Do they know it’s them?

Here are two fun and silly and consequently viral animal videos that I was recently shown on Twitter, but they both raise a non-trivial question about animals and their degree of self-awareness.

First up, a cat looks in a mirror, and is surely not aware that the other cat is him/her. Cats are much stupider than they seem to us, because their basic method of going about things is the way a wise human goes about things, often rather slowly, carefully and thoughtfully, or else in a way that looks very alert and clever. But, often they are thick as several planks.

Meanwhile, a dog watches herself on TV doing one of those canine obstacle courses in a show. Dogs behave like stupid humans, with wildly excessive enthusiasm for stupid things, and consequently we tend to think of them as being very stupid. But the typical dog is a lot cleverer than the typical cat, I believe. Dogs don’t care how stupid they look. Cats typically don’t either, but cats typically behave like they do care about looking stupid, unless you dangle something in front of them on a string, at which point they go crazy, unless they are too old to care.

But back to my self-awareness point.

As commenter “Matt” says, of the dog watching herself on TV:

This is amazing I hope she knows its her.

In other words, Matt is no more certain than I am that she does know it’s her. Maybe she’s watching a totally different dog do what she likes to do, and she’s excited about that, just like any other sports fan.

The cat video ends with a variation on what seems to be a regular internet gag about misbehaving reflections (that vid being in the comments on the cat vid), but that’s a different story. Someone else adds a Marx Brother, or maybe it’s actually two Marx Brothers, doing the same gag, in those far off days before there was an internet.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Poetry is not dead

Indeed:

Here.

She also wrote that NYT letter about white privilege, concerning which she Tweets:

Do not deny my lived experience.

Absolutely not.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

“Exhuberation”

The word used by England spin bowler Monty Panesar, when he was on Test Match Special this morning during a rain break, to describe how it felt when, in a test match in India, he got Sachin Tendulkar out.

Despite all the rain of the last two days, England were exhuberating at Lord’s today.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Two good jokes – and a mystery (and a sign (and a cartoon dance))

Two things got my attention just now on Twitter, both, I think, very funny. I didn’t actually LOL. But I did smile.

First up, this quote:

It is always bittersweet when your relatives bid you fond farewell as you leave for Edinburgh, and only you know how much you are about to defame them for comedic gain.

And next up, this cartoon:

The latter of these two jollities goes way back, and I suspect that the script and the visuals were done by different people. But the first one is bang up to date, and I am hence able to direct you to who originated it, which I like to do.

This, on the other hand, baffles me:

I recognise financial commentator and funny man Dominic Frisby, on the left there. But why do Frisby’s shoes have lightbulbs in them? Who is that other bloke, and why are the two of them waving their fingers like that? Why are they sitting in the eyes of a giant skull? Also, what on earth does this have to do with Brexit? What is it that Remainers have said about such a scene as this, to the effect that it couldn’t happen, or would happen less? Are the above two gents, like the provider of the quote above, in Edinburgh, for the Festival? And have the Remainers said that the Edinburgh Festival this year would be a flop? Yes, that must be it.

LATER: Just noticed where it says spikedmath.com in the cartoon. So I guess that’s where that started.

EVEN LATER: This:

Also:this.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

BMdotcom typo of the day

Chris Martin, in this:

… I’m Christ Martin. …

Just under the subheading “Transcript”.

But then again, why not? In the Hispano- and Portugo-(?) spheres, they have lots of people called Jesus.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Now you see it – now you don’t

Here is a recent Scott Adams Dilbert cartoon, although Dilbert himself is not involved in this particular one:

I’ve always thought that one of the many things that won the Cold War for Civilisation and doomed Bolshevik Barbarism to defeat was stealth stuff. By its nature, stealth stuff is undetectable, and the better it is, the more impossibly undetectable it is. So, if you cannot detect it at all, it could still be there, and really really good at being stealthy. Hell, it could be anywhere. It could be right outside the Politburo’s front window.

Of course, it probably isn’t this clever. But, how would you be sure?

This was why, when the Americans had got these contraptions working reasonably well, they revealed their existence. They took lots of spooky photos of these spooky things, and made sure the whole world could see them. Where, at any particular moment, they were, for you to photo, they did not reveal.

How can you defeat an enemy like that?

Same with Star Wars. Shooting down all incoming nuclear missiles with all-powerful death rays. Bollocks, right? But, again, how could you be sure?

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Talking with – and without – a microphone

I like doing podcasts, and have recently resumed doing this. The difference between these and earlier efforts is that I am not making the mistake of trying to be the interviewer, a role which I have learned, the hard way, that I am utterly unsuited to.

