion years ago (or more!). The reference frame, also known now as the neuronal grid cell system, is basic to all of mechanics, even Poincare’-Lorentz Relativity. (An open question: Quantum Physics uses even more general reference systems, Hilbert spaces; I will therefore predict that the brain has also that sort of organization!)
The world is not as astonishingly understandable, as Einstein would have it. Neuronal grid cell studies show that we are the world. Understanding the world is understanding ourselves.
The world is not just written in mathematical language, as Galileo found out. We are made mathematically. We think mathematically, because we are made of math. We are mathematics.
We are not just looking at shadows in a cave, as Plato would have it. And the cave was not given to us by the gods, as Socrates had it. We are the cave, we, and our personal history, built it.
Any new experience, idea or emotion, taught or experienced, is another brick in that wall of perception and analysis, we better consider it carefully, before indulging in it. Call that the Principle of Mental Precaution But that Principle extends also to what we chose NOT to experience, which can be just as bad, if not worse.
You are not just what you think. You mentally are what you were submitted to, and what you decided to submit to. Fate is written in mathematical patterns, one theorem made out of neurons, their axons, dendrites and supporting glial cells, at a time.
Such theorems are written with the physics of minds, just as sturdy as the physics of stars. Just as hopeful, just as ominous.
Plato thought mathematics were “forms”, out there, outside of the physical world. This is not what science is finding. There are not “forms” out there, and physics, nature, somewhere else. Our minds are literally made of math.
So here is my theory:
“Whatever exists in mathematics exists in the brain. And reciprocally.”
Patrice Ayme’
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I do so hope that this essay from Patrice fires you up as it did me. If it leaves you with questions, then offer them to me as a comment to this post and I will take it upon myself to have Patrice answer them.
Finally, did you pick up on the fact that it isn’t just our human brains that are mathematical organs, it applies to the brains of dogs as well!
Mathematics in action. (Photo courtesy of Pinterest)
First some background to the pictures that are presented both today and in a week’s time.
Little Kids and Big Dogs
Andy Seliverstoff is a 58-year-old professional photographer from St. Petersburg, Russia. A few years ago some of Seliverstoff’s friends asked him to take photos of their daughter Alice in a park. They had their gigantic Great Dane, Sean, with them, so they decided to incorporate him into the photos. After seeing the results, he knew he was on to something special.
Seliverstoff did another shoot with a child featuring big dogs, and told BuzzFeed News that he was “deeply touched” by the work. That was four years ago and he’s been a dog photographer ever since.
The project has become his passion, which he chronicles in a book called “Little Kids and Their Big Dogs.“
All of the photos are taken in St. Petersburg. Its extensive parks and colder climate help create some spectacular shots.
Seliverstoff said the goal of the series wasn’t just to create beautiful pictures, but to capture the interaction between the children and the animals.
We have a rather run-down ‘home’ for our chickens close to the house. It was run-down before the snow fell and almost brought down the surrounding wire fence.
But, hopefully, this coming Thursday sees a new walk-in run being constructed for our birds so they are better protected.
It’s time we started paying attention to chickens, one of the most misunderstood and ignored species on Earth.
There was a time when chickens were viewed as exotic, fascinating birds. Descendants of exotic Asian jungle fowl, they were revered for their ferocity and intelligence, and domesticated around 8,000 years ago, more for cockfighting than eating. But then, we humans began eating them in ever-larger quantities, until we reached the point where we are now, with 20 billion (mostly white) chickens living in dirty, crowded barns, awaiting slaughter.
Chickens have been a part of human lives for millennia, and yet they are one of the most misunderstood, if not ignored, species on Earth. Lori Marino, an American neuroscientist and animal intelligence researcher, wants to change this. She is intrigued by the fact that chickens are so rarely recognized for their cognitive abilities and frustrated that studies about birds almost always focus on other, less-domesticated species, like crows and parrots.
“Arguably even the scientific community has been influenced by public perceptions of chickens as cognitively simple… This asymmetry in the literature is likely a reflection of, as well as a contributor to, the disconnect scientists and the public have between chickens as commodities and who they actually are as individuals.”
Chickens deserve more attention, and here are some quirky, interesting facts to get you thinking about chickens less as food and more as fascinating co-inhabitants of our world. These come via Marino’s recent paper, “Thinking Chickens,” published online in Animal Cognition in January 2017.
