 |
| Dog Advice | People's Dogs | Having fun with Dog | Dog Accessories | |||
Dog-E-Biz -------------------- Doglinks: HOME |
||||||
| Dogs & Kids | Health & Welfare | Travels with Charlie | Communication |
|||
|
More of Non-Doggie Sites and Readings |
Non-Doggie Sites Best jobs in America -- by salary and other criteria Marksmanship guide Even if you don't shoot, this is a very cool graphical training aid |
Doggie and non-Dog Reading What does the idiom: "Give a dog a bad name" mean? A person who is generally known to have been guilty of some offence will always be suspected to be the author of all similar types of offence. Once someone has gained a bad reputation, it is very difficult to lose it. Dunedin Dog Show- 1897- the first one! Everything for a Dog (5 hours audio) from Christchurch Library |
Back4Sure -- freeware tool for easy backups Feeding a family for a week: a photo essay The Evolution of Life in 60 Seconds is an experiment in scale: By condensing 4.6 billion years of history into a minute, the video is a self-contained timepiece. Like a specialized clock, it gives one a sense of perspective. Everything??from the formation of the Earth, to the Cambrian Explosion, to the evolution of mice and squirrels??is proportionate to everything else, displaying humankind as a blip, almost indiscernible in the layered course of history. Do the Time Warp Take a trip through Time Warp's high-speed scenes frame by frame. Watch how a dog shakes his head and the saliva goes everywhere. "William And The Windmill" is a multimedia presentation from "The Star" in Canada about William Kamkwamba and is story (that is getting more known everyday) of putting together scraps to make a windmill to generate electricity in Malawi. Not only is the video well-made, most of it is closed-captioned and accessible to English Language Learners. Malawi windmill boy with big fans is a BBC article about the same story, just in case you want to learn more about him. Atomic dogs: The making of an internet sensation On the floor, 16 golden retrievers stare up at me bemused. They are arranged in a square, four by four. I watch through the viewfinder of my video camera. This, I think to myself, could make me famous.How Memory Works This is great multimedia resource created by the Public Broadcasting System NOVA scienceNOW program. The show aired originally on August 25, 2009, but you can still watch portions of the program online. The main video describes the work being done on the brain of "H.M.," a man who had brain surgery that left him unable to form long-term memories. VoiceThread You can upload pictures and create an audio narrative to go along with them. In addition, audio comments can be left by visitors. VoiceThread also provides a great deal to teachers by allowing them to get their premium services for free, including allowing them to create a zillion VoiceThreads for free. Sporcle trivia, quizzes, language games, etc. Dale's Cone of Experience rebutted People do NOT remember 10% of what they read, 20% of what they see, 30% of what they hear, etc. That information, and similar pronouncements are fraudulent. Recipe: Asian roasted carrots Desert Island Discs Long-time BBC show where guests are asked to name 8 pieces of music to have on a desert isle, which presumably has a gramophone powered by coconut oil. The guests also choose a book, other than the Bible or complete Shakespeare, and a luxury item -- an inanimate object, not for escaping the island or communicating. Literary map of San Francisco Plan B: What to Do When All Else Has Failed to Change Your Kid's Behavior More child-rearing advice for dealing with rotten kids Dr. Johnson's House Gough Square, near Fleet St, in London, where he lived for about 10 yrs and worked on his dictionary. For me, this is one of the holy shrines of the western world 1001 things to do with Liquid Nitrogen How to teach your rat to fetch things People Naturally Walk in Circles In a follow-up experiment, the researchers challenged 15 people to walk straight while blindfolded. When they couldn't see at all, the walkers ended up going in surprisingly small circles -- with a diameter of less than 66 feet. Go Animate- Anyone can create an animation! Popurls- Genuine aggregator (not alligator) Post Crossing send a postcard and receive a postcard back from a random person somewhere in the world! Memory tips and tricks How to e-mail a text message to someone's cell phone New York Sites' Science section- I love it! Boustrophedon text reader and sample page Tipcam You can create videos as FLV or AVI. No limit to the length of the video. ScreenCastle the screencast recorder and record a screencast directly from you browser Recuva shareware file recovery tool- Supposed to be one of the better tools for recovering accidentally deleted files Irish student hoaxes world's media with fake quote Hugh Laurie interviewed and interviewed and interviewed and interviewed Really cool assorted photos- Check out all the other photos on his website. Elizabeth Warren on *The Daily Show*, explaining TARP and the Eco-conscious Battery World Aust/NZ Points to free battery recycling Gordon Ramsay making a scramble out of scrambled eggs DrugWatch database: It reveals the side effects and herbal interactions of more than 540 popular brand name drugs . Torpedo7 (NZ) Sports equipment online. They also have 1-Day which offers daily specials. BitMeter BitMeter is a bandwidth meter that allows you to visually monitor your Internet connection by displaying a scrolling graph that shows your upload and download speed over time. PriceSpy (NZ) A site dedicated to providing information on the best deals in cameras, cell phones & computer hardware/software in New Zealand. One has to be quite sure of what exactly they require before beginning to search for items on this site be- cause of the immense amount of information presented one could easily get overwhelmed with it Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. Cards - Quick! 