I do not, however, like doing podcasts because I assume that I will reach a huge audience with my brilliant insights and opinions. Rather is it that I deepen my friendships with the people I share the microphone with. The first is a mere outside chance. The second is pretty much guaranteed to happen.

Although neither I nor any of the other people whom I podcast with assumes that we will reach a huge audience, we know that we probably will reach some sort of audience, probably very tiny, of friends and acquaintances and general passers-by, and that means that we had better say things we have thought about and which we mean and which are worth saying. We need to be at our conversational best, just in case.

Compare that with two or three of us just chatting in a pub or an eatery or in one of our homes, but with no microphone on. The level of conversational intensity, so to speak, is, in those circumstances, far lower.

Almost all of my renewed podcasting activity has been with Patrick Crozier. I recall with particular pleasure the first of these recent efforts that we did about World War 1. Who else has listened in? I have no idea. But I listened. He listened. I can listen again, and I have, more than once, because so many interesting things, I think, got talked about.

More recently, I took part in a group podcast on the subject of freedom of speech, alongside Jordan Lee, Bruno Nardi and Tamiris Loureiro. On that occasion I can be sure that others were listening, because there was a room semi-full of people, listening, right there, in the Two Chairmen, where Libertarian Home meetings now all seem to happen.

The microphone that Bruno placed in our midst was distinguished by its size and its striking appearance. I photoed it:

That photo, for me, illustrates the bigness of the difference that a microphone makes to a conversation. Jordan, Bruno and Tamiris are all slightly better friends of mine now than they would have been if we’d not done this.

Why then, do I not switch on a microphone during my Last Friday of the Month meetings? Maybe I will start doing this. But for now, I believe that a roomful of people, assembled to hear a particular person speak on a particular subject, achieves that same heightened level of attention and conversational concentration that a microphone achieves for a smaller group of people who are talking amongst themselves.

It is also helpful for speakers to be absolutely sure that their talks won’t go straight to the www, and that means that they can confidently take an early shot at a new subject, with all the errors, hesitations and confusions that might occur. Ideas need to be nurtured and shaped and polished, and that is far easier to do if such early efforts are not being bugged.

This Friday, I have another of my Last Friday meetings. Dominic Frisby will be doing an early dry-run version of his Financial Game Show, which will be having a run of performances for real at this year’s Edinburgh Festival. I’m pretty sure that me threatening to switch on a microphone during this out-of-town preliminary try-out version, so to speak, would have been a deal-breaker.

There’ll be another early version for this show at the King’s Head, Crouch End, on May 22nd. I attended the very first outing of it at the same venue last Monday, and I can report that I and the rest of the small crowd had a lot of fun. As Frisby reports at the bottom of this piece in MoneyWeek:

We had fun. My MoneyWeek colleague, Ben Judge, turned out to be the winner, prompting many in the audience to make accusations of an inside job.

Yes. This was a pity, because actually what came across rather well was how imperfect the knowledge of financial experts often is, and how other people, with direct experience of whatever it is, often know more than them.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Two adverts for the Pauline Quirke Academy of Performing Arts

I’d never heard of it, until, yesterday, at a bus stop near near Finsbury Park tube station, I observed, and photoed, this:

This advert didn’t impress me. I actually laughed. The Pauline Quirke Academy. Give over. You’re ‘avin’ a laugh. I did anyway.

Later, I saw the same advert in the tube:

This did impress me.

I think it was that the back of a bus is a tacky advertising spot, used by tacky enterprises that you have never heard of and will never hear of again. Ergo, the PQA must be tacky and will soon disappear. The tube is not such a tacky spot to advertise. Ergo, the PQA is not so tacky after all.

I wish the PQA every success. PQA website.

Pauline Quirke is best known to me for doing this. And to most others, if the internet is anything to go by.

Might someone else who saw both adverts have been more impressed by the bus advert than by the tube advert?

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Getting to know Mrs Smith

Via Scott Adams, I encountered this, from someone called Peter Smith:

Been chatting to my wife while Twitter was down. She seems nice.

But what does she now think of him?

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Me and Me talk on the phone

This morning I get a phone call:

Me: Hello.

Voice at the Other End: Hello.

Me: Who is this?

Voice at the Other End: Me.

That is such a perfectly idiotic answer. And such a perfect joke, provided only that it isn’t happening to me or to you. It should be in an American sitcom, and I am sure it has been.

The subsequent conversation included this:

Me: I am going to blog this.

My thanks to Me.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog