Friday, September 13, 2013

News – There is a new gift produced in Japan. It is fluffy two-ply toilet paper with artful designs and poetry printed on it. The cost is between $13.00 and $17.00 a roll, but it comes in a beautifully wrapped gift box, so it's a bargain!. I got curious and looked on the Net. There is a huge range of bathroom products from Japan, from Japanese toilets that all have bidets included to toilet paper that dissolves in water, so it never clogs the toilet! I think they have a hang-up about the toilet. The last time I saw that much stuff about toilet habits was on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. Apparently the amount of time you spend thinking about toilet habits is significant. I have to laugh at it. Life is too short to worry so much over something inevitable.

The book – Kathryn Dance's mother, who is a nurse, has been arrested for a mercy killing at the hospital where she works. It seems she signed a petition supporting Jack Kevorkian. Dance, meanwhile, is faced with another killing. The only problem with this story is that the identity of the killer is known to the reader, and he is a junior in high school. Most boys that age don't have their full height and weight yet, and this killer has overcome two young women without a weapon, choking one and lifting and hog-tying the other. He must be big for his age. He is known to have a fierce temper, though. Maybe that's enough.

3:17 PM – Still reading. Kathryn Dance's mother gets in deeper trouble as time goes on. The teenaged villain has obtained a gun, is still not found and has placed a cross on Dance's back yard. He is dangerous to all concerned. 5:22 The killer has broadened his scope to a new set of victims. More tomorrow.

Thursday, September 12, 2013

News – James Reston, Jr., author of five historical works, has written a new book called The Accidental Victim, in which he argues that John Connolly was the intended victim when John Kennedy was shot. I may get it from the library and read it, though I haven't been convinced by any new theories of his death so far. His works have received a lot of praise and some awards, however, so he is at least a good writer I assume. Ron Howard did a movie of British writer Peter Morgan's screenplay based on Reston's description of the Nixon/Frost interview.

It's going to be another day of allergy discomfort, though this Claritin is definitely helping after half an hour or so for it to kick in. My throat and bronchial tubes are sore from coughing. I'll take some Robitussin again, too, though it really does taste nasty. Here goes.

The book Roadside Crosses is about a teenaged girl Tammy who sounds off in answer to a blog segment titled Roadside Crosses. She blames the driver of the car in which the teenagers were killed, and tells some things about him, indicating that she knows him. Kathryn Dancer, the kinesics expert who interviews the teenaged girl after she was nearly murdered, believes that the would be killer read her answer to the blog and targeted her for attack. The attacker failed in his attempt on her life and she is now a potential witness. She was not cooperative with Dancer, however, presumably out of fear.

The author goes into a lengthy series of blog comments, too lengthy for my tastes, and then gives some information about the mysterious language that teenaged bloggers use with its misspellings and abbreviations. I have seen that kind of writing a number of times, and I am exasperated by it. I don't find it readable, and I am disgusted by that type of rebellion against good writing. It's like the teenaged boys wearing their pants down below the waist and exposing their (always colorful) undershorts. When I was that age nobody went to such trouble to be obnoxious. Of course, we were the Disney generation, and while I was in high school at least, were basically conservative. Then we hit college and took anthropology and psychology and political science. Then came the rebellion. Some rebelled more than others, but in general the times did change a great deal. I'm not sorry for the social changes. Our society is more ethical now as a result. Life is more fair for the underprivileged and the racial minorities. It looks to me as though we made real progress, though there are still elements in society who are haters.

The author also goes into the so-called “synthetic worlds” of on-line gaming, which are opposed to “the Earth.”. There are rules to the synthetic world, which is enclosed by a “membrane” called a Magic Circle that “encloses virtual world.” Within this membrane the rules of the virtual world are followed, and outside it the rules are those of the real world. The membrane is “porous,” like a semi-permeable membrane in real life, and there is interaction between the two worlds. This is from a Wikipedia discussion of virtual worlds. There have been a number of books written about synthetic worlds, especially as it applies to on-line games. This author Deaver states that among older players when they play a video game, they draw a clear distinction between the synthetic world and reality, but people even as old as thirty and especially teenagers may spend most of their consciousness in the “synth” world of the game. Deaver states that an “average” gamer can spend 30 to 60 hours a week playing, and may consider the game to be the “real” world. The suspected “perp” in this mystery is a teenaged boy who may be living in a synthetic world in which vengeance is a virtue, and other negative things are acceptable. The victim Tammy posted an angry comment to a blog about a fatal car accident, blaming the driver of the car, an acquaintance, and criticizing him broadly. The theory is that the driver is her attacker, and if so he may try to kill others who also blamed him in their blog comments.

6:00 PM I've had supper and am getting ready to veg out now. Watching the news. They just showed some good foottage of a mated pair of Florida panthers. The male was scratching on a log and looked just like a house cat.

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

News – President Obama and Vice President Biden and their wives came out to the White House lawn and stood in silence marking the 9/11/2001 attacks, then a military band played Taps. They quietly turned around and walked back into the White House. It was a dignified and moving ceremony. In the face of such a sad occasion there is little left to say now. It has all been said.

My allergy reaction is still going on, though the Claritin did work when I took it last night. It is supposed to be a 24 hour pill, but the problem is back again this morning. It got worse after I ate and had coffee, so I suppose the yogurt and hot liquid irritated it. The pills are 10 mg, and the dosage recommended by the manufacturer is 20 mg. Maybe I'll take another pill this morning.

I have one more thing I need to do for Perimeter Security – go by the Post Office and turn in a change of address card, sending all the mail directly to John in Germany. I'll send John an email to let him know about it. I don't want to keep going by the office to check the mail and sending the mail to him in an envelope. It's a chore and it costs money, though not a lot, but even so I'm retired now and I shouldn't keep doing it.

I'm trying to continue to read this book. I hate to stop a book in the middle, and I have wanted to broaden out my reading to other types of things. There are bound to be some things I won't especially like. I tend to avoid modern novels that aren't mysteries, because you never know what kind of writing and story you will get. They are all different from each other, and by no means are they all well-written or equally interesting. Also they tend to have extended sex scenes that are described in detail, and I don't want to read pornography. I still prefer the nineteenth century classics like Pride and Prejudice, or others of that quality. They have well-developed plots and characters, and keep me reading until the end. Back to the book now.

1:21 PM I took a trip south, going to the office and collecting mail, then to the post office and doing the change of address, plus sending today's mail bundle, and then went to the library and got three mysteries and two non-fictions. The books were too heavy so I left all but one mystery in the trunk of the car to carry in another time. I'm reading Loose Change again right now. I can get through it if I expect less.

I have stopped reading on the Davidson book and taken up a mystery by Jeffery Deaver called Roadside Crosses. I've read a couple of his and enjoyed them. He uses the term “kinesics” to mean a science of observing facial expressions and body language to tell whether or not a witness is lying. Kinesics as a science was first described by the anthropologist Ray Birdwhistell in 1952. Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson also pursued the study, while another scientist Paul Ekman disagreed with them in some aspects of the theory. See Wikipedia for more about Kinesics.