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know You probably had no idea you could even do these things. Whether you want to is another matter. Jessica Conant-Park and Susan Conant Font Types: Da Font and 1001 Free Fonts Chinese pregnancy calendar to predict gender of child --various URLs all over the Web Secunia vulnerability scanning Reading Test- The paomnnehel pweor of the hmuan mnid Be irrepressible Chat rooms monitored. Blogs deleted. Websites blocked. Search engines restricted. People imprisoned for simply posting and sharing information. Will it blend? These guys put anything in a blender to see if it will be blend? Colour Lovers Colours for inspiration. Great to figure out the colour scheme of a new website. Excerpt from *The Philosopher and the Wolf: Lessons from the Wild on Love, Death, and Happiness* by Mark Rowlands |
Babies Understand "Dog Speak" How to Teach Physics to Your Dog Supposed to be a very well done book explaining quantum mechanics and other arcana. Here's the book itself Crash test -- 1959 Chevy Bel Air vs. 2009 Chevy Malibu. They don't build 'em like they used to. And that's a good thing My latest summer reading Richard Russo's The Old Cape Magic. This book is available at the Christchurch library. The plot: The story revolves around a past-middle-age former Hollywood screenwriter, Jack Griffin, who is presently teaching creative writing at a New England college. He loses both parents within a year of each other, and he travels considerable distance to attend two weddings during the same time. As he travels, and as he interacts both with his family and his in-laws, he ponders marital and family relationships. He is also mulling whether to remain in New England or return to the uncertainty of Hollywood. The annual round-up of books, in time, I hope, for your howliday shopping: Alexandra Horowitz's Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know Ted Kerasote's Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog The Encyclopedia of Dog Sports and Activities: A Field Guide of More Than 35 Fun Activities for You and Your Dog Off and on watching the Janice Gunn videos. For some reason, Gunn excludes any footage of people presenting their own dogs out of respect for privacy. This seems a little odd to me, since in so many videos -- such as the recent one by Michael Ellis -- the whole point is to demonstrate how to work through a problem, how to apply the method correctly. Couple of "graphic novels" -- comic books, really: Michael Keller's illustrated version of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species: A Graphic Adaptation Lots of graphic adaptations are just shortcuts to writing a real novel, I suppose -- Greg Rucka's *Whiteout* books, for example Final Crisis: Revelations HC Getting to the end of my stack of books on the Battle of Britain -- Michael Korda's With Wings Like Eagles: A History of the Battle of Britain Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog Couple of language books. I'm Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears and Other Intriguing Idioms From Around the World In the book Dogs Bite: But Balloons and Slippers Are More Dangerous, Janis Bradley shows in a convincing and entertaining manner that dogs are in fact much safer than many common household objects and activities. The Science of Fear: Why We Fear the Things We Shouldn't--and Put Ourselves in Greater Danger by Dan Gardner (Ottawa Journalist for the Ottawa Citizen- my hometown) Good reading especially since this episode in Invercargill (and Rotorua) where they think that killing puppies is okay... Reason: they have the ''potential'' of being aggressive. For word lovers, Foyle's Philavery and Foyle's Further Philavery The Unwritten Rules of Baseball: The Etiquette, Conventional Wisdom, and Axiomatic Codes of Our National Pastime Unfortunately, Dickson keeps repeating the point that when "going against the book" works, you're a genius, and when it fails, you're a dolt. This is true with any kind of heterodox approach, and moreover, what seems novel now will become SOP later. For example, it was very radical when teams first used "the shift" against Ted Williams, but that kind of defensive alignment is now quite common against some hitters. The Whiskey Rebels by David Liss, one of several historical mysteries he's written -- this one set in 1792 when the young American republic was struggling over Hamilton's nat'l bank. I think I mentioned I'm re-reading Pamela Reid's Excel-Erated Learning: Explaining in Plain English How Dogs Learn and How Best to Teach Them One of the dangers in reading books like this is that you get swamped by doubts that any dawgg ever learns anything you try to teach -- "Oh, migawd, what if my reinforcers aren't salient? What if my cues are blocked (or blocking)?" Makes you wonder how any dawggs were trained for the 10,000 years before clickers. Another book on British culture and life by another American married to a Brit -- The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British Roy Blount's meanderings about words and language, Alphabet Juice: The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, ... With Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory Ben Crystal's Shakespeare on Toast is a nice little book. Crystal, who's the son of an eminent linguist, is very good on matters of Shakespeare's language ("thou" vs. "you" which is always important in Shakespeare), on how much it cost for Elizabethans to go hear a play (note: hear, not see), cost of the costumes, how the design of the Globe theatre informs the plays, and so on. Good book for a send-off gift to a freshman. Another of Lee Child Killing Floor thrillers. It's customary for the heroes of such series to have various eccentricities -- even implausibly. How did Nero Wolfe manage to avoid a coronary infarction? How does Reacher manage to get two or three days out of the same clothes? In honor of Dr. J's tercentenary, there are some new biographies to read. I'll start with Samuel Johnson: The Struggle "The Peace of Wild Things" by Wendell Berry When despair for the world grows in me "The Big Blue Book" -- no official name, I guess -- is Lori Drouin's brain dump of everything she knows about obedience training, which is a The history of animals in New Zealand I've liked all of Patricia McConnell's books and booklets, so no surprise I liked Tales of Two Species: Essays on Loving and Living With Dogs, her collection of columns or essays from *The Bark* magazine. Nice lunch-hour or coffee-break reading. Could use some editing (McConnell thinks the mind boggles instead of being boggled and gets the title wrong for *The Miracle Worker*). Another of Alan Furst's superb World War II espionage thrillers, Dark Voyage: A Novel *The Expert's Guide to Doing Things Faster: 100 Ways to Make Life More Efficient* is the latest compendium of practical wisdom by Samantha Ettus. It includes, for example, advice on curing a stomach ache by Crazy Legs Conti, said to be Major League Eating's 11th ranked competitive eater. (I'm not making this up.) Conti offers a persuasive endorsement for an Italian digestif called Fernet-Branca. Who knows. Watched a Sandra Ladwig video -- three discs Beyond Puppy Training: The Next Level. The production qualities are good. However, Ladwig has, ostensibly, a "system," so she's always saying that something or other was covered on a previous tape, and you come away a little dizzy, a little unsure of what she has or hasn't explained. The latest "Spenser" from Robert B. Parker. The series has become much more manufactured, sort of stamped out in a kind of template, rather than written. The books aren't unpleasant, and they're hard to resist, but they're not really satisfying -- sort of like fast food. Here and there, Parker finds himself actually writing a plot and actually sketching a character, but for the most part, the Spenser series has become a kind of repetitive exercise, like a jogging route. Revisiting a couple of books from my youth when the spy novel boom was fresh: The Spy's Bedside Book The Well-Connected Dog: A Guide to Canine Acupressure Mary Roach tends to write about squirmy subjects -- corpses, ghosts, and now sex, or rather, sex research -- Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex Rachel Page Elliott's memoir, From Hoofbeats to Dogsteps: A Life of Listening to and Learning from Animals Somehow, in the great migration from Brookline, Norfolk County, to Littleton, Middlesex County, I lost or lost track of some books, including Sheila Booth's Purely Positive Training: Companion to Competition It seems dated now, the proselytizing against "corrections" and the preachiness. Maybe it's still a good book for beginners to read as a way of reinforcing the exigency of building a *relationship* with a dog as logically prior to skills training; and of course it was bittersweet to read Booth's admiring mentions of Patty Ruzzo. But by now, I hope, we can bet past the ideological disputes about training methodologies, as though what were really important is doctrinal purity rather than practicality.
|
is enjoyable and sometimes insightful, esp. on the primacy of scent in dogs' apprehension of the world 
is a lovely recollection of a dog with a remarkable personality 
by B. J. & Peter Spanos is a very pretty collection of photos even if you don't know much about the sport or your breeds are other than, say, GSDs 
by Diane Morgan gives very good summaries of almost every sport and pastime involving dogs 
is a parody of 
and a philosophy survey called 
by -- I love these names -- Aposotolos Doxiadis & Christos Papadimitrou, which may be esp. notable because Bertrand Russell is the hero. 
-- but sometimes the collision of the children's format with a grown-up theme or contents produces something startling, enjoyable, and clever, as with Art Spiegelman's 
. Doesn't seem to be very original historiography, more like a very bright student's term paper, but nicely written. 
The title, for example, is the Russian way of saying "I'm not pulling your leg." Very interesting collection, but the book simply gives the literal (?) English translations without the original, so you don't get the musicality, alliteration, rhyme, and so on. Stephen Dodson's 
is another round-the-world collection, this time of insults and imprecations. It's a slimmer but better organized book. 
by Joseph Finder -- seems to be the first of a series about a character not unlike Lee Child's 
, two collections of more or less unusual words, compiled by Christopher Foyle, the owner of the famous London bookshop. 
by David E. Fisher, figured it would be a dry account of the technology. But Fisher writes in a lively, blunt-spoken way, clearly listing his heroes (Dowding, Keith Park), villains (Hitler and Göring, of course, but in another sense, Leigh-Mallory and 
which is quite good, but needs some updating (on the latest in bridge & target trng, behavior research, and so on), and esp. needs an index and glossary. 
.
by Jeffrey Meyers who seems to write a book or two every week. May have to re-read Bate, Wain, and Fussell, too. If I could travel back in time, one of the people I should like to meet is Himself, maybe at the house in Gough Square. 
. This one seems a little less world-weary, less sombre than some of Furst's other books. 
, an anthology compiled by Graham Greene& Hugh Greene, and 
This book does for canine acupressure what my books do for human acupressure, presenting the traditional theory in an easily digestible way and making it very do-able. Just by reading this book and trying the stretches and the point recipes for common problems, you can help your dog's health. -- Iona Marsaa Teeguarden, MA, Author 
. She's very funny, but I wish she didn't think footnotes were a way to mutter an acerbic or ironic aside. Someone (Dwight Macdonald?) said that having to read footnotes was like answering the doorbell on your wedding night.
, which is extremely enjoyable for its depiction of a bygone era -- and perhaps a bygone relationship to horses and dogs -- and for Mrs. Elliott's wit. Pagey is, of course, the doyenne of the Golden Retriever and one of the truly great authorities on canine structure and movement. 
, which I once regarded highly. So I had to buy a replacement copy and, of course, reread it, if somewhat skimmingly. Are You a Vending Machine or a Slot Machine? Realigning the Groups Proposed rearrangement of AKC conformation groups Are you on Facebook?- The following is a good read Facebook in a Crowd It makes my real life feel real now. Snowy Tree Cricket Snowy Tree Crickets can tell you the temperature (no kidding). Just count the number of their chirps in 13 seconds (okay, I'll admit, you often have to record them and slow it down to count!) and add 40, and you've go the temp in F. (taken from Patricia McConnell blog) When is it good for you? A good little website to help you and your mates find a suitable time. The Periodic table of Videos The crazy academics at the University of Nottingham have put this site together. There's a video explanation including cool scientific experiments for each of the chemical elements in the periodic table. Far from being boring and nonsensical, these guys make learning about science look fun, and more than a little dangerous. Strange Maps: Pop vs. Soda Elephants master basic mathematics It may be a side effect of their bulging brains and an evolutionary kinship to other "smart" animals Decisions: How Do We Animals Decide What To Do? Grey Matters is a series of 15 lectures (each about 60 minutes in length) "to enhance public awareness of recent developments in brain research." Best store names - an array of great pictures Digital Forensics: 5 Ways to Spot a Fake Photo Dennis Lehane's *Shutter Island* is a very intriguing mystery, but it's a little chubby around the middle, esp. compared with his earlier books, the "Patrick Kenzie" series. Lehane could use a crash course in George V. Higgins to learn how to have the dialog tell the story, and a seminar in Elmore Leonard to learn how to pare things down. (How many sentences
Mind 42.com Manage all your ideas, whether alone, twosome or working together with the whole world - collaborative, browser-based and for free. Radio3 Do you want to listen to Canadian music on your computer? Excellent site for upcoming concert list, etc. An Open Source Computer Location Tracking System: A free program helps you get a lost or stolen laptop back. The Cheap Petrol Project (NZ) Sick of Petrol companies telling you what to pay for your petrol? Thousands of people are more powerfull than one, join us now and get discount petrol! For Fuel Saving Tips: (NZ) click here, to find out how your vehicle rates for fuel economy click here and for tips to help you be transport efficient click here SuperMemo algorithm for memorization practice *Ulyssses* for Dummies IRD unclaim money (NZ) Emily Dickinson Internat'l Society Basketball: The Bill James method of calculating when a college basketball game is The Cave Paintings of Chauvet date to 30,000 to 32,000 years ago. Safe2Pee -- find a public bathroom This can be a challenge in USA whereas in NZ, we are civilised (as a foreigner told me) and have them splattered around. 100 best mystery novels: Says You! -- very funny word game show on NPR PalindromeList.com Would you like between $25 and $1,000? Open a RaboPlus savings account. You need to click the link to open your cash present |
Some of the essays, most of which are just a couple of pages long, may have come from her Dogs in Canada column (which is worth the price of a subscription). OK, yeah, I have a crush on Donaldson, but really she's very deft with turns of phrase and has a functional sense of humor -- and she's less jargon-y here than in some of her other books. Glenda Brown, in one of her excellent articles on retriever training, cites a book by Mark Rashid about trng horses called Life Lessons from a Ranch Horse What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage Book: What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage: Lessons for People from Animals and Their Trainers What is really required is that the dog's intelligence should be trained. The correct method of training is by reward and encouragement, and the tricks should be entered into as an amusing game. Under this Poems often expose emotional truths we can't otherwise describe or disclose. Here's a short poem, "Things," by the New Zealand poet, Fleur Adcock:
Classics for Pleasure by Michael Dirda is a kind of reader's guide to books and writers he may have omitted from his previous collections. Dirda has one of the chief virtues of a critic -- or teacher, for that matter: he makes you want to read the books he discusses. The Jenny Damm agility DVDs from Clean Run -- *Handling Foundation* and *Advanced Handling* -- are quite good, esp. once the "talking head" part is done and she's shown working with her dogs. The Syn Alia Series on Animal Training * When I train, physical punishment is generally limited to correcting those behaviors which if uncorrected could result in harm or injury to animals or people. Physical punishment is not appropriate BTW, I watched a science fiction thriller on DVD, Equilibrium, which had been recommended to me for the choreography of its fight scenes -- gunfights like kung fu duels, very interesting. The premise is that in the future, a totalitarian society has banned human emotion as a way of preventing evil. At one point the hero, who moves from being an enforcer of the totalitarian law to a being an, um, insurgent, discovers love and kindness because of a BMD puppy whom he manages to save. Understanding Your Dog For Dummies Like all the "Dummies" books, it's pretty good, not great. A poem by Norman MacCaig, the poet laureate of Edinburgh, "Praise of a Collie" (fair warning: keep a hankie close by): The latest from Robert B. Parker, Spare Change, is another in the"Sunny Randall" series which seems fresher than the "Spenser" series -- very enjoyable. A poem by Norman MacCaig, the poet laureate of Edinburgh, "Praise of a Collie" (fair warning: keep a hankie close by): A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 by James Shapiro concerns the year WS wrote in part or wholly Henry V, As You Like It, Julius Caesar, andHamlet (not bad. Sort of a MACH-OTCH-UDX-CT sort of thing). What was going on in his life then? What was going on in his society? Oh, just a rebellion in Ireland, the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the usual religious strife and political feuds, the death of a child, the loss of some friends, vicissitudes of business. The book has a slightly academic style, but is very enjoyable, very perceptive -- scholarly without being pedantic.
|
, which gives six rules that work as well for dogs as for horses: 
Batch of language books: 
Barbara Ann Kipfer's 
Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words
For Fuel Saving Tips: (NZ) click here, to find out how your vehicle rates for fuel economy click here and for tips to help you be transport efficient click here
SuperMemo algorithm for memorization practice *Ulyssses* for Dummies IRD unclaim money (NZ) Emily Dickinson Internat'l Society Basketball: The Bill James method of calculating when a college basketball game is The Cave Paintings of Chauvet date to 30,000 to 32,000 years ago. Safe2Pee -- find a public bathroom This can be a challenge in USA whereas in NZ, we are civilised (as a foreigner told me) and have them splattered around. 100 best mystery novels: Says You! -- very funny word game show on NPR PalindromeList.com Would you like between $25 and $1,000? Open a RaboPlus savings account. You need to click the link to open your cash present |
The Jenny Damm agility DVDs from Clean Run -- *Handling Foundation* and *Advanced Handling* -- are quite good, esp. once the "talking head" part is done and she's shown workingh her dogs. The Syn Alia Series on Animal Training * When I train, physical punishment is generally limited to correcting those behaviors which if uncorrected could result in harm or injury to animals or people. Physical punishment is not appropriate BTW, I watched a science fiction thriller on DVD, Equilibrium, which had been recommended to me for the choreography of its fight scenes -- gunfights like kung fu duels, very interesting. The premise is that in the future, a totalitarian society has banned human emotion as a way of preventing evil. At one point the hero, who moves from being an enforcer of the totalitarian law to a being an, um, insurgent, discovers love and kindness because of a BMD puppy whom he manages to save. Understanding Your Dog For Dummies Like all the "Dummies" books, it's pretty good, not great. A poem by Norman MacCaig, the poet laureate of Edinburgh, "Praise of a Collie" (fair warning: keep a hankie close by): The latest from Robert B. Parker, Spare Change, is another in the"Sunny Randall" series which seems fresher than the "Spenser" series -- very enjoyable. A poem by Norman MacCaig, the poet laureate of Edinburgh, "Praise of a Collie" (fair warning: keep a hankie close by): A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 by James Shapiro concerns the year WS wrote in part or wholly Henry V, As You Like It, Julius Caesar, andHamlet (not bad. Sort of a MACH-OTCH-UDX-CT sort of thing). What was going on in his life then? What was going on in his society? Oh, just a rebellion in Ireland, the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the usual religious strife and political feuds, the death of a child, the loss of some friends, vicissitudes of business. The book has a slightly academic style, but is very enjoyable, very perceptive -- scholarly without being pedantic. Couple of good mysteries: |
Dennis Lehane's *Shutter Island* is a very intriguing mystery, but it's a little chubby around the middle, esp. compared with his earlier books, the "Patrick Kenzie" series. Lehane could use a crash course in George V. Higgins to learn how to have the dialog tell the story, and a seminar in Elmore Leonard to learn how to pare things down. (How many sentences do you need to describe someone's lighting and smoking a cigarette?) Robert B. Parker's *Resolution  * is a sequel to his western, *Appaloosa * -- sort of a "Spenser" thriller moved from current Boston to the 19th C. frontier, six-guns instead of wonder-nines, horses instead of motorcars.
Mind 42.com Manage all your ideas, whether alone, twosome or working together with the whole world - collaborative, browser-based and for free.
Spam Proof your email address Radio3 Do you want to listen to Canadian music on your computer? Excellent site for upcoming concert list, etc. An Open Source Computer Location Tracking System: A free program helps you get a lost or stolen laptop back. The Cheap Petrol Project (NZ) Sick of Petrol companies telling you what to pay for your petrol? Thousands of people are more powerfull than one, join us now and get discount petrol! For Fuel Saving Tips: (NZ) click here, to find out how your vehicle rates for fuel economy click here and for tips to help you be transport efficient click here SuperMemo algorithm for memorization practice *Ulyssses* for Dummies IRD unclaim money (NZ) Emily Dickinson Internat'l Society Basketball: The Bill James method of calculating when a college basketball game is The Cave Paintings of Chauvet date to 30,000 to 32,000 years ago. Safe2Pee -- find a public bathroom This can be a challenge in USA whereas in NZ, we are civilised (as a foreigner told me) and have them splattered around. 100 best mystery novels: Says You! -- very funny word game show on NPR PalindromeList.com Would you like between $25 and $1,000? Open a RaboPlus savings account. You need to click the link to open your cash present |
 Linda Mecklenburg's Developing Jumping Skills for Awesome Agility Dogs collects some of her superlative articles from Clean Run -- I wish the book had more photographs in addition to the linear graphics, but it's still terrific  Patricia Gail Burnham wrote one of my favorite trng books, Playtraining Your Dog -- I'm told it was meant to be a kind of rebuttal to the mordant severity of Koehler, et al. That was over 20 yrs ago.
Classics for Pleasure by Michael Dirda is a kind of reader's guide to books and writers he may have omitted from his previous collections. Dirda has one of the chief virtues of a critic -- or teacher, for that matter: he makes you want to read the books he discusses. The Jenny Damm agility DVDs from Clean Run -- *Handling Foundation* and *Advanced Handling* -- are quite good, esp. once the "talking head" part is done and she's shown working with her dogs. The Syn Alia Series on Animal Training * When I train, physical punishment is generally limited to correcting those behaviors which if uncorrected could result in harm or injury to animals or people. Physical punishment is not appropriate BTW, I watched a science fiction thriller on DVD, Equilibrium, which had been recommended to me for the choreography of its fight scenes -- gunfights like kung fu duels, very interesting. The premise is that in the future, a totalitarian society has banned human emotion as a way of preventing evil. At one point the hero, who moves from being an enforcer of the totalitarian law to a being an, um, insurgent, discovers love and kindness because of a BMD puppy whom he manages to save. Understanding Your Dog For Dummies Like all the "Dummies" books, it's pretty good, not great. A poem by Norman MacCaig, the poet laureate of Edinburgh, "Praise of a Collie" (fair warning: keep a hankie close by): The latest from Robert B. Parker, Spare Change, is another in the"Sunny Randall" series which seems fresher than the "Spenser" series -- very enjoyable. A poem by Norman MacCaig, the poet laureate of Edinburgh, "Praise of a Collie" (fair warning: keep a hankie close by): A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 by James Shapiro concerns the year WS wrote in part or wholly Henry V, As You Like It, Julius Caesar, andHamlet (not bad. Sort of a MACH-OTCH-UDX-CT sort of thing). What was going on in his life then? What was going on in his society? Oh, just a rebellion in Ireland, the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the usual religious strife and political feuds, the death of a child, the loss of some friends, vicissitudes of business. The book has a slightly academic style, but is very enjoyable, very perceptive -- scholarly without being pedantic. Couple of good mysteries: |
On the Recent Publication of Kahlil Gibran's *Collected Works* by Alan Imaging Resource -- digital camera reviews Walking sticks and canes USA Walking sticks in New Zealand Excursion to Gulag (Elena Filatova) Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction I wrote an article called Periodic Tableware , about how people have taken the periodic table of the elements and adapted the form in interesting ways. Since then, I've run across quite a few more examples. Wild Mushroom & Roast Garlic Sandwich How to Tie the 10 Most Useful Knots Grilled Skirt Steak with Caramelized Butter & Cumin Climate change: A guide for the perplexed |