1. Chickens are a sub-species of the red jungle fowl that hails from southeast Asia.
The red jungle fowl (galls gallus) inhabit the edges of fields, scrubland, and groves. Domestication was well established 8,000 years ago, but some records suggest it could have started as much as 58,000 years ago.
2. Domestic chickens are similar to their wild counterparts.
Despite the intense breeding and genetic manipulation of recent years, chickens have not been cognitively or behaviorally affected by domestication. This stands in contrast to dogs and wolves, for example, which have diverged significantly due to domestication. Nor have chickens become less aggressive toward predators through domestication, which is a common outcome; in fact, some chickens are more aggressive even than red jungle fowl.
3. A chicken’s beak is highly sensitive to touch.
The beak, with numerous nerve endings, is used to explore, detect, drink, preen, and defend. This also means that when a bird is de-beaked, as often happens in industrial farming, it experiences great pain, sometimes for months, which changes its behavior. Marino writes, “At the end of the beak is a specialized cluster of highly sensitive mechanoreceptors, called the bill tip organ, which allows chickens to make fine tactile discriminations.”
4. Chickens have finely tuned senses.
They can see long distance and close-up at the same time in different parts of their vision. They can see a broader range of colors than humans. They can hear at low and high frequencies at a variety of pressure levels. They possess well-developed senses of taste and smell. They can orient to magnetic fields, like many other birds.
5. Chickens are surprisingly good at math.
Three-day-old chicks are able to perform basic arithmetic and discriminate quantities, always opting to explore a set of balls with the greater number, even when an object was visibly transferred from one set to another. Five-day-old chicks have been found to track up to five objects.
“When they were presented with two sets of objects of different quantities disappearing behind two screens, they were able to successfully track which screen hid the larger number by apparently performing simple addition and subtraction.”
6. Chickens can exercise self-control.
In an experimental setting, chickens have been given the choice between 2-second delay with 6 seconds of access to food, versus a 6-second delay with 22-seconds of access to food. The hens waited for the longer reward, “demonstrating rational discrimination between different future outcomes while employing self-control to optimize those outcomes.” Self-control usually doesn’t appear in humans until four years of age.
These are just a few of the remarkable discoveries described in Marino’s study, a highly readable, entertaining paper. It’s an important reminder that chickens, arguably the most ubiquitous animals in our world, deserve far more respect than they currently receive. Hopefully this will lead to more people questioning the horrific conditions in which most of them are kept.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of looking for a humourous way to close today’s post. But a more responsible approach would be to repeat the words from the start of the article to serve as a reminder of trying, wherever possible, to think about the food we eat, especially when animals and birds have to be slaughtered to provide us with that food.
…. we reached the point where we are now, with 20 billion (mostly white) chickens living in dirty, crowded barns, awaiting slaughter.
But please don’t leave this page until you have watched the following video.
Published on Dec 3, 2014
After 22 years of raising chickens for Perdue, one brave factory farmer Craig Watts was at his breaking point and did something no one has done before. He invited us, as farm animal welfare advocates, to his farm to film and tell his story. Ask your supermarket for Better Chicken at http://better-chicken.org.
This post should be read in conjunction with the post that came out an hour ago: Dogs and Learning. It was first published on Learning from Dogs on March 19th, 2014.
Cleo
Cleo between guests Darla and Cody- picture taken yesterday (March 18th, 2014).
Where to start this story about Cleo?
I guess by going back to the days when I was living in the village of Harberton, near Totnes in South Devon, England. That means going back to 2003, the year when it seemed the right time for me to get a dog. (Jean and I first met in December, 2007) There was always only one breed to be considered; the German Shepherd dog.
Thus that desire for a German Shepherd led me to Sandra Tucker who lived not too many miles away who owned the GSD breeders Jutone. It was at Jutone where I saw the wonderful puppy dog who became my Pharaoh.
But Sandra did better than breed the dog that has meant more to me than words can ever describe, she gave me some fantastic advice. That being that when Pharaoh was getting on in life, then bring in a German Shepherd puppy. There were two solid reasons why this made sense. The first was that Pharaoh would teach the new puppy many of the skills and disciplines that Pharaoh had learnt as a young dog and, secondly, the puppy would keep Pharaoh active.
