So apparently I have a bit of a pet peeve with media talking about science and making statements about research that upon closer inspection are dumbness and not actually getting to the heart of the matter.

So I was listening to a Radiolab episode at work about whether animals have feelings like humans do. And they were talking about the idea that dogs feel guilt. A lot of dog owners say that their dog gets a guilty look when it has done something wrong. So there was an experiment on a group of dogs and their owners. Half of the dogs in the group did something naughty, the other half didn't, but all the owners were told that their dog did do something bad. So the owners went in and scolded the dogs, you know, angry voice and face and say "bad dog" or "no" or something. And all the dogs did the face of ":C I sorry". And they then concluded that it doesn't matter what the dog thinks it has done, what matters is that it is being submissive to the alpha in its pack.

But the whole thing is just wrong if you know dogs >.<
Firstly, the scolding. Now I admit that dog training advice evolves and changes just like all things we know, but the last I heard was that you do not scold the dog unless you catch it in the act of doing something wrong. So for example, if you come home and find that the dog has chewed every single pair of shoes there is, or that the living room looks like a localised hurricane struck there, you do not scold the dog if you don't catch it in the act of destroying things. Because the dog won't connect the dots of "something I did several hours ago" and "human really mad". So it just thinks "human comes home and is mad :C" and that makes a very negative connection. So of course a dog that is scolded out of the blue will express submission, it doesn't really know how else to cope with this random aggression directed towards it. :/ It has a very limited bag of tricks.

Secondly, when you have been with your dog for a while and you are used to each other and stuff, and the dog is now trained and it knows what is bad behaviour - it will sometimes still do it (depends on the personality/breed of dog, probably). And when it does, it can have a look on its face (before the owner realises what has happened and scolds the dog) that clearly indicates "I did something I was not supposed to". My dog usually has that face when something has forced him to poop inside. He knows poop goes outside, and usually he doesn't poop inside except when it's just impossible to stop it. But in the time between his pooping and my discovering the poop his face is totally different than his normal face. It looks guilty, or sorry, or embarrassed, or some such. I can look at his face and know that he has done something that he knows he shouldn't have done. And I'm pretty sure you couldn't create test conditions to make this face happen, because it's so dependent on context.

So from now on, if any situation calls for an animated gif response, mine will be:

You know how way back in the olden times, people thought the world was made of the four elements of earth, water, air and fire. And now we have the atomic elements and we think "oh silly ancient people, thought that things can be made of fire lol". But... there actually are four states that those atomic elements can be: solid, liquid, gas and plasma.

I kind of had a little epiphany about this last night at work, and felt a little weird, like "this can't possibly be a new idea, but why have I not learnt this from anywhere?" Kind of like, why did I waste brain energy figuring this out by myself, why didn't anyone tell me? :P (Though I must admit it is very enjoyable to have mini-epiphanies like this.) So I'm just wondering, was this obvious for everyone else already and I'm just slow? Have you heard that idea before or did you learn it from somewhere?

Gift Ideas. A mere beginning, but it's actually one that I've been thinking of doing for years.

ABCs according to my browser

amenalready.tumblr.com
bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net
copyheart.org (huh, I've only been there once)
darthsanddroids.net
eksp.fi (:O sorry Elftown!)
facebook.com
google.fi (I don't appreciate it adding the .fi on its own accord)
hotmail.com
inariedwards.tumblr.com
j- nothing
klm.com
lds.org
mail.google.com
new.familysearch.org
october15th.com (again, only been there once)
posti.fi
q- nothing
ruutu.fi (same with this one, only been there once)
segullah.org
thisamericanlife.org
uudetkirjat.fi
v- nothing
wikipaintings.org/en/search
x- nothing
youtube.com
z- nothing
å- nothing
ä- nothing
ö- nothing

I think Vint Cerf should rule the world forever. >_>
http://www.decodedc.com/home/2013/1/31/episode-7-cerfing-the-net.html

*sings* I have a pokemon, short and stout. Here is its handle, here is its spout. When it gets all steamed up you can hear it shout. So tip it over and switch it out!

I like this a lot :) (stealering from [Triola]
http://mobile.theverge.com/2013/5/1/4279674/im-still-here-back-online-after-a-year-without-the-internet

I love it how he sort of states (what to me is) the obvious, that you are you whether you're online or offline, I really don't think people have separate personalities (unless they, y'know, have that sort of disorder) for offline and online lives. Which also means that I think that trolls are assholes in reality too (basically, the internet is a social place that lacks the social constraint that other people's presence gives us. So some people would steal from a shop if no one could see them but wouldn't if someone was there, while other people would not steal under any circumstances. In similar way some people are assholes as long as they on't have a tangible other-person-presence there to stop them. And some people of course are assholes all the time, to offline people as well as online people). Internet is just another social space, that has different rules for how to behave, just like one might behave differently with parents than with friends from school.

Sorry, rant over. >_>

Back to the article. I think he might have missed something good that he learnt there. In the beginning when he was offline, he was doing great. I've done that "take a break from the internet for a bit" and it really is great. So just because extended period of offlineness do not you a better person make, doesn't mean that shorter breaks can't be beneficial. And you don't have to cancel your internet to take a break, just don't turn things on for a while.

And you know what would make taking a break from the internet a lot easier? If you didn't worry about missing out on something. If your people did it at the same time. If my whole group of friends said "let's not use Facebook/Tumblr/email/something" for anything important or interesting for a week, it would make it a lot easier to think "there is no reason for me to get on so I really should just not turn the device on." I remember back in pre-Facebook days when Elftown was down, I had a very much of a "nothing to do on the internet" feeling :P

PS. When the weather warms up a little, I might go ahead and do an internet break. Because the balcony is very comfortable when it's not too cold, not too hot. :)

Story tiems! I had a really odd nightmare.

