When Engineers have Dogs

One of My "Pet Peeves"

If next week, threatening/menacing/posing, "urban/gangsta/thugsta/(need I say) Black" media figures who have used the dogs to exaggerate their menace, started brandishing Bichon-Frises or dachshunds along with their glocks and gold teeth, insted of pitbulls and rotties, there'd be bichon-attack stories in the Enquirer in a week, children mauled by doxies...And breed laws would follow.

Via

The Military's Dishonorable Discharge of Pit Bulls

Pit bulls and the U.S. military have a long history together. On propaganda posters for World War One and Two,(an American Pit Bull Terrier represented the spirit of the American people), with slogans like, "Neutral, but not afraid of any of them" and "We're not looking for trouble, but we're ready for it."

Sergeant Stubby, a pit bull, is known as the most decorated war dog to have served the U.S. military. In the first World War, he warned his troops of incoming attacks. He captured a German spy all on his own. While recovering from injuries in the line of duty, he kept morale up among the injured soldiers and eventually returned to the trenches.

Today, it seems as though Stubby's service to his country has been forgotten, as pit bulls became the target of new military housing pet policies and were evicted from bases.

Early last year, the Pentagon approved the new pet policy that banned pit bulls, Rottweilers, Dobermans, Chows, and wolf hybrids from military housing. A number of Air Force and Navy bases followed suit. Then, last fall, the Marine Corps issued a worldwide breed ban policy. In theory, some of these policies allowed dogs already living on bases to be grandfathered in, but in practice, dogs were evicted by local enforcement or as soon as the families were relocated.

Like most breed specific legislation, this policy appeared to have been a knee-jerk reaction to dog attacks that took place on military bases. But just like civilian situations, the dog attacks were rare and the result of human irresponsibility, not any particular breed. Due to the ineffectiveness of breed specific legislation, the American Veterinary Medical Association, the American Kennel Club, the ASPCA, the Humane Society of the United States, and several other organizations have taken a position against breed bans.

Being forced to give up family pets isn't good for the morale of our troops. The Obama Administration needs to reverse the breed specific pet policy to keep military families together and restore these loyal dogs to their former, well-earned position of respect.

O'Bama's got trouble enough with BlueDawgs, he's not gonna get involved in that...

How To Free A Chained Dog, Win Good Karma, and Be A Better Person, All Around

This is quite good, and the affectless voices actually amplify the volume of the discourse. I found it on F-Book.


I sense the same sensibility in this one, too:

More Breed-Bragging: The "Vick" Pits, 3 Years Later

It's NEVER the dog. It's ALWAYS the people.




When I read the things Vick did to his animals, I think a suitable punishment might be to cut his hamstrings clean through and throw him into a dumpster full of rabid, starving, shit-house rats.

This Is AAWWWWWwwwwfully Sweet

It's not the dog; it's NEVER the dog. It's ALWAYS the fucking people...Good people? Good dogs. Shitty people? Shitty dogs. Works for kids, too. Just sayin...

Pit-bull Vick-tory: A Dog-umentary

The Iceland Volcano In Action

Iceland volcano eruption, Eyjafjallajökull - May 1st and 2nd, 2010

Original video @ http://vimeo.com/11673745 by © Sean Stiegemeier
http://in-perfidia.com
http://twitter.com/​sstieg

So I saw all of these mediocre pictures of that volcano in Iceland nobody can pronounce the name of, so I figured I should go and do better.
But the flights to get over took forever as expected (somewhat).
4 days after leaving I finally made it, but the weather was terrible for another 4.
Just before leaving it got pretty good for about a day and a half and this is what I managed to get.

Wish I had more time. I missed all the cool Lightning and the Lava of the first eruption.
But I figure this will just be a trial run for another day.

I am of course accepting sponsors to send me back there for more please...!! haha

Canon 5d mkII
HUGE thanks for the Motorized Dolly via MILapse (vimeo.com/milapse).
Details are to come soon so stay tuned...

SONG: Jónsi - Kolniður

Sit, Girl! Speak! Parse! Good Girl!

How Smart ARE Dogs?

The PBS show NOVA scheduled for February 9 on most of your same station takes the example of Chaser, a Border Collie whom a retired psychologist taught of 1,000 "words," as well as apparently was imbued with grammatical awareness, too. Under a clever hed, writer Nicholas Wade tells the story in the NYTimes, today:

Chaser, a border collie who lives in Spartanburg, S.C., has the largest vocabulary of any known dog. She knows 1,022 proper nouns, a record that displays unexpected depths of the canine mind and may help explain how children acquire language.

Chaser belongs to John W. Pilley, a psychologist who taught for 30 years at Wofford College, a liberal arts institution in Spartanburg. In 2004, after he had retired, he read a report in Science about Rico, a border collie whose German owners had taught him to recognize 200 items, mostly toys and balls. Dr. Pilley decided to repeat the experiment using a technique he had developed for teaching dogs, and he describes his findings in the current issue of the journal Behavioural Processes.