That puppy was Cleo.
First picture of what was to be our puppy – 4th April, 2012, just two days before we brought her home.
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Puppy Cleo coming home – April 6th, 2012
Cleo was born on the 23rd January, 2012. At that time we were still living down in Payson, Arizona. Right from the start she was, and still is, the most joyful, loving dog one could imagine. That top photograph shows in her eyes the openness of her heart and soul.
First meeting between Pharaoh and Cleo; April 7th, 2012.
So here we are coming rapidly up to the two-year anniversary (6th April, 2014) of when Cleo entered our lives.
Cleo continues to be the most loving, gentle, sweet German Shepherd.
However, as Sandra so correctly predicted, Pharaoh has ‘taught’ Cleo a number of commands such as Sit, Stay, Lie Down, Come, and more. Not a minute’s training of Cleo has come from Jean and me.
Cleo is very fond of Pharaoh and it’s obvious that Pharaoh gets a huge amount from having Cleo around him.
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Fast forward to now, as in January, 2017, and the relationship between Pharaoh and Cleo is still incredibly important. Cleo senses that Pharaoh is in the last ‘phase’ of his life but still shows him incredible respect.
Cleo is a very intuitive dog who appears at times to really understand what Jean and I are talking about, even when it has nothing to do with dogs. For instance, Cleo knows when I am finishing up my lunch and that the next thing that will follow is Jeannie and me taking the dogs out for their afternoon walk.
Cleo is almost certainly the most knowledgeable and obedient of all of our dogs and it’s all down to Pharaoh’s skills as a teaching dog.
Actually, some recent very interesting research on how puppies relate to the sounds of people around them.
A recent mailing under the SmartNews banner used by The Smithsonian Magazine seemed too good not to share with all you dog lovers.
Plus, our internet connection is not good at the moment so not going to dilly dally but go straight to the article that may be seen on the Smithsonian website here.
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Why Puppies Love Baby Talk
New research shows puppies respond strongly to high-pitched chatter, but most adult dogs could care less.
Anyone who has lived with a dog will find themselves occasionally cooing to their pup in slow-paced, high-pitched baby talk (OK, maybe most of the time). And a new study suggests that our canines respond to such dulcet tones—well, puppies do at least.
The study, published this week in the Proceedings of Royal Society B, shows that the baby-talk, also known as dog-directed speech, gets a big response from puppies. Older dogs, however, aren’t super impressed, reports Virginia Morell at Science.
The study’s researchers had 30 female volunteers look at photographs of dogs while reading standard dog-directed phrases, like “Who’s a good boy?” and “Hello cutie!” (they didn’t use real dogs to minimize the speakers going off script). The volunteers also read the doggie praise to a human. The researchers found that women used the higher-pitched, sing-song baby-talk tone when reading the passages to the photos, making their voices 21 percent higher when reading to the puppy images. With the human, they spoke in their normal voice.
That was more or less expected. But when the researchers played recordings of the women’s voices to ten puppies and ten adult dogs at a New York animal shelter, there was a stark difference. The puppies went wild when they heard the dog-directed voices. Morell reports they barked and ran toward the loudspeaker, crouching down in a pose used to start a round of horseplay. When researchers played the same phrases using the women’s normal tone of voice, the puppies weren’t nearly as enthused.
The adult dogs, however, were a different story. “They didn’t care at all,” Nicolas Mathevon, a bioacoustician at the University of Lyon in Saint-Étienne, France, and co-author of the study tells Morell. “They had a quick look at the speaker, and then ignored it.”
There’s no clear reason why the puppies reacted so strongly to the baby talk and the mature animals didn’t. It’s possible the higher-pitched tones stimulate a special response in the puppies. Mathevon tells Helen Briggs at the BBC that it may be related to a theory called the baby schema. In that hypothesis, humans evolved to find big eyes, big heads and round cheeks irresistibly cute. That helps parents bond with children, convincing them to spend the endless hours required to feed and tend to infants. Many of those cues are also found in baby animals.