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

8:02 AM I am having severe allergy symptoms today. I've been taking Benadryl for a number of days now, and I have run out. I'm thinking of buying some Claritin at the drugstore, and the next time I go to the doctor, getting a prescription. I think Claritin is more expensive, and if I get a prescription the insurance will pay for it. 9:28 I'm back from the drugstore. I got the store brand of both Claritin and Robitussin DM. The Claritin cost $10.00 and the Robitussin $5.00. I have already had a dose of Benadryl a couple of hours ago, so I won't take any Claritin yet, but I did take a dose of Robitussin. Like all allergy medicines it is bitter and foul tasting, but I swallowed it quickly. It does sooth the throat immediately. It also has a decongestant in it, so I won't need Sudafed. I then took a couple of sprays of NasalCrom. After a few minutes I should have some relief.

Reading – Loose Change.

Bad news. The Internet light is off on my modem. It's not red, just off. Is it working? It is working, and the light has come back on again. It needed to be stimulated, apparently.

This novel is not much to my tastes. I'm past a hundred pages and there is no story line. It's made up of a series of short segments, each of which is about one of the four young women who are involved with the hippies at Berkeley, CA, and are getting to know the work world and having interactions with men. So far there is very little drama, just lots of detail about each of them, without much in the way of insight and meaning. I think her main goal is to describe the cultural scene and events of the sixties. I would probably find it more compelling if I had been a hippie when I was that age. These women are about three years older than I was at that time. I'm going to keep reading, though, to see if a main character or a story line develops. Or maybe not. There are 250 more pages to go. We'll see. Well, it's time to eat supper and settle in for the night. The end.

Monday, September 9, 2013

News – A “blogger couple” decided to try to change their relationship from a close friendship of four years by agreeing to date every day for 40 days, to see if they would become committed lovers. They “broke up” at the end of the 40 days and became good friends again. It has been my experience that I either have “chemistry” with a man or I don't, and I just accept whichever the situation is. In my only experience of being close with a man for a long time without actually making love, it was because he was full of anxiety around the subject of sex and had had two traumatic and disappointing relationships with women when he was young. I found it hard to deal with someone who wants to kiss and hold hands and all that jazz without going any further. I did continue the friendship/relationship, accepting the limitations in order to keep the closeness which was there in full, and I'm not sorry I did.

What I have often wondered about many times is the old institution of arranged marriages, in which the couples, I have no doubt, often had little fire in their relationships, but managed to complete the necessary activities enough to have half a dozen kids. Maybe it was a one-sided relationship, with the man simply accepting that the woman was cool sexually, but compliant. Or maybe they read the Sanscrit Kama Sutra by Vatsyayana and followed the directions there. I got it out of the library one time and read part of it. It is a sex manual for the first interactions, telling the man exactly how to approach the woman gradually over a period of time, getting her used to his touch, until she becomes interested. In the Eastern cultures where many couples had never even met before their wedding, it would probably be a very important tool. According to Wikipedia, the Kama Sutra is an ancient sacred Hindu text (one of a group of such texts referred to as Kama Shastra), as sensual or sexual pleasure is one of the four main goals of a balanced Hindu life. The text discusses love and family life as well, and Hindu virtue in general. It was composed somewhere between 400 BCE and 200 CE. With the aid of an Indian archaeologist and several other scholarly people, Sit Richard Burton published it in 1883.

Reading The Butler now. 1:06 PM I finished the book. The first section discusses the interviews with Allen and his family. None of the conversations and interactions between them appeared in the book, so they have been created from beginning to end by the writer of the film, though the son told Haygood that the film captured the tone of the life in the family home, and since he was arrested for civil rights activities I would assume that the conflicts found in the movie between him and his father would have occurred. The life of the butler within the White House is given as being a constrained relationship, since his function there was to be pleasing to the presidents and keep the household running smoothly. Several of the presidents, however, did reach out to Allen as a person whom they respected to a high degree, and were often openly friendly to him, inviting him to events or outings on which he was not required to serve them. The last president under whom he served was Ronald Reagan, and Nancy Reagan invited Allen and his wife to a state dinner with a distinguished foreign guest. There were apparently other such invitations, too, because his wife was said to have a number of dresses and hats that she kept as a memento. Allen, however, was not allowed to talk about what happened while he was at work, even to his wife, who explained to the neighbors that Allen couldn't answer their questions. In Allen's last years he was able to vote for Obama for president. His wife, unfortunately, died the night before they were going to go out to vote. President Obama gave Allen a VIP invitation to the Inauguration. Allen died in 2010, and there was a large funeral with well-known guests. President Obama didn't go to the funeral, but sent flowers and a letter to be read aloud praising Allen's service.

The final portion of the book reviewed the movies down through time that either focused on blacks or starred black actors and actresses, finishing off with a section on the making of the movie The Butler. , and then by a section on the various presidents' contributions to the civil rights activities, laws and achievements of those years. I would heartily recommend this book to anyone who lived through those times or who would like to learn more about the subject. The section summarizing the responses Hollywood made to the issue is worth the price of the book, as the viewpoints exhibited by the movies in large part reflect the larger society. It is a good reference list for those who would like to see more movies about black issues. The book is 96 pages long, so it's a fast read, and it only cost $16.75 including shipping. It was great!

I am now out of library books, so I need to go get some more, plus go to the grocery store and the drugstore. On the other hand, I really ought to pull one of the books I already own out and read that. They all “looked interesting,” which is why I bought them, but since I have tended to read mainly mysteries from the library I haven't gotten to them. I'll try to do that today. Done – I'm going to read Loose Change: Three Women Of The Sixties, by Sara Davidson. It was recommended to me by my sister Hilda. I probably borrowed it from her, and have kept it all this time!

5:08 I just got back from a wild goose chase out past Dunn Ave. I wanted to go to Walmart for printer ink, but when I looked at the cartridge I had in the printer to check the number, I copied it down wrong. Bummer! They had it out there after all, but I was afraid to buy it. Now I'll have to go back some time soon. I'm not entirely out yet.

Then I went to Publix for a load of groceries and Chad Henderson was there. I was so glad to see him. He looked sharp. He said he is still taking courses. I think he was studying IT. I used to have him fix the computer at work when cords had to be located out of the tangle and checked. It seemed that every time I would call the technical assistance number they wanted me to simply pull plugs out and then plug them back in again. I guess they can work loose so that they aren't making contact anymore.

Well, it's supper time, though I'm not really hungry. The end for now.

Sunday, September 8, 2013

I went to church today and then to eat lunch with Ginger and Raquel. We had fried chicken at Popeye's. KFC is good, too, but I usually prefer the spicy version at Popeye's. I don't eat fried food very frequently, so I'm not really getting too much fat. I take a statin for high cholesterol anyway, so I'm probably protected against damage. The weather was great and we had a good time. I always think it's a long way to Orange Park and the Southside., but it doesn't really take too long. It's 20 miles to the church, but if I only do it once a month I'm not spending too much for gasoline.