The thing had a feel of a night at work and pokemon adventure at the same time. So when I say "someone had told me", it's sort of in that pokemon kind of way when you talk to someone and they tell you one thing.

So I was at work (in my job I cycle around and enter buildings, much like one does in pokemon) and someone had told me about this really old and saintly woman who lived somewhere near here, and there was something really special about her. So during my work round, I actually found myself by her bedside. And it seemed to me that she had died. A really long time ago, actually. And I touched her hands, which were sort of resting on her chest, and she opened her eyes and looked at me. I was a little startled, sorry that I had woken her and embarrassed that I'd thought that she was dead. But she was really weak, and she asked for some water. So I gave her some water from my bottle, and I was a little worried how such a frail little old lady was going to be okay, all alone in this huge house with the huge bedroom and what not. But when she drank, she was like rejuvenated before my eyes, like one of those little plants that can be dried out and then come straight back to life with a little water, and I realised there was something really weird going on. And I got worried. And I made my way out of there as soon as I could, but I saw her getting out of bed all briskly and stuff, and I was rather freaked out. So I biked back to the work place as fast as I could, but on the way there I saw her on the street, roughly handling some kind of... things. Like bodies, but not people's bodies. More like... pokemon bodies I guess. And I was convinced that she had some how done some kind of magic thing, so that she was leeching my life vitality because I had given her water to drink from my bottle. And I somehow came to the conclusion that if I were to smash my bike light into itty bitty pieces, the spell would be broken. So I was beating the lamp against buildings, all the while hurrying back towards the office (I guess my bike disappeared here). And I got back to the office all out of breath and freaked out, and then felt weird because there were people other than my boss in the room, and everyone kind of looked at me quizzical like I'd interrupted them (this btw is the default look people at work give me in reality too), and I was sort of embarrassed and tried to explain, that I needed to give my work phone back because there was something wrong with it. And the boss said "okay...?" and as I was handing it to him, I realised that it wasn't my work phone but my nintendo DS and I was like "oh wait, I need to save my game", and the freak out sort of dissipated with the sort of normal surrealness of the situation...

But the old lady was scary as all get out >_>

Mr. Woollcott's appearances in the popular comic format:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ns0RG5GA2_Q
http://www.supercartoons.net/cartoon/756/the-woods-are-full-of-cuckoos.html

Courtecy of Geoffrey, who has the geeky skill of finding stuff like this :)

http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses

I might... have to watch all the ones in humanities... >_>

First day back to work after sick leave. And the knee hurt a little bit, like it did when all this knee pain started, which indicates that it will gradually be getting worse again. I guess this means I need to start looking for a new job soon. Or just bite my teeth and do the three months that I'd been planning on doing before moving back to England, being always high on pain killers at work... We'll see how this develops. *sigh*

It's so frustrating I could cry. :/

This is a pretty picture: http://visual.ly/death-taxes-2012 And I mean only literally/graphically pretty, not like... you know, like a good thing. But the thing itself is very good. Even though the... stuff isn't. I mean, it is full of good stuff, but you know. Just like, click it, yes?

Happiness begins three weeks from now. Prepare yourselves. And your shelves. And cupboards. And under the desk.

Sick leave ends in three days from now. Praise the Lord. I'm having serious cabin fever here. I hope they don't put you on sick leave for cabin fever... :C

This post thingy has a list of podcasts to check out: http://transom.org/?p=33356 It is a very long list :/ But I have been hacking down the Economist and the More or Less podcasts, so maybe there is time to...

But mostly just pokemans and Star Trek and This American Life.

http://news.yahoo.com/mormon-bishop-samurai-sword-runs-off-attacker-233001935.html
The what now? X)

http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/med_00.html

This was kind of cool, I came across it when wondering why the heck there are a million chrome.exe processes running in my Task Manager. Also found a way to kill the pointless nonsense that Apple stack in my computer when I installed iTunes (useless since I don't have an iPod or the sorts).

But this laptop is getting more and more erratic (no Aval, not erotic :/ ) every day. I don't think it has a lot more to give :/ I should start gutting it and saving things some place safe now...

Tomorrow is World Book day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Book_Day

Please celebrate in any which way you'd like. :)

In Finland the day is called The Day of the Book and the Rose, so if you go buy a book in a bookstore tomorrow you will get a rose (may be applicable to women only, possibly).

This. http://www.genusfotografen.se/?p=2190 Is. Win.

A school assignment where the high school students were asked to attach August Strindberg's face to a woman's body. (He was a notorious and outspoken women-hater type back in his day, but a world famous author despite that.) He just has the most perfect face for this kind of exercise in the differences how men and women are portrayed in visual language. Similar idea as the much beloved Hawkeye Initiative :)

So I'm still on sick leave. For the rest of this week. What am I supposed to be doing? O_o Someone, quick, give meaning to my life! I already went through all the official forums that I was behind on, I draw and listen to podcasts a lot, I read and study, I walk the dog (as much as he wants to be walked, which is not a lot - today he just plopped himself down on the snow instead of walking to the mailbox with me to get the mail X_x ), I hitrecord, I junk forum, but I need to... do things! O_o;;;;

Yet I feel like I never finish anything, or manage to get on with important stuff - bar maybe the drawing. :/

It seems that I have so much time that I can't use it right, and then end up not doing what I should be doing. What am I supposed to be doing? :/