But there may be more to the response. “One of the hypotheses was that we humans use this dog-directed speech because we are sensitive to the baby cues that come from the face of a small baby [animal] as we are sensitive to the faces of our babies,” he tells Briggs. “But actually our study demonstrates that we use pet-directed speech or infant-directed speech not only because of that but maybe we use this kind of speech pattern when we want to engage and interact with a non-speaking listener. Maybe this speaking strategy is used in any context when we feel that the listener may not fully master the language or has difficulty to understand us.”
Over time humans have bred dogs to be more baby-like, which only makes humans bond with them more, Evan Maclean, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Arizona not involved in the study tells Nicola Davis at The Guardian. “As a result of selection for juvenile traits, dogs emit a lot of signals that scream ‘baby’ to humans, which can facilitate special kinds of interactions with dogs that are normally reserved for children,” he says. “The question we don’t have a great answer to is whether there are long term functional consequences of interacting with dogs in this way (e.g. effects on word learning), or if this is just a byproduct of the baby-like cues that dogs inundate us with.”
So why did the older dogs just keep chewing their bones when they heard the strangers’ voices coming from the speaker? “[M]aybe older dogs do not react that way because they are just more choosy and they want only to react with a familiar person,” Mathevon tells Briggs.
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I think there’s more to this than the slightly light-hearted tone that came across in the article (well to my ears anyway!).
If you want to study the published proceedings from The Royal Society, referred to by Jason Daley in the second paragraph, then the paper is here:
Dog-directed speech: why do we use it and do dogs pay attention to it?
For those looking for answers to the crisis in liberal democracy, this may well be it.
In yesterday’s post Tensions abound in many societies I offered a viewpoint that the ‘left’ arguing with the ‘right’ in politics was utterly inappropriate. Simply for we, as in the people who live on this planet, have to start working together if we wish to have a future for mankind on Planet Earth.
Yesterday’s post also referred to Inductive and Deductive Reasoning with me proposing that the future had to be built on a universally acknowledged relationship between ’cause’ and ‘effect’. A relationship that was built on a clear axiom, or theorem; as we see all around us in both the physical and natural worlds.
This idea does take a little time to filter through and I would be the first to say that I had to spend quite a while reflecting on the idea to fully understand the difference, the power, of deductive reasoning. Plus how something that was a behaviourial ‘law’ could be seen as much as an axiom as is, for example, the calculation of the speed of light, or the relationship of gravity to mass.
His thesis is that there is a direct relationship between “… about how well dispersed economic decision-making power is and how much control and financial security people have over their lives.“
That relationship is the core message of his essay.
In other words, as I see it, there is an axiom, a theorem, that governs the relationship between the leadership process of a country and the degree to which that country’s society could be classed as a democratic society.
If 2016 brought Brexit, Donald Trump and a backlash against cosmopolitan visions of globalisation and society, the great fear for 2017 is further shocks from right-wing populists like Geert Wilders in Holland and Marine Le Pen in France. A new mood of intolerance, xenophobia and protectionist economics seems to be in the air.
In a world of zero-hour contracts, Uber, Deliveroo and the gig economy, access to decent work and a sustainable family income remains the main fault line between the winners and losers from globalisation. Drill into the voter data behind Brexit and Trump and they have much to do with economically marginalised voters in old industrial areas, from South Wales to Nord-Pas-de-Calais, from Tyneside to Ohio and Michigan.
These voters’ economic concerns about industrial closures, immigrants and businesses decamping to low-wage countries seemed ignored by a liberal elite espousing free trade, flexible labour and deregulation. They turned instead to populist “outsiders” with simplistic yet ultimately flawed political and economic narratives.
Much has been said about the crisis of liberal political democracy, but these trends look inextricably linked with what is sometimes referred to as economic democracy. This is about how well dispersed economic decision-making power is and how much control and financial security people have over their lives. I’ve been involved in a project to look at how this compares between different countries. The results say much about the point we have reached, and where we might be heading in future.
The index
Our economic democracy index looked at 32 countries in the OECD (omitting Turkey and Mexico, which had too much missing data). While economic democracy tends to focus on levels of trade union influence and the extent of cooperative ownership in a country, we wanted to take in other relevant factors.
We added three additional indicators: “workplace and employment rights”; “distribution of economic decision-making powers”, including everything from the strength of the financial sector to the extent to which tax powers are centralised; and “transparency and democratic engagement in macroeconomic decision-making”, which takes in corruption, accountability, central bank transparency and different social partners’ involvement in shaping policy.