I'm starting to read The Butler A Witness To History by Wil Haygood, author of a number of biographies and a winner of three awards. They have made a movie of it which I may see, but the name of the central character was changed for the movie and I wonder why. Have they also changed the story to make it more dramatic, or worse, melodramatic? The movie has some good actors in it, though. I may see it, too.

I'm about half way through the book. It's bringing up memories of “the bad old days” of racism at its worst. Allen was first in the White House under Harry Truman, who was not very enlightened about racial issues. I was 5 or 6 years old as I sat at the family meals listening to my parents talk about Truman. He was a rough man in a lot of ways, like LBJ. As the presidents succeeded each other in the White House there were improvements in racial relations, a little at a time. I was largely oblivious to things like that until I got into high school. I was busy doing my school work and playing outdoors with my dog before that. In high school I started reading the newspapers and watching current events on television especially, where the camera recorded history in the making. I was shocked at some footage of police facing down a black group of protesters with German shepherds straining at their leashes to get to them. I saw the brutality that was involved. And there were news reels of the KKK marching. I also took an American history course in high school and learned the background of the struggles between blacks and whites. Though to this day I love much about the South, I was no longer as proud of our history. When I went to college I continued to learn more, and began to become more active about issues, especially the women's movement, the labor movement, the peace movement, racial interactions and the problems that the Jews have always had from time to time. I knew which side of the fence I stood on, and became a voting Democrat, sometimes helping with grassroots efforts during elections. I am only sorry that there is still so much ill will between the parties. Still, we have made vast improvements, and though the times were so hard in the 60s and 70s that I was often depressed, a lot of very weighty issues were ironed out. Now there are still diehard racists and other haters, but the society as a whole has become more open and fair for all people. I'm glad to have lived through it all.

It's 6:30 and I'm hungry. Over for now.

Saturday, September 7, 2013

8:19 AM News – A cat was found sitting on a mat inside an apartment house in Waterville, NY with an arrow piercing through his abdomen. A woman who lived there took him immediately to her veterinarian and they performed two surgeries on him to get the arrow out and repair his liver, stomach and spleen. The cat is said to have a friendly and bubbly personality, purring and interacting with all the workers at the veterinary hospital. The veterinarian said he eats whatever you put before him, so he isn't even picky. He is going home with one of the clinic workers when he is healed, which is expected to be in about two weeks. Police are looking for the heartless person who shot him. Some people really are without mercy. How could anybody fail to appreciate the beauty, grace and lively personality of a healthy cat? I understand that some people hate or fear cats, but that, too, seems groundless to me. Fearing dogs I understand. They really are a great deal more likely to be hostile and bite. I wish I could keep an animal easily here. I miss my cat Sally Petunia. She was full of personality and very beautiful.

I have looked up the locations of primary physicians and psychologists in the Riverside neighborhood and came up with at least one psychologist and one primary physician. The psychiatrist is on Post St. and the family doctor is on Riverside. I got the bus routes from the apartment to Ginger's on Atlantic Blvd., and it only takes two buses. The apartment is on the P4 route like my present apartment is, though I would have to walk about two blocks to get to the bus stop. Here it's right in front of my building. Will I be able to walk two blocks at the age of 70? The answer is, if I keep my legs in condition with these new ankle weights I should be able to. If I don't keep in condition, I will go downhill fast and have a lower quality of life, so I had better exercise!

According to my grid map of Jacksonville, the surface streets to Riverside are W. Bay St. to Park St. I need a new map that is not divided up into pages to see it better, though usually the print is smaller on those. The page division on this grid map makes the route hard to follow on those small streets. I hope Kangaroo has a map.

Mapquest has failed me. They no longer have slots into which you type the addresses to and from your locations, but have something called the Crawler which has to be downloaded and my computer flashed up a malware warning when I tried to do it. I am going to have to buy a street map of Jacksonville somewhere. I do hope Kangaroo has one, because I don't know where any other source of maps is near me. I wasn't going to go out today, so I'll try to remember it the next time I do.

UPS brought me two packages yesterday. It should be a book and two ankle weights. Opening them now. Well, the book The Butler is small, only 96 pages, so it shouldn't take too long to read. The ankle weights are comfortable. I was afraid they might be too heavy. I have them on now, and I may just make a habit of wearing them around the apartment to make the most of the walking that I do. I'll know after a few hours if that will make my muscles sore. I hope not. Walking. Well, I can definitely feel the extra exercise in my calves, the muscles above my knees and the gluteus maximus. I think this is what I need.

Lunch time now.

Reading about hurricanes again. Tracking and naming the storms have evolved over the history of European settlement in the New World. Christopher Columbus mentioned several large storms, but managed to stay safe from them. This book credits Benjamin Franklin with the first important new knowledge about them. In 1743 he deduced that a nor-easter which he observed in Philadelphia had moved from Boston by the fact that the clouds obscured a lunar eclipse in Philly, which he had been going to watch. He got information that the nor-easter had reached Boston after the eclipse was successfully watched there. His theory was that though the storm winds came from the northeast the body of the storm was moving from the southwest. Six years later he tracked a hurricane from North Carolina to New England, proving that the storms did move up the coast as an intact body rather than forming spontaneously where they hit. In 1831 a William Redfield published an article in a scientific journal describing the storms as being circular in form or “whirlwinds” with the wind blowing inward toward a slowly moving center. He also tracked hurricanes for the first time moving from the West Indies to the east coast of the US. He must have painstakingly tracked the changes in wind direction in the storm to have understood their shape and that they had a center of circulation, since he had no way to observe the storms from above as we do today. An Englishman named Henry Piddington went to India and observed storms there, giving them the name “cyclones,” a term meaning “coils of a snake.” The Jesuit priest Benito Vines of Cuba followed hurricanes until his death in 1893 and created an elaborate warning system throughout Cuba made up of volunteer observers, telegraph warnings and ship reports. He set up a system like the pony express of the US mail between the isolated villages to warn the inhabitants.

In 1870 Pres. U S Grant charged the U S Army Signal Service with the responsibility to track storms and give warnings in the US. They began the use of weather maps. Then in 1891 the U S Weather Bureau was formed under the Dept. of Agriculture, but only in 1898 was a specific hurricane forecasting service established. The first forecasting center was in Havana, Cuba. In 1902 it was moved to Washington, DC and in 1935 to Jacksonville, FL. In 1943 it was moved to Miami where it shared activities with the Navy and the Air Force. The first airplane flight into the eye of the storm was in 1943. In the 1950s radar began to be used to track storms and in 1960 the first weather satellite was launched into orbit. Communications also were improved, and computers came into use. Today the organization, still based in Miami, is called the TPC or Tropical Prediction Center and the National Hurricane Center is their forecasting facility. Due to the early warning system and the evacuation plans, casualties have been greatly reduced. Current techniques include supercomputer atmospheric modeling, Doppler radar, high altitude reconnaissance and global weather studies plotting seasonal trends.