Anyway, needing a dose of macho shoot-em-up until I could find a replacement copy of the Child book, I started the new one by Robert Crais, The Watchman: A Joe Pike Novel (Joe Pike Novels) , in which Joe Pike is the lead character and Elvis Cole is sort of the sidekick. (This is like my childhood comic books when Tonto or Robin appeared without the Lone Ranger or Batman.) Pretty good as usual. And we're going to close the bedroom door when we leave for work, so B-girl can't editorialize my reading. *A Useful Dog
New training book Flatwork Foundation for Agility by Barb Levenson -- is just superb, one of the best trng books I've seen in a while. Levenson is accomplished in obedience as well as agility , so the book has a lot that's applicable to obedience and rally, esp. on how your body language cues your dog, perhaps intentionally, perhaps inadvertently. The sections on circle work, meant to teach an agility dog serpentines and other sequences, is helpfully relevant to the F8 and changes of pace in heeling. I loved the section on shaping a dog to stand with his front feed on a box (say, a phone book) as a way of getting the dog to maneuver his butt. (At her recent seminar in RI, Debbie Zappia did something similar, because it's useful to teach the dog physical self-control for, say, stand-stay exercises.) Nicely written, nicely illustrated (well, my aging eyes would have liked a larger format).
Primo Levi, who survived Auschwitz and wrote about it, wrote a kind of adventure novel, If Not Now, When? (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)  , about a band of Jewish partisans who, in the finale of WW2, made their way from Russia to Italy in hopes of getting to Palestine -- sort of an updated *Anabasis* with automatic weapons.
The Triumph of the Thriller by Patrick Anderson replays some of his reviews of crime and mystery fiction from the *Washington Post*. Anderson is very good on Hammett and Chandler -- well, the whole book is good, although now and then he lapses into the kind of plot summaries you expect in high school book reports, as though proving to the teacher than you did, in fact, read the book.
A poem by David Budbill, "Winter: Tonight: From Agility Warehouse in the UK, a little pamphlet called Your First Obedience Show: A Survival Guide written by a couple of teenagers, Sally Rowe & Rachel Dowman. I'd skipped the last couple or three Elmore Leonard novels, because he seemed to have locked into a Hollywood view of himself -- an offshoot of his commercial success -- with almost sitcom settings and characters instead of the straight-ahead realism of his earlier fiction. But between symptoms of the 1918 flu this week, I started The Hot Kid which seems pretty good, a return to an era Leonard has written well about before. ("Well about before"? Now there's a trio. This is what the flu does to your syntax. Not pretty.) A poem by John Ciardi, "Suburban": |
* by Donald McCaig collects some of his shorter pieces, mostly on sheepdogs. Very nice little gift book.The History Net: The Wild West Duck confit -- various recipes: Chorizo with Sun-Dried Tomatoes & Cider Periodic Table of Visualization Methods Judge William Young's statement in sentencing the "shoe bomber," Richard 50th anniversary of the Helvetica typeface Official Robert's Rules of Order The Routine Autopsy -- the Procedure Related in Narrative Form: A Guide for Screenwriters and Novelists (Ed Uthman, MD) Learn CPR -- Includes information on CPR for cats and dog. PBS *American Experience* episode on New Orleans Chez Schwartz -- BJL's latest film Marsha Wilcox's photography Dave Barry interview in *Reason* magazine Possibly the funniest guy who's ever lived The Most Dangerous Roads in the World Geoffrey Nunberg's timeline for the history of information Fred's Recipes Literature Map Robert Louis Stevenson's prayers written at Vailima He wrote these for family and friends while in Samoa. They're quite beautiful, even to an unrepentant atheist like me. You might find a copy of Stevenson's *Prayers* via a Web search -- the edition published a few years ago by a small press in California is an especially beautiful Grilled Lobsters with Southeast Asian Dipping Sauce Raymond Chandler NC Sweet Potato Commission -- recipes Perpetual calendar (Karen Deal Robinson) ASL University Resources for teachers and students "September 1, 1939" by W. H. Auden |
Unfortunately, Coren's commentaries and analyses may tend to support breed banning and prejudices against this or that breed. People with Labs and Goldens, Bruce Fogle is a vet in the UK and prolific author of dog books. I came across his Travels with Macy in which he and his Golden Retriever retrace the route of John Steinbeck and his Poodle in Travels with Charley. I'm not sure if the book is published in the States. Boston and Cambridge have bookstores which carry some UK books. Fogle writes well, although without the spirit