He bought Chaser as a puppy in 2004 from a local breeder and started to train her for four to five hours a day. He would show her an object, say its name up to 40 times, then hide it and ask her to find it, while repeating the name all the time. She was taught one or two new names a day, with monthly revisions and reinforcement for any names she had forgotten.

Border collies are working dogs. They have a reputation for smartness, and they are highly motivated. They are bred to herd sheep indefatigably all day long. Absent that task, they must be given something else to do or they go stir crazy.

Chaser proved to be a diligent student. Unlike human children, she seems to love her drills and tests and is always asking for more. “She still demands four to five hours a day,” Dr. Pilley said. “I’m 82, and I have to go to bed to get away from her.”

One of Dr. Pilley’s goals was to see if he could teach Chaser a larger vocabulary than Rico acquired. But that vocabulary is based on physical objects that must be given a name the dog can recognize. Dr. Pilley found himself visiting Salvation Army stores and buying up sackfuls of used children’s toys to serve as vocabulary items.

It was hard to remember all the names Chaser had to learn, so he wrote the name on each toy with indelible marker. In three years, Chaser’s vocabulary included 800 cloth animals, 116 balls, 26 Frisbees and a medley of plastic items.

Children pick up about 10 new words a day until, by the time they leave high school, they know around 60,000 words. Chaser learned words more slowly but faced a harder task: Each sound was new and she had nothing to relate it to, whereas children learn words in a context that makes them easier to remember. For example, knives, forks and spoons are found together.

Dr. Pilley does not know how large a vocabulary Chaser could have mastered. When she reached 1,000 items, he grew tired of teaching words and moved to more interesting topics like grammar.

One of the questions raised by the Rico study was that of what was going through the dog’s mind when he was asked to fetch something. Did he think of his toys as items labeled fetch-ball, fetch-Frisbee, fetch-doll, or did he understand the word “fetch” separately from its object, as people do?

Dr. Pilley addressed the question by teaching Chaser three different actions: pawing, nosing and taking an object. She was then presented with three of her toys and correctly pawed, nosed or fetched each one depending on the command given to her. “That experiment demonstrates conclusively that Chaser understood that the verb had a meaning,” Dr. Pilley said.

Go to the linked story for the rest. It's quite complete and fairly done.

More Awwwww-someness of Pibbles

Peanut-Sniffing Pitbull Keeps Human Pal Safe

A family pet has turned into a working dog. But it’s the breed and potential life saving task it performs that makes this story truly remarkable.
Parents with children who have severe peanut allergies know just how dangerous one mistake can be and as a result they often live their lives in a constant state of fear. A family in New York will soon be able to breath a little easier thanks to a transformation that is taking place in San Diego.

Source: A Peanut Sniffing Pit Bull | NBC San Diego



The folks at Bad Rap, who posted this of FB, said it all:

Look at this pup who's been trained to keep her young ward safe by searching for peanut products. The remarkable thing about this story is not that the dog, Layla, happens to be a pit bull mix (as the story mentions), but this is just a dog adopted from a shelter and found to having amazing potential. How many similar stories could be written for shelter dogs everywhere? Perhaps Elmer's story will be written next!

As the proud person of a pitbull, I agree.

Brits LOVE their "Staffy" Dogs, Still

We've All Got Embarrassing Relatives

Hemp is probably one of the oldest domesticated plants. Without it, "civilization" would likely been very different, as it was hemp of which both the lines and the sails of the European explorers' ships were manufactured.

Marijuana Prohibition Era Cartoon Par Excellence: Hemp’s Notorious Cousin
January 8th, 2011 By: Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director

Thanks to the GlobalMana Foundation and the design group Northshorecartoon for publishing a very creative, funny and spot-on political commentary in the form of a short cartoon focused on the costly absurdity of the U.S. government banning the domestic production of industrial hemp.

Most all other countries (Canada, France, Great Britain, China, Switzerland, etc…) do not allow the lawful use of cannabis for non-medical purposes, yet, they allow for the production of one of the most utilitarian and environmentally-friendly row crops that humans have been cultivating and prospering from for thousands of years.

Regardless of whatever happens in state and federal governments with ‘marijuana’ laws in future regarding medical access, decriminalization or legalization, the US government must stop trying to enforce a complete and total blanket prohibition on all forms and uses of the amazing cannabis plant—notably, like other major countries have done regarding industrial hemp.

More, Awesome Dogginess

Wallace Demonstrate DiscDogging, Up Close & "Personal"

This ain' "workin," this is how you do it!

Very Kewl: In Slo-Mo, Ball-bearing Plunges Into Sand

I coulda watched it a coupla dozen MORE times, easy...

How to Play With A "Cuddle" of Pibbles...