The naming of storms in the 1700s through the first half of the 20th century was not done systematically. Storms were mainly identified by some popular name such as Racer's Storm or the Padre Ruiz hurricane. The Ruiz hurricane was given that name because it happened to occur during his funeral. In the nineteenth century they were named according to their position at sea as determined by ship reports. That proved confusing when there was more than one storm active. In the late 1800s an Australian meteorologist started naming them with women's names. In the US during the early 1900s they were given numbers within the year in question. After some years military observers began using alphabetical code names like Able, Baker, Charlie etc. Then in a 1941 novel the writer used a woman's name, which became the official method of naming in 1953. In the late 1970s the feminist movement became aroused and raised vociferous complaints, and in 1979 men's names and foreign names began to be used. When a storm causes a great amount of destruction that name is retired and never used for another storm. Hugo, Andrew, Opal and Fran have been retired. This system of naming is now used internationally, and prevents confusion.

The rest of the book goes all the way through to Opal in 1995. I didn't read about all of them simply because there were too many discussed, and the overall picture of what hurricanes are capable of doing has become clear to me. My appreciation for the potential damage has gone up since reading this. I had become used to seeing storm reports every year, and was beginning not to fear them much. The truth is that most of them don't hit Jacksonville, though the pages of this book showed that over the period on two hundred years a fair sized number did come in here. The theory is that the land mass of Georgia jutting out to sea right above Jacksonville tends to steer hurricanes out to sea and around us. Obviously that isn't always the case, though. The hurricane that I shouldn't fear is the one that doesn't hit here, because where they do hit directly, with the eye passing over, the damage is frequently catastrophic. Florida's ever increasing population centers along both coasts make the problem worse, due to the danger to so many human lives. I will pay more attention when a storm is moving toward us now, and maybe give thought to going to a shelter, though if there is a widespread power outage even a shelter might be pretty uncomfortable. The author stresses that there will be other “great” hurricanes like Hugo, Andrew and Fran, and any hurricane that strengthens greatly within a short distance from land is likely to inflict great damage and do so with surprise, even though our forecasting is better in recent years. Our evacuation routes and shelters aren't sufficient. The author said that secondary roads are preferred as routes over Interstates and turnpikes, which can become choked with cars trying to evacuate, and possibly becoming death traps as the cars can't go anywhere. Also some evacuation plans involve the staggering of the times that cars from adjacent localities get on the road. Each family, he says, should have an emergency evacuation route planned out before the storm is approaching, and that going a short distance of even ten miles may be more effective than trying to go a hundred miles or more. It has occurred to me that from here it is probably better to go west rather than north, because there is no river or shore there. I would probably get on Beaver St. and go as far as Baldwin and look for a motel room there. The other thing is to go sooner rather than later, especially if you are planning to stay overnight, or you may have to sleep in your car.

It's 7:35. I have read past my mealtime again. Once I get involved in some subject I can be very single-minded. To eat now.

Friday, September 6, 2013

8:53 News is on. The weather forecast for the next week has the temperature starting at 91 for today and progressively going down to 86 for most of the next seven days. Is this autumn coming, or a hurricane brewing? We have had no hurricanes this year, though there have been half a dozen or so named storms. If the weather is going to be cooler from now on I wouldn't mind, as long as it doesn't get cold until November. The sun is shining and rain isn't predicted.

I just took some time to delete quite a number of files off my desktop and in my “Work after 55” folder. I'm not looking for work anymore. I'm keeping my resumes and list of jobs just because I can't make the break emotionally yet. I haven't been retired long enough to adjust my ideas to my new condition. I'm enjoying my new freedom, though, and am more relaxed during the day.

I called Raquel and told her about the web sites offering low cost cat rabies vaccinations, and she said she would look at it. I got her email address so we can keep in touch.

Reading now. This book is called Florida's Hurricane History and is written by Jay Barnes, director of the North Carolina Aquarium. It was published by the University of North Carolina Press at Chapel Hill, NC. This is not a subject that I will probably read in complete detail like the book on dogs. I will skim parts of it.

The term hurricane is probably derived from the word Hurukan, the name of the Mayan storm god, and some other Caribbean words meaning “big wind” and “evil spirit.” In the western Pacific they are called typhoons, and in the Indian Ocean, cyclones. A “cyclone” is a low pressure area in which the winds rotate inward and upward, moving counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern. An anticyclone is a high pressure system and rotates in the opposite directions, bringing clear and sunny weather. All hurricanes no matter what their location or the term used for them are cyclones. They form in all tropical oceans except the South Atlantic and the Southeastern Pacific, and can come in various strengths. It begins with the “tropical wave” which is a low pressure trough drifting westward at the equator. Within it thunderstorms form, and it is then called a “tropical depression.” If it intensifies, developing wind as high as 39 mph it is then a “tropical storm.” If its wind reaches 74 mph, its air pressure continues to lower and the winds become organized in a circular pattern, it is a hurricane. The spinning of the winds is caused by the rotation of the earth and is called the Coriolis effect. The winds start to spiral inward in response to the friction with the water surface, pulling in more warm, moist air from the surrounding area and the storm strengthens. When the circle of winds is complete and an eye has formed, the winds next to the eye in the eyewall are at their most destructive. They require warm water to strengthen, and will weaken when they move over cooler water or land. Typically hurricanes are formed in the Atlantic between June and November, but they have been known to occur either prior to or after that time. September is the peak of the hurricane season in the waters off Florida. The Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Africa are the source of the most dangerous storms that strike Florida, occurring most often in August and September. Earlier or later in the season the source of storms is more likely to be the Gulf of Mexico or the Caribbean, and they aren't usually as severe. The “nor'easters” developing in the winter off the Florida coasts can be damaging, but are not true hurricanes. They are called “extratropical cyclones” and lack the warm central air mass and the eye. Every year about 60 tropical waves form off the coast of Florida or Africa, but only about 6 make it to hurricane status.

The “Saffir-Simpson scale is used to rate the intensity of a hurricane. It goes from the numbers 1 through 5, based on the gradation of sustained wind strength. Gusts of wind in the storm, or particular structures such as a “suction vortex” which can occur in the eye wall and act like a tornado, can be much higher than the sustained wind. Some storms have totally broken the instruments measuring wind speed due to their strength. In this measuring scale wind of 74-95 mph is classed as a number 1. A number 5 has sustained wind of over 155 mph and a tidal surge of over 18 feet. The terrible storm Andrew was only a category 4. A storm simply called the Labor Day storm in 1935 was a number 5, and had sustained winds estimated at 200 mph. This is stronger wind than the average tornado contains. Some storms like Camille go inland for great distances retaining severely damaging winds, in spite of the fact that passing over land tends to weaken them. Camille went through Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia. Its tidal surge was 25 feet high. It dropped 27 inches of rain in eight hours in Virginia and caused flash floods there that killed 109 people. That was in 1969, and was the last storm of that strength to come ashore in the US, up to the 1998 publication date of this book.