What is striking is the basic difference between a more “social” model of northern European capitalism and the more market-driven Anglo-American model. Hence the Scandinavian countries score among the best, with their higher levels of social protection, employment rights and democratic participation in economic decision-making. The reverse is true of the more deregulated, concentrated and less democratic economies of the English-speaking world. The US ranks particularly low, with only Slovakia below it. The UK too is only 25th out of 32.
Economic Democracy Index, figures from 2013. Andrew Cumbers
Interestingly, France ranks relatively highly. This reflects its strong levels of job protection and employee involvement in corporate decision-making – the fact that the far right has been strong in France for a number of years indicates its popularity stems from race at least as much as economics.
Yet leading mainstream presidential candidates François Fillon and Emmanuel Macron are committed to reducing France’s protections. These are often blamed – without much real evidence – for the country’s sluggish job creation record. There is a clear danger both here and in the Netherlands that a continuing commitment to such neoliberal labour market policies might push working class voters further towards Le Pen and Wilders.
One other notable disparity in the index is between the scores of Austria and Germany, despite their relatively similar economic governance. Germany’s lower ranking reflects the growth of labour market insecurity and lower levels of job protection, particularly for part-time workers as part of the Hartz IV labour market reforms in the 1990s that followed reunification.
The index also highlights the comparatively poor levels of economic democracy in the “transition” economies of eastern Europe. The one very interesting exception is Slovenia, which merits further study. It might reflect both its relatively stable transition from communism and the civil war in the former Yugoslavia, and the continuing presence of active civil society elements in the trade union and cooperative movements. Southern European economies also tend to rank below northern European countries, as does Japan.
Poverty and inequality
The index provides strong evidence that xenophobic politics may be linked to changing levels of economic participation and empowerment – notwithstanding the French data. We found that the greater the poverty and inequality in a country, the lower the rates of economic democracy.
These findings suggest, for example, that the Anglo-American-led attack on trade unions and flexible labour policies may actually drive up poverty and inequality by cutting welfare benefits and driving up individual employment insecurity. While the OECD itself advocated these policies until recently, countries with high levels of economic democracy such as Norway, Denmark and Iceland have much lower levels of poverty than countries such as the US and UK.
Far right activists in Budapest, Hungary, February 2016. EPA
Far-right populism is on the march everywhere, including the Nordic countries. But Brexit, Trump and the more serious shift to the far right in Eastern Europe have been accompanied by diminishing economic security and rights at work, disenfranchised trade unions and cooperatives, and economic decision-making concentrated among financial, political and corporate elites.
We will monitor these scores in future to see what happens over time. It will be interesting to see how the correlations between economic democracy, poverty and voting patterns develop in the coming years. For those looking for answers to the crisis in liberal democracy, this may well be it.
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I shall be writing to Professor Cumbers asking if my analysis of that relationship is supported by his research.
For if it is then we do have a very clear axiom that few would disagree with. That is the political consensus this world needs now.
For both humans and, in consequence, for those dogs close to us.
Effectively, the whole of the New Year has been a tad challenging here in Merlin, OR. For even before the snows arrived early on in January, leading to power outages and frozen pipes, the local weather service was warning of unusually severe storms. Indeed, more than once we have heard locals speaking of this looking like a one-hundred-year-storm.
So it was inevitable that there were some anxious periods. Plus the challenging weather may not be not fully behind us. For this is the current (Sunday 18:00 PST) weather warning:
HYDROLOGIC OUTLOOK
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MEDFORD, OR
134 PM PST SUN JAN 15 2017
…Flood Potential Outlook for main stem river flooding, snow melt flooding, and quick rises on rivers and streams in the following counties…in California…Siskiyou…and in Oregon…Coos… Curry…Douglas…Jackson…Josephine…
A strong atmospheric river event is expected to arrive in Southern Oregon and Northern California by Wednesday. While models have trended towards a faster progression of the front, and therefore lesser rainfall amounts, this event may still produce high snow levels, periods of heavy rain, and significant melting of lower level snow-pack Wednesday and into Thursday. With the extensive snow-pack, saturated soils and high river levels, there is a potential for flooding and rapid rises along main stem rivers and small creeks and streams. Urban areas may also experience high water from blocked culverts and runoff.
