Neurophilosophy has posted an article and video regarding tool-use in wild crows being caught on video for the first time.
An excerpt from the article and the video:
For example, one of the crows observed in the study used at least 3 different tools while foraging for food in loose substrate on the ground. The tool was transported from one site to another, and discarded briefly while the crow used its beak. Use of the tool was then resumed.
This film shows the crows making tools from what appears to a dry, grass-like stem. Prior to this study, crows had never been seen using this material for tool-making.
This video is pretty phenomenal in what it is exhibiting. I imagine we will begin seeing proof of many other animals’ tool-use, along with other heretofore unknown habits.
My good friend Mark Dobbins has been publishing his thoughts on society at large on the web for quite a few years. These pages are updated relatively frequently and contain, in my humble opinion, vast amounts of thought that are becoming more and more essential as the pages’ of modernity turn. While the design and layout may be threadbare, the concepts contained within are invaluable.
Mark Dobbins on “Higher Education”:
What is Higher Education?
The human experience starts in childhood. Childhood is when the being is molded from a biological potentiality to a human actuality. Once a mature human, whatever that may mean, finds its way out of childhood higher education should be there to offer whatever knowledge and skill will help it push itself and its society forward. In any society that values freedom, truth, and beauty “offer” is a word of primary importance. One of my main criticisms of our modern education system is its unnecessarily restrictive and demanding nature. Not demanding in the sense of challenging, but externally demanding. It is full of requirements and structures that only serve to limit freedom and minimize the possibilities. I understand the argument that all students should know some part of literature, or history, or science. But understanding cannot be forced. Understanding must be sought. If we live in an age of uninquisitive minds, then that is the fault of childhood, of primary education, and it would be best to deal with the problem there, and not attempt to bandage it by limiting freedom and possibility in higher education. Furthermore, these unnecessary limits breed not only totalitarianism and conformity, often the two things that the required courses are meant to deter, but also inefficiency. The walls of rules that maze higher education make it more expensive, more prone to politicking, and lead to power being held not by the customers, not by those eager to learn, but by administration, by authority, as if the school was paying the students. As you will hopefully come to understand, I am not belittling the very necessary organizational tasks of administration, I only strongly question the place of administration as a commander, or perhaps a demander. To simplify, I believe there is a more free, efficient, and inexpensive way to conceive of and structure higher education.kamagra oral jelly sin receta
To say that the creative capabilities of children are, for the most part, being squandered away in public education systems is an understatement. Whether or not this is the fault of any supposedly accountable person, people, association, council, agency, etc is not for us to judge or concern ourselves with. What is most important at this time is steadfast solidarity. We must demand of ourselves and our hierarchical superiors support for all children. Every generation that is created without an intimate understanding of the creative tools at their fingertips will become another generation of adults without the imagination and compassion to create progressive, pragmatic tools for change.
An article at National Geographic points to some new research out of Germany that shows that birds can see Earth’s Magnetic Field in their regular vision. This would help enable migratory birds to find their position, and eventually home, in relation to their surroundings.
Scientists already suspected birds’ eyes contain molecules that are thought to sense Earth’s magnetic field. In a new study, German researchers found that these molecules are linked to an area of the brain known to process visual information.
In that sense, “birds may see the magnetic field,” said study lead author Dominik Heyers, a biologist at the University of Oldenburg.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if there are subtle, but noticeable differences in the Earth’s magnetic fields that would be perceptible to the birds that would give them a series of “landmarks” that would allow them to know where they are. Subtle forms of pattern recognition seem to have helped almost every species along its path. I think we’re just beginning to see the full potential of the natural world.
Anita Hill wrote an article for the New York Times regarding Clarence Thomas’ attack on her character in his new memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son.” Thomas personifies her as an incompetent, “touchy”, “combative left-winger” who only had a government job because he had “given it” to her. He was, of course, forgetting the fact that she had graduated from Yale Law School (just like Thomas) as well as passing the D.C. bar exam.
Here is a piece of the article regarding the current state of affairs:
“Regrettably, since 1991, I have repeatedly seen this kind of character attack on women and men who complain of harassment and discrimination in the workplace. In efforts to assail their accusers’ credibility, detractors routinely diminish people’s professional contributions. Often the accused is a supervisor, in a position to describe the complaining employee’s work as “mediocre” or the employee as incompetent. Those accused of inappropriate behavior also often portray the individuals who complain as bizarre caricatures of themselves — oversensitive, even fanatical, and often immoral — even though they enjoy good and productive working relationships with their colleagues.
Finally, when attacks on the accusers’ credibility fail, those accused of workplace improprieties downgrade the level of harm that may have occurred. When sensing that others will believe their accusers’ versions of events, individuals confronted with their own bad behavior try to reduce legitimate concerns to the level of mere words or “slights” that should be dismissed without discussion. “