The author mentions that damage from increasingly high winds does not increase in direct proportion to the change in wind speed, but to the square of the change, or “quadratically.” A 140 mph wind will do four times as much damage as a 70 mph wind. Tree branches, road signs, lawn furniture, lumber and other items are airborne in a 100 mph gust of wind. At 96 to 110 mph roofs, doors and windows are damaged, as are mobile homes, trees, signs, piers and small boats, with flooding of coastal routes. 111 to 130 mph brings structural damage to buildings, destroys mobile homes and causes substantial regional flooding along beaches and rivers.
Sustained winds of 131-155 mph cause extensive structural damage and complete roof failures. with all terrain under 10 feet above sea level flooded. Finally, the strongest winds of greater than 155 (and recorded as high as 200 mph) cause complete roof failures on many homes and businesses with complete structural failure on many buildings. While the strongest tornadoes do more damage than a number 5 hurricane where they hit, most do not, and at least tornadoes rarely affect as wide a swath of land as a large hurricane does. So hurricanes get the prize for being the worst. Luckily, less than 5% of Atlantic storms reach the category 5. Since 1900, six category 4 storms have hit Florida and a category 5 in 1935.

Like tornado winds, hurricanes have picked up objects like planks and driven them through structural walls, trees or posts. In Hurricane Andrew “a massive concrete and steel beam measuring eighteen feet in length, with part of a roof section still attached, was carried through the air more than 150 feet. In the same storm, a possible vortex near the Hurricane Center lifted cars off the ground and dropped them onto other cars.”

Despite the damage of the winds, the storm surge is the most dangerous part of a hurricane. The winds and lowered barometric pressure in the storm cause the water they cross to rise up into a swirling column, and it is then driven over the land. While the storm is still out at sea the dome of water may be only a few feet high, but when it reaches the shallow water near the shore it rises up higher like a tsunami. In strong hurricanes the storm surge once it reached land has been more than 20 feet above sea level, destroying all structures on the beach. While still at sea the storm surge produces large swell of water which travel ahead of the storm by as much as several days and create huge surf on the shore. The swells tend to be evenly spaced and be as high as ten feet. The shape of the sea floor and coastline can cause storm surge damage to be worse. In the Bay of Bengal an event called the Hooghly disaster, from the presence of the Hooghly River, in 1737, in which a storm “wave” estimated at 40 feet came ashore and killed 300,000 people. At Martinique, St. Eustatius and Barbados the Great Hurricane of 1780 killed 22,000. Hurricane winds have also been known to pull the water back from the shore out to sea exposing the sand of the sea bottom and taking boats from the harbor with it. The storm surge usually builds gradually over a span of minutes to hours, but it has been known to come in suddenly. In the Galveston hurricane of 1900 over 8,000 people were killed when this happened. The author also mentions something called a “bore,” which is “a high, abrupt tidal wave that sweeps through narrow channels.” It occurred in a 1926 hurricane on the Miami River, destroying a number of boats that were moored there to keep them safe from the storm. It was caused by the shifting of the wind when the eye passed over the city. Florida's greatest flood disaster was the loss of 2,000 people when the waters of Lake Okeechobee were driven over the levee by hurricane winds.

And then there is rain. Wherever the storm passes, there are huge quantities of rain. Typically at least 6 to 12 inches of rain falls, as the downpour may go on for days if the storm is slow to move through the area. Even after it was diminished to a tropical storm, Hurricane Agnes in 1972 caused flooding all the way from Florida to New York state. On the other hand a hurricane passed over the city of Miami depositing only 0.35 inches of rain! Some of what controls that is how soon the storm moves out of the area. A hurricane that drifted in circles for three days over Cedar Key dropped 38.70 inches. City flooding in Florida is often a problem because most of Florida is flat, and the water can't run off as easily as in hilly areas. Fouled drinking water, power outages and stalled traffic flow cause problems.

Tornadoes are often spawned by hurricanes, usually striking on the fringes of the storm rather than near the center. Florida averages 44 tornadoes a year, which is more than Kansas. A simple severe thunderstorm can develop a tornado. The tornadoes in Florida are not as large and destructive as those in the Midwest, but they still destroy homes and other structures. In 1972 Hurricane Agnes spawned 15 tornadoes, destroying 80 mobile homes at one site and causing $4,000,000 in damages.

The right front quadrant of the eyewall in a hurricane produces the greatest amount of damage in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. The radiating arms of the storm can cause rain and wind even if the eye never comes ashore. How much damage from wind and rain are caused has a great deal to do with how fast the storm is progressing forward. Over tropical water, they tend to be moving between 8 and 15 mph, but may accelerate up to 30 to 50 mph over cooler northern water. Fast-moving hurricanes have sometimes caused great damage in New England where their forward speed increased. In Florida they are usually moving about 15 mph.

The end of reading and writing for this day. Goodbye.

Thursday, September 5, 2013

8:06 AM Morning news – Photographer Ray Bellisario is auctioning off his collection of 20,000 shots of the British royal family and other celebrities. These photographs are candid shots including Prince Charles water skiing while sitting in a chair, the Queen doing the twist and Princess Anne falling off her horse. He went to royal events strolling around with his camera and kept his eye open for the compromising shots. He began his activities in 1954 at the age of 18, shortly after the Queen was crowned. His pictures were blacklisted in the United Kingdom, but were sold abroad. He is expecting some 500,000 pounds or $1.6 million for the collection.

Reading. About dog intelligence, the author said it is hard to measure and to pin down to specific breeds. Mutts vary widely on intelligence. The border collie probably ranks at the top on trainability, which he said is easier to measure, and the Afghan hound, other hounds and terriers are at the bottom. Are the hunting dogs more instinctual in their behavior? Maybe their intelligence should be judged more on how they discover and flush out the prey without killing it. The border collie Rico is known for having a word vocabulary of 200 names for his toys. The handler takes him into an adjacent room to his toy storeroom and tells him to go get one of his toys, referenced by its name. Rico immediately does it. The handler even gave him an unfamiliar word as the name of a toy, and Rico, recognizing that he didn't have a familiar toy by that name, selected a new toy that had recently been placed in the room. In other words, he deduced which toy to bring out by the fact that it was unfamiliar. So there is some degree of “thinking” with dogs. Rico is said to be able to learn a new name for a new toy after being told the word just one time. Human psychologists call this “fast mapping” and they had thought that only human toddlers could do it. My mixed breed terrier when I was a child could pick words out of conversation and react to them, and would show signs of appreciation and attention if you talked about her. People who have interacted closely with dogs and observed them with an open mind, in other words, rather than firmly assuming they are extremely inferior to humans, will probably have personal stories to tell of their intelligence. I think if you get away from the realm of dogs doing tricks like “roll over” and “give me howdy” and go more toward watching them interacting with the world you will see their intelligence. The dogs that have been trained to help paraplegics around the house are especially interesting. Monkeys have also been trained to do that. On Animal Planet there was a show about those dogs. The paraplegic man had tied a towel to the handle of the refrigerator door and would ask his golden retriever to bring him a beer. The dog would go immediately to the kitchen and pull the fridge open by the towel and get a beer out for the man, carrying it carefully to him. Many pets, when the owner interacts frequently and with warmth and patience with them, learn a great deal. Plus they learn by observing people doing things around the house. The author cites one of his dogs that quickly learned to open the screen door and escape from watching the author do it. When they tried to circumvent this by always closing the wooden door which had a handle on it, the dog soon learned on his own to pull the handle down and let himself out. It is obvious to me that animal intelligence is similar to human intelligence, but is not quite as highly developed. Also it is hard to test them, especially on language, because they don't have the vocal cords and throat to talk. Birds that can talk, specifically the African gray parrot Alex, showed some reasoning and recognition of the meaning of the words, rather than simply being able to say them, and several apes including Kanzi the chimpanzee and Koko the gorilla have been taught human sign language. Koko made the news a couple of years ago by telling Penny her owner that she had a pain on the scale of 9 in her mouth. They took her to a veterinarian who put her to sleep and pulled her decayed tooth, meanwhile taking the opportunity to give her some other physical exams.