Continue to monitor forecasts for any updates as this potentially hazardous situation develops.
Anyone who has a dog (or several) in their lives will know how our anxiety is so quickly picked up by our dogs. Ergo, looking after our dogs, as in keeping them relaxed, is really important.
Now read this article that was published over on the Care2 site. I am republishing here for all you good people.
Does your dog suffer from anxiety? A lot of rescued dogs do, and often we don’t know the exact cause for their nervousness. Abuse, neglect or even a single bad experience before you adopted your dog could cause mild to debilitating anxiety. These natural remedies for dog anxiety have worked wonders for my very anxious dog.
We adopted my dog, Jenna, two years ago. Jenna was three years old when we rescued her, and her story still breaks my heart. Lifeline Animal Project rescued Jenna from an animal hoarder when she was six months old. For those first six months, she lived in a crate 24/7. They didn’t even take her out to pee and poop, they just changed the newspaper or laid new paper down. Jenna lived in Lifeline’s no-kill shelter for two and a half years before she was socialized enough to be adoptable.
Even after those years of care, Jenna was still incredibly fearful when we got her home. For the first 36 hours that we had her, she didn’t pee or poop at all. She basically sat on her bed, shaking. By the end of second day we could get her to eat and use the bathroom, but it took weeks for her to finally trust us.
We’ve had Jenna for two years now, and she is a completely different dog. She is still wary of strangers and has her nervous moments, but she loves to run and play. She’s even warmed up to family and friends who visit us often. Jenna is always going to have a high base level of anxiety, but thanks to the natural remedies I’m going to get into below, she also can relax and behave like a normal dog the vast majority of the time.
Look at this mellow, happy gal!
Natural Remedies for Dog Anxiety
Every dog’s situation is different, so what worked for Jenna may not work for your dog. If one of these natural remedies isn’t doing it for your nervous dog, try another one! This is a laundry list of everything that’s worked and one thing that didn’t work for us but does for too many other dog owners to leave out of the list. Pick and choose natural remedies as you find out what helps with your dog’s anxiety.
1. Obedience Training
I can’t recommend a good trainer enough. Training gives your anxious dog confidence, and a good trainer can help you with commands that are especially important. I’ve been taking Jenna to training on and off the entire time that we’ve had her, and it has been a miracle for us. It took a few months for us to start seeing results, so don’t expect a quick fix from this. The long-term benefits for you and your dog are well worth it.
2. Exercise
Getting exercise with your dog is a bonding experience, and it also helps her work off some of that nervous energy. Jenna and I run 9-15 miles a week together, when I can swing it, and she loves to run more than anything else. We had to stop running towards the end of my pregnancy, and on that first run back, she had a huge puppy grin on the whole time we were out.
Running is just one way to get your dog exercise. You can go for walks, play catch, or play training games like “touch.” Whatever you choose to do, talk to your vet first. Some breeds of dog are great runners, but others (like pugs) can overheat easily and need lower-key exercise.
3. Essential Oils
One fear that Jenna is definitely not over is thunderstorms. She shuts down during storms, which can be rough during spring and summer when it storms frequently here in Atlanta. Essential oils combined with Rescue Remedy (more on that below) have helped her out a lot. Choose a calming scent like lavender, and just put a couple of drops onto the dog’s collar. Putting it on the collar is key, because then your dog can smell the soothing oil but can’t eat it.
4. Rescue Remedy
Rescue Remedy is a blend of flower extracts, and they make blends for pets and for humans. We use the liquid for pets and feed it to her in a lump of peanut butter. (**** See my Footnote below) It calms her down considerably. Though, to be honest, I do wonder if getting her favorite treat (peanut butter) has something to do with it. You can find Rescue Remedy at natural food stores or online.
5. Focus Toys
Redirecting your dog’s attention when she’s feeling anxious can be a big help. You can try using commands that you learned in training class, or you can give your dog a focus toy. There are all varieties of these. You can go with a rawhide bone or one of those puzzle toys that dispenses treats when the dog gets it right. Jenna’s favorite toy is a Nylabone. She’s a 50 pound lab mix, so she tears through a rawhide in minutes. She’s had the same Nylabone for months, and it’s still pretty much intact.
