The time of teeth
I intern with my dog trainer's school and help out with their puppy socialization class. While watching puppies play is pretty heartwarming, my favourite part is training sessions. By week three, all of the pups have a sit on cue and are working towards their cued downs. It's fascinating watching their little gears turn as they try to figure out what behaviour gets the hallowed click (and inevitable treat). However, another huge part of puppy class is socialization and handling.
Ok, this is apparently an old dog, but he's so funny I couldn't help myself.
Folding 88 paper planes
This week, I made a lot of paper planes. A LOT. Apparently young children have trouble with folding paper planes.
Get into the Flow
I recently re-started playing a video game called Mass Effect. Before Christmas we bought the complete trilogy. I’m about half way through the second game but I decided to go back because:
1) I wanted to do somethings differently
2) I wanted to take the time to explore the game’s universe.
You see, the first time I played through Mass Effect I binged. I mean really binged. I didn’t have much else going on at the time and so I played through the whole thing in about three days. There are a number of theories about why this happens. Why regular people can be sucked into a video game so deeply their skin will begin to meld with the controller. What I want to talk about though, is the idea of 'flow'.
The Case for Helicopter-Parenting
I’m a bit of a “helicopter mom” with my dog. A friend very gently introduced me to the term after a chat about the antics of my, then, year-old puppy. I hovered over him at the dog park ready to intervene at a moment’s notice. At the time, I laughed, because it was true, but it’s not a term meant to inspire pride. That style of parenting sounds overbearing.
But the thing is, while my dog is my furry, four-legged child, he’s not human. Helicopter parenting may be bad for kids who eventually have to become independent members of society, but my dog will never be independent of me. He will rely on me until his muzzle greys. Constant supervision isn’t going to hurt his ability to ‘mature’ and does a lot to keep him safe and out of trouble. This week, a newly-released study validated my pet-parenting style and found some interesting links between personality and pet affection.
I swear, it was this big!
Our oceans are massive and are home to some massive creatures. These are the seeds of myth: sea dragons, Leviathan, the Kraken. Such creatures may seem unreasonable now, but exaggerating the size of our planet’s largest beasts is not just a thing of the past.
For years, scientists have worked with a very small pool of data when estimating the maximum and average sizes of marine megafauna. That is, until now.