Other traits that psychologists have researched in animals are self-awareness, empathy and consciousness. A number of chimpanzees passed the test of self-awareness by recognizing themselves in a mirror and touching their own body where a streak of lipstick had been applied, rather than touching the image on the mirror. In other words, they recognized that the mirror was merely reflecting their own image. Not all chimps recognized themselves, though. Some thought it was another individual and showed fear. Most dogs don't show any recognition of their image in a mirror, and the author said they don't even seem to recognize it as a dog. I have a story about a border collie, however, which breaks this rule. This dog, owned by my first husband's family, was in the sitting room with me on Christmas morning after the gifts had been unwrapped, sharing some mutual affection. I took a large red ribbon off the floor and put it around her neck, and it looked so pretty with her thick black fur and white collar that I began saying repeatedly, “Oh, you look so pretty! You're beautiful!” After about thirty seconds of this she abruptly moved away from me to a long mirror that was hanging on the door and looked at herself in the mirror while “smiling” widely. I am convinced she knew what I was saying, first, and secondly that she did indeed have “self awareness.” My husband and I also had a German shepherd that would sometimes show signs of problem solving and attempts at communication with body language, once jiggling the door keys that were hanging in the lock with his nose as we stood too long talking and saying goodbye. He seemed to be saying, “Let's go already!” Clearly some dogs are brighter than others, but it is also a matter of the owner paying a great deal of attention to the dog on a regular basis and talking to them, while observing what they do. If you take your animal and tie it up on a chain outdoors all the time, maybe beating it for barking and just feeding it a couple of times a day, you won't see much intelligence.

About empathy, I have had my terrier Butch to come up to me when I was sitting and feeling down and put her head in my lap, licking my face. Again, you have to form a relationship with the animal to see empathy. The author said that scientists have identified “mirror neurons” in the brain which initiate imitation, so that when the viewer sees happiness or sadness or other feelings, a part of their brain imitates the mood and we can therefore identify with the other person or being. Chimpanzees when they are together in a group will come over to comfort a member of the group who has just been injured in a fight, for instance. This is one of those things that I would expect to find in a social animal such as a human, an ape or a dog, maybe even a dolphin. The author said that dogs clearly have “at least a limited capacity” for imitation.

The author also looks at the ability to be conscious of the thoughts or intentions of other individuals. Psychologists call this “Theory of Mind,” and are studying a wide range of social animals, not just the most intelligent ones. It is probably an important basic instinct to watch others to see what their mood is. It keeps the individual from being assaulted within the group and tells them when the others have found a source of food. The author says that even small puppies can read canine body language. Dogs also watch human faces closely for signals as to what is going on, and cooperate with their masters.

Can dogs plan ahead? The author tells a story of one of his six dogs that was used to sleeping in a crate by the owner's bed, while another of the dogs went to the bed to sleep. Both dogs would go to the bedroom a few minutes before the owners retired, because they were used to the sleep schedule. The crate dog observed the other dog going to the bed and began to precede the others into the bedroom and hide between the bed and the wall underneath the dust cover, and after a few minutes hop up on the bed herself. She seemed to have planned to secrete herself in order to circumvent being put into the crate. I have a story about my terrier Butch. At least one time I remarked out loud to Mother that I was going to wash Butch, and she immediately disappeared, hiding from me. After that I spelled out “wash Butch” with better results.

The author talks about love. Do dogs love their masters or their mates? Apparently dogs lost the wolf trait of pairing off with a mate for a long-term relationship. Papa dog goes about his business after the mating while Mom raises the babies. Do they love their masters? The author thinks so, in a doggy sort of way. They definitely miss them if they are absent, and try to please them, showing empathy and cooperating closely.

About dog bites, Page says that some breeds are indeed statistically more prone to be the attackers, though not all members of the breeds are necessarily aggressive. Pit bulls and rottweilers are cited the most frequently for actually killing people, though I have seen in other sources that German shepherd attacks are also more commonly fatal than others. He also listed Akitas, Domermans, Chow chows, huskies and Rhodesian Ridgebacks. The Rhodesian Ridgeback was developed from interbreeding with a “semi-domesticated” hunting dog of the African tribe called the Khoikhoi, and was used to hunt lions, wild pigs and baboons, so they are formidable fighters. They were also known for fierceness as guard dogs. He says that while the upbringing of the dog is a very important factor in producing an aggressive and dangerous individual, that the genetic traits bred in are also very important. As much as I like dogs in general, I would never have a rottweiler or pit bull, and certainly not a Rhodesian Ridgeback. I can't imagine why some people are so fearful that they need that kind of protection for their house. I want a warm, affectionate and intelligent dog that will be a good companion. It is my experience with dogs that most of them in a pinch will try to defend their home or their masters if they are under attack. You want a guard dog that will bark loudly and persistently to attract the neighbor's attention, and will threaten someone who comes on the property and tries to attack a human, but which will be able to tell the difference between a hostile human and a friendly one, in other words, they need to be intelligent and well-socialized to people. I think a border collie would make a good watch dog, while gently and patiently helping to take care of your children.

The Appendix on obedience trainability breaks it down by breeds, and includes the number of attempts it takes to get them to understand what is wanted and to do it on command. There are great variances between the breeds. It takes a border collie, the champion of all breeds, just 5 exposures to a new command to learn it and they will obey 90% of the time. There were ten breeds in this top category, including also the Poodle (I have seen it before given as the large or “standard” poodle and not those little fluffy ones), German shepherd, Golden retriever, Doberman, Shetland sheep dog, Labrador retriever, Papillon, Rottweiler and Australian cattle dog. The least clever, requiring as much as a hundred repetitions and when they do obey they show signs of being annoyed includes the Shih-tzu, basset hound, beagle, mastiff, Pekingese, Afghan hound, blood hound, Chow-chow and bulldog. How much of their disobedience is a lack of desire to be pleasing to their masters, I wonder? The only one of these breeds that I have ever been around is the Basset hound, and that dog was very slow to come when called, but seemed cheerful and friendly. I assumed it was just stubborn. Its owner said she had trouble with it when it was on the leash also, and that was a problem because the dog weighed fifty pounds and she was a very small woman, so it could pull her around. The author said that in choosing mongrels for pets to chose according to what breed the dog most closely resembles in order to pick a personality that you want.