6. Watching Your Tone
When your dog is scared, how do you react? Do you say, “It’s OK, sweetie!” in a higher-pitched voice than usual? This is a normal reaction, but it’s actually not the best one when your dog is scared. If your dog sees you as the alpha in the pack, she’s going to take her cues from you, and that kind of attention rewards your dog’s fear, reinforcing it.
Next time your dog is scared, try to react as if everything is normal. You can put a hand on her back, so she knows that you’re there, but try not to make a big deal out of the situation. Don’t say “It’s OK.” Instead, show her that everything is OK with your body language.
7. Crate Training
We were lucky that Jenna was crate trained when we adopted her. For an anxious dog, the crate can be a “safe place” they can retreat to. When there’s a thunderstorm or our neighbors decide to shoot off fireworks, Jenna often curls up in her crate. Dogs like a small, cozy space. If you’re not into crate training, I’d suggest setting up a dog bed in a quiet corner or even under an end table, so your dog has a cozy place that’s hers where she can go when she is scared.
8. The Thunder Shirt
This is the one natural remedy on this list that has not worked for us at all. Jenna is more afraid of the Thunder Shirt than she is of thunder! We are definitely outliers here, though. Every dog owner I know that has an anxious dog recommends the Thunder Shirt to me when I mention Jenna’s fear of storms. This is a great example of how different natural remedies work for some dogs and not others. The Thunder Shirt is definitely worth a shot! If it doesn’t work for you, you can pass it on to a fellow dog owner or donate it to your local shelter.
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Footnote!
Regarding feeding dogs peanut butter, do not, repeat not, do this until you are sure that the brand of peanut butter you are considering is free of the ingredient xylitol.
I wrote of the dangers of xylitol in a post last December 8th. It is being republished in an hour’s time just to make sure the widest number of readers of this place are aware of the danger.
Anyway, this seemed like a very useful article. Plus there’s another benefit of having one’s loved dogs in a relaxed state. It helps the people around those dogs remain relaxed as well!
Brandy and Jean enjoying mutual relaxation!
Chill out everyone! Both the two-legged and the four-legged ones!
Rakesh runs a charity called The Voice of Stray Dogs (VoSD).The WikiPedia entry is a bit light on details but the UK arm of The Huffington Post makes up for that. Here’s an extract from the news item:
VoSD was founded by Mr Rakesh Shukla, affectionately known as the “Dog Father”. It was set up single-handedly after he felt obliged to do something about the plight of stray dogs in India. Well known for keeping dogs in his home [ the VoSD Sanctuary] and in his office, Rakesh has worked tirelessly to raise funds for the care of stray dogs [ with greater than 90% contributed by himself]. One visitor said ““Rakesh’s growing family of rescued dogs is a sight to behold. It is amazing how so many dogs together get on so well“.
He operates a system that has rescued more than 3000 dogs in 2 years with 400+ permanent dogs under his care. VoSD offers the highest standard of service and is equipped with the latest technology so that stray dogs get the best possible care.
Back to the BBC item that I am taking the liberty of republishing in full.
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The man who looks after 735 dogs
19 December 2016, India
Rakesh Shukla is a software engineer who’s found his life’s calling in looking after dogs that no-one wants, writes the BBC’s Geeta Pandey in Bangalore.
The car pulled up outside a dusty farmhouse near the capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka and suddenly dogs were everywhere, yelping and barking, jumping with joy.
Within seconds, they were all over Rakesh Shukla, nuzzling him and licking him, and Mr Shukla was as delighted to see them. He spoke to them, patted some, scratched one behind the ears, and lofted another onto his shoulder.
Then he gave me a tour of his three and a half acre farm. At last count, Mr Shukla had 735 dogs.
There are Labradors on the farm, there are Golden Retrievers, Great Danes, Beagles, Dachshunds, Rottweilers, Saint Bernards and even a pug. There are hundreds of mongrels too.
Most of the dogs are strays, the others have been abandoned by their owners. The latest arrivals was a group of 22 pedigreed dogs whose owner, a city businessman, was shot dead recently by criminals.
“I’m the last stop for these dogs. They are no longer cute and cuddly. Many are sick and no longer wanted,” said Mr Shukla, 45.