Wild dogs of modern times are the subject of Appendix D. The author first discusses the foxes, of which there are 22 species out of the 35 wild dog species. They occur on every continent except Antarctica. The most widespread of the species is the red fox, starting in Eurasia and spreading to North Africa, though they were not native to the southeastern US and Australia, but introduced by mankind. They are also the largest of the foxes, growing up to 30 pounds. Their coat varies in color from red or mingled in color to black or even white. In upland areas their coats tend to be a golden red while in lowland areas they tend more to be paler and more yellowish. They avoid the territories of wolves and coyotes which will eat them, and also they don't like dense woods or deserts. They are comfortable living in towns and cities, as there are no natural predators there. They live in small groups consisting of a single mating pair with a few daughters to help raise the kits. A female is called a vixen and the male is called a dog fox. They eat insects, mice and voles mainly, but have been known to kill and eat the young of wild boars or deer, so they are powerful predators. They also scavenge on garbage dumps like dogs, and approach houses to eat food from the pet dog's dish. They have very good ears, being able to hear a mouse as far away as 150 feet. Than can broad jump 6 feet and leap over a normal sized fence, and they can run for some distance at a speed of 30 mph. They have been characterized in many stories down through time as being very clever and good escape artists. There is only two other foxes in North America, the “swift fox” or kit fox and the gray fox, which is a different genus, and differs in several ways, especially in that it has large curving claws that enable it to climb trees. They sometimes nest as high up as 30 feet, and will run up a tree like a cat when chased by dogs. The are also the Fennec of the deserts of North Africa and several other species in the dry regions of Africa, plus one that lives above 16,000 feet in Tibet, one that ranges from India to Pakistan, and one in southern Russia. There are also a number of types in South America. There is one in Africa that eats mainly termites and other insects, and even has a specialize set of teeth to chew the hard shells of the insects. At the Arctic Circle there is a species that changes its coat from brownish in the summer to white or bluish in the winter, presumably to blend in with the snow and hair-covered feet to prevent frostbite. This Arctic Fox has a relationship with the lemmings in which it's population figures go up every four years, as does the population of the lemmings, so it can reap the benefit of the extra food supply. They must have lived in that area with the lemmings an awfully long time to have developed this parallel pattern.

The large wild dogs include wolves, coyotes, African hunting dogs and jackals. Hyenas are not dogs, but are closer to felines and “viverrids”. The classification of viverrid includes the African linsang, binturongs and the African civet. The next group of wild canids is called “hunting dogs” and consists of the Dhole of southeast Asia and the African wild dog or Cape Hunting Dog. Neither is very large, but they hunt in packs and can run until the prey animal gets tired, so they can bring down large prey. Jackals come in four species, most of which live in Africa, though one lives in Asia and into Europe as far west as Italy. They eat anything from insects to gazelles, often preferring to scavenge the kills of other predators. They live in small packs with one mating pair and several of their young which help in raising the new offspring. They “yell, woof, whine, growl and howl. All jackals are smaller than the hunting dogs and resemble foxes. The largest jackal type weighs about 40 pounds. This is called the Simien Jackal and is thought by some biologists as being related to wolves and coyotes than to the other jackals.

The last of the wild dogs is the coyote, which play a large role in Navaho folklore, being part of their creation story, and are known for their intelligence. They sometimes are solitary, but often hunt in small packs, bringing down deer and even elk, but they also eat small mammals and insects. They sometimes hunt in the daytime, but are more often nocturnal. They range in size from 35 to75 pounds. When they live in cities they will eat small pets, especially house cats. They also kill livestock, and so they are hunted by farmers and ranchers. They have spread from the West to the whole United States except for Hawaii. They have interbred with both wolves and domestic dogs. Coyotes are not bothered by the presence of humans, and don't try to attack them.

This is the end of that book. It was all fascinating and written in a way that scientific terms and theories when they occurred were explained for the most part. I did thoroughly enjoy it. It's 4:46. To my emails now.

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

John McCain was caught by a news photographer playing poker on his I-phone during a Senate hearing on the Syria Crisis while John Kerry, Chuck Hagel and Gen. Martin Dempsey gave testimony. He tweeted, “Scandal! Caught playing I-phone game at 3+ hour Senate hearing – worst of all I lost!” He is cute, even if he is on the wrong side of the political fence. If I had to have a Republican president again I wouldn't mind having him. I think he is an enlightened man.

Today I have to have the car taken to the shop. In 30 minutes, as a matter of fact. Better get dressed!

10:04 I'm waiting for the man from Quality Tire and Auto to call me. He said he would come around 10:00 with a trailer to take the car. Hoda and Kathy Lee are on. They are really zany and I enjoy watching them sometimes. They always have a glass of wine apiece, though I notice they aren't usually drinking it, and though they get a little wild sometimes they don't stray into the area of very bad taste. 10:09 The car man just called. He said he will call me in about fifteen minutes and I can come down to meet him. I want to take my book and go to his shop with him. I'm hoping it won't be a very lengthy repair session. If the man who helped me in the parking lot was wrong in his guess that it was the distributor cap it may take a long time and cost more money. I hope he was right. Maybe I should just stay here and give the man my car key. That way I can be more relaxed while I'm waiting. That's what I'll do. 10:20 Mike just came and took my car keys. Said he would call me in a couple of hours.

Reading about dogs now. The famous sense of smell is due to the extensive amount of tissue called olfactory epithelium, about 60 square inches in a beagle. The author says this is about as much as a typical piece of typing paper. Pretty big, but it covers a series of bony plates, which is how it all gets packed into such a short distance as a beagle's snout. It contains 225 million scent receptors, as compared with the human who has about five million receptors. A blood hound has 300 million receptors. The sharpest dog noses are a million times more acute than a human's. A dog can detect scent molecules in concentrations as low as the typical homeopathic medicine (a strange medical theory in which very small amounts of the “medicine” are given to cure an illness) dose, and they can identify and react mentally to a number of scents at the same time, whereas the human can only smell one thing at a time in most cases. They can detect the scent of prey which is no longer there, within the range of a few minutes. Identical twins can be differentiated by scent when they are together, but when the dog is set onto the tracks of twins that split up and walked in separate directions, the dog followed the wrong twin. With different people walking in a line and stepping in each others footprints, the dog being set to the lead man's scent, the dog can discriminate the lead man's track when he diverges into a new direction.

The vision of a dog is not as good as a human's in some ways and is better in others. Their eyes are set farther apart, so they see more to the sides, but they have less depth perception and distance vision. Flat faced dogs and “sight hounds” like the Afghan and Saluki have better distance vision and depth perception because their eyes face farther forward than most dogs and they have a wider range of sight with both eyes, or binocular vision. They still don't have as much binocular vision as humans and apes do. Dogs and wolves can see better in dim light such as dawn and dusk than humans, which is when many prey species are out and active. This is caused by their having larger pupils to let in more light. Humans see more detail than most dogs do, due to differences in the lens, retina and a structure called the fovea which humans have and dogs don't. It is a concentration of cones on the retina directly behind the lens. Dogs can't close their pupils enough to see in good focus in bright light. Their eye is geared to dim light. Dogs also have fewer “cones” in their eyes, which is the structure that perceives color. Dogs can see some color, but not as much as humans. They can see some blues, some yellows and gray, but not red, and the colors green, yellow and orange are perceived as yellowish. Due to a “streak” of cones on the retina, dogs and other animals that move fast can see movement better, especially on the horizon, where there may be a herd of prey animals. Dogs and other animals that have the “streak” of cones may not notice an animal or object that remains still. (Hence, many species will freeze in place when alarmed.) A dog's eye has an opaque, reflective layer of cells which causes their eyes to glow that eerie greenish color in the beam of a flashlight. He didn't say what the function of that is, but cats eyes glow that way, too, so maybe it helps them to see in semi-darkness. The author comments that you shouldn't buy a blue frisbee for your dog, because it will seem to disappear against the blue sky. This author, while informative, is very entertaining.

What about hearing? Humans can hear at frequencies between 20 Hz, about the frequency of a string bass at its lowest, and 20,000 Hz, or about three octaves above the high notes on a piano. A dog can hear about the same on the low scale, but up to about 40,000 Hz, in the range of what is called ultrasound. That is the frequency of sounds made by small mammals, which all dogs would hunt and eat in the wild. Even wolves eat mice, which I first learned from a great movie called “Never Cry Wolf,” in which a researcher camps the whole winter in the wilds of Alaska to watch wolf behavior and their predation on caribou. He is lucky enough to have a pair of wolves which have a den within sight of his tent to watch. They are not disturbed by his presence if he stays within a boundary that he set up around his tent by distributing his urine on the ground in a big circle. As he watches the wolves he sees the female repeatedly jumping up and down with her nose to the snow and grabbing mice. She could hear their squeaks through the snow. He sets up a humorous, but effective, experiment to prove that the wolves don't need to decimate the caribou population, because they are eating mice. I recommend that movie to anyone who likes animals. It came out around fifteen years ago, I think, and is based on a book by the same name which I also read, and which is a true account rather than fiction.

And then there is ESP. What could it possibly be, really, and do dogs have it? How can a dog know within ten minutes or so when their owner is going to show up at home, and be there in front of the door waiting for him? They operate on a “circadian rhythm” of 22 to 24 hours, depending on the dog, and can track time to that range, so they simply remember when the owner is due and become alert to the need to go to the meeting place, in other words the front door. The author cites a case when his friend gave his dog Sasha to them because the owner was moving away. For a time Sasha would go to the front door and wait awhile each day, but finally gave it up when she realized the her master was not going to show up anymore. Then out of the blue Sasha began to go to the door and wait again. The author found out that in fact Sasha's owner had made a trip to town that weekend, not coming by to see Sasha for fear of upsetting her attachment to her new owner the author. How did Sasha know her master was in town? The author cites Niko Tinbergen, an “ethologist” (a field of zoology that studies animal behavior) as saying ESP is due simply to sensory perception that is presently unknown to science, such as elephants communicating over long distances with other elephants using very low frequency sound. Also animals sometimes, but not in all cases, begin to panic and act odd before an earthquake. It is thought that their hearing or some other sense, such as perceiving electromagnetic waves, is the cause of it, with the earth giving off sounds or waves as it begins to shift, and before the major movement occurs. The author said that the Chinese town of Haicheng was evacuated by Chinese seismologists based on the behavior of animals, and that a major earthquake did occur the next day. So how do they find their way home from long distances? The author said scientists suspect that they can navigate by the angle of the sun's rays, by the polarization of light, or by some kind of electromagnetic sense. Nothing has been proven, however. Cats have also been known to do this.

Barking and the several other doggy sounds are used differently in differing circumstances, and are therefor not unlike a language. The author said that adult wolves don't frequently bark, though when in their pack they will sometimes do it as an alarm sound. Wolf puppies bark more often, and it is therefore a babyish sound, like the fact that their noses are shorter than adult wolves. Humans may have chosen animals to tame because they bark a lot, therefore giving a warning when there is danger or a stranger is coming up. There are a number of different kinds of barks and yelps and whines, plus the warning growl and the immediately threatening snarl. Humans can learn to interpret them with practice. Scientist have recorded these various sounds and graphed them on paper to explain them further. The “bark” sound of a dog is actually two sounds emitted in rapid succession, a higher pitched sound and a lower sound, and is an alarm sound. Many other animals and even birds also use alarm sounds with that high to low structure, and have a low pitched threatening sound. To me that tells me that it is a characteristic that goes a long way back over evolutionary time to the earliest mammals and birds and maybe even dinosaurs, if birds are descended from specialized dinosaurs. I also would guess that it is more characteristic of social animals than those that live a solitary life. I think a human shout for attention probably also starts higher pitched and then goes lower. I have seen some very interesting writing about specific animal sounds that scientists have recorded in some species which included a number of characteristic and specialized calls, some of which were used in very distinctive situations, as particular as the presence of a snake in the grass nearby or a raptor flying overhead. I think that was some monkeys that they were studying.

Howling is something that wolves all do, but most dogs only do occasionally. The husky, malamute, pack hounds and dobermans howl more often than other dogs. Dogs howl most often when they have been left alone at home or isolated outside the house on a chain, when another dog is howling, and in response to certain kinds of music. The author asks, are they singing? He says it hasn't been proven why dogs will howl along with a violin. It could be because the range of the violin goes up so high and hurts their ears, but I have sometimes thought it is because the violin can sound something like a wolf howling, and the dog will respond by howling along. The author said that howling is mainly a long distance communication method and can be either a warning to a stranger to stay away, or a greeting. They also howl in groups when they are hunting or getting ready to hunt. The author compared it to a pep rally. My first husband had a recording of wolves howling, and they sounded very musical. Maybe they actually are singing. Why not?

1:41 I have forgotten my lunch again. I still don't feel very hungry. I think I'll just eat some milk and peanut butter crackers.

The car is back from the shop. My mechanic is a really good guy. He doesn't overcharge or try to fool me into buying something I don't need. He saved me money by laboriously cleaning the spark plugs and several other things that had oil on them, replaced a fan that wasn't working, changed my oil and tightened up the spots where the oil was leaking. It cost me $404.00, but would have been more if he had simply replaced the parts that he cleaned. I have never had the car break down again immediately after he has fixed it like I did at another shop, and concluded that the mechanic broke something while he was fixing the original problem. This money will come out of my savings, but it costs money to keep a car, and at the age my car is it's a wonder it's not in the shop more often. It is a 1993 with 181,000 miles on it.

4:57 It's time for the news. I