Affectionately known as the “Dog Father”, he calls the dogs his babies and him their “papa”.
Mr Shukla, who founded a software company along with his wife 10 years ago, spends three to four days every week on the farm, taking care of his canines.
“I had worked in Delhi, in the United States and then set up my own company in Bangalore,” he said. “Life was all about buying big cars and expensive watches and living a fancy life. I had travelled and seen the world many times over, but then I was not happy.”
Then Kavya came into his life: a beautiful 45-day-old Golden Retriever that he fell hopelessly in love with. It was in June 2009, and Mr Shukla remembers clearly the day he brought her home.
“When we got home, she went and hid in a corner. I got down to her level on the floor and I was calling out to her. She was looking at me, she was scared, but I could see she wanted to trust me,” he said.
“And that’s when the moment happened – it was a physical feeling, my hair was tingling, I could feel a warm glow. And I’ve never needed to ask myself that question – ‘why am I here?’ – again after that.”
Mr Shukla’s second dog, Lucky, came to him three months later when he rescued her from the streets. “It had been raining for 12-13 days, she was wet and miserable, so I brought her home too,” he said.
Over the coming days and weeks, whenever he met a stray or abandoned dog, he brought it home. Initially he kept them there but when his wife protested, he moved some of them to the office, where the top floor was turned into a home for dogs.
In 2012, as the pack grew, Mr Shukla bought land in Doddballapur town and set up the farm – a haven for dogs that are old, ailing or simply unwanted.
The farm is designed for its canine residents, with lots of open spaces for them to run around and ponds to swim in, and there’s double fencing to keep them safe.
Every time we entered an enclosure, a cacophony of barks greeted us.
The farm employs about 10 people, including trained veterinary assistants, to look after the dogs, cook for them and feed them. The dogs are fed 200kg of chicken and another 200kg of rice daily and many of the sick ones need regular medicines and attention.
The daily cost of running the centre is 45,000 to 50,000 rupees ($663; £532 to $737; £592), according to Mr Shukla, who said he provided 93% of the funds.
In the past year though, he has run into problems with some animal activists, who have demanded that they be allowed onto the farm. He has also faced complaints that he is creating public unrest by keeping so many dogs. There have also been demands that he shut down the farm.
He has refused to concede.
“I’ve made a pact with my dogs,” he said. “We will part only when one of us kicks the bucket.”
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You know that there are many who are desperately worried about 2017 and beyond. The next few years, ten at most, will see the results of this great experiment that humanity is conducting.
Now, I’m happy to put my hand up as someone who does worry at what my generation is leaving for our grandchildren.
Then one comes across people like Rakesh and, somehow, the future doesn’t seem quite so grim.
What a wonderful man.
Published on Oct 8, 2014
Rakesh Shukla is the go-to guy for dog rescue in Bangalore. His privately-funded venture, ‘The Voice of Stray Dogs’ champions the cause of India’s stray/ street dogs with research, publication, litigation, veterinary and healthcare services for stray dogs.
See you all on the other side of Christmas!
But promise me one thing: Never turn your back on a dog in need.
Not long before my mother died we contracted with a local landscaper, Leif Monchallin, to do quite an extensive improvement to the area of land that is to the front of the house. One of the improvements is putting in a dry-stone wall at the top of the driveway just before it splits into a turning circle. The photograph below shows the early stages of that wall.
Anyway, Jeannie came up with the idea of putting in some sort of engraved stone right in the centre of the wall. Leif knew of a local stone mason, Oregon Valley Sign Company, and off Jean and I went to meet Bryan Schram, who with his wife, run the business.
Bryan Schram at work.
Between the three of us we came up with a form of words that seemed highly appropriate.
But first off Jean and I had to locate a suitable stone for the engraving and take it over to Bryan’s premises.
Once that was done then it was about a week before we went to collect the engraved stone with the lettering also painted (that was Bryan’s wife’s area of expertise).
Finally, Leif placed the engraved stone in the wall after taking meticulous care to ensure it was perfectly positioned.
Here’s the result.
My mother was a musician and music teacher for most of her life and Jeannie’s Mum, Florence, was a great lover of music and dancing. Hence the clefs either side of the wording.
A rather special reminder of our mothers; don’t you think!
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Learning from Dogs 