humor and self-mockery of, say, Bill Bryson. Also, Fogle strikes me as a less than savvy trainer. Bill Bryson is one of the funniest writers I know. If you haven't read any of his books, well, I envy you the joy of discovery. The problem with Bryson is that if you're reading any of his books while anyone is nearby, you start reading whole passages aloud while gasping in laughter. This isn't so bad unless the person nearby is Roseann who, inexplicably, doesn't like Bryson. To me, that's as bizarre as not liking pistachio ice cream. Bryson's latest, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, describes growing up in '50s Iowa with his slightly ditzy parents and the slightly ditzy culture. Bruce Fogle is a vet in the UK and prolific author of dog books. I came across his Travels with Macy in which he and his Golden Retriever retrace the route of John Steinbeck and his Poodle in Travels with Charley. I'm not sure if the book is published in the States. Boston and Cambridge have bookstores which carry some UK books. Fogle writes well, although without the spirit *… And Be Merry: A Feast of Light Verse and a Soupçon of Prose About the Joy of Eating*, ed. William Cole -- very enjoyable collection of poems and quips on wine, cheese -- you can expect some snippets to appear in Nobody asked me, but... It's that time of year when you may be obliged to contribute to the greater glory of American (and world) capitalism -- and bestow gifts upon friends and kin. So, here, gleaned from this years' weekly missives, are some books and videos which I thought were pretty good in 2005. This was the year of the pamphlet -- some of the best doggy reading was in pamphlet or booklet form, including new editions of old favorites, such as Try Tracking by Carolyn Krause, an update of The Puppy Tracking Primer, one of the better books (or booklets) on tracking. This is ideal to give someone just getting started in tracking. Likewise, for someone getting started in agility, Cindy Buckholt has a new version of her pamphlet, Competing in Agility: Entering Trials and What to Do When You Get There. And there's a new edition of Patricia McConnell's excellent booklet, The Cautious Canine, which should be required reading for all dog owners, even if your dog isn't fearful or skittish. It's simply the best brief guide to counter-conditioning and de-sensitizing to solve real training problems. If you could get copies cheap enough to hand out, John Rogerson's little pamphlet, How to Get Your Dog to Play, would be very worthwhile for KPT and beginners obedience. One of the ways in which Novice is A booklet by Dara & Les Flores,*Schutzhund Handler Trial Tips Operant conditioning was all over the bookshelves this year. There's the first of a planned series of agility DVDs by Julie Daniels, Agility Fix-It: Contacts & Weaves. Daniels is great to watch, has that same grace and clarity of gesture in agility handler that you associate with some of the best handlers in obedience. Despite my persistent doubts and deprecations about "pure positive" training, I loved Susan Garrett's book, Shaping Success: The Education of an Unlikely Champion. I've been reading it in a kind of iteratively looping fashion, a chapter or two at a time, then going back to re-read sections. The focus is agility, but the book is worth reading for obedience or other training. And, of course, there's a new edition, substantially revised, of The Culture Clash by Jean Donaldson, one of the most influential dog books of the past 10 years or more, and a sort of Talmudic document for pure positive trainers. Donaldson may be the best dog writer on the planet -- her column in Dogs in Canada is alone worth the price of a subscription. Speaking of Canadian magazines: D in C is pretty good, but the best dog magazine I know of is Dog Sport from A few more DVDs: Of Belgianological interest, the Rt. Hon. Russ Beach's Grooming from Nose to Tail & Handling Seminar" is excellent. I've passed it on to a couple of people who don't have Tervs and they still found it informative and entertaining. At one point, I tried watching it with my dogs and a bunch of combs, brushes, and clippers laid out on the carpet, in hopes Quip and Bluesette would learn a little about self-grooming. Nope. The U.S. Mondioring Assn has a DVD of the 2004 The Underdog is a documentary about SchH, in particular a guy named Kevin Lanouette going to Europe to train The best training book of the year is Building a Bridge: From Training to Testing by Marsha Smith & Shalini Bosbyshell. Very sensible approach to training and good hints on how to practice; good advice on attention training. This would be a terrific book for a Novice to read. The best non-training doggy book of the year is First Friend: A History of Dogs and Humans by Katherine Rogers. And the overall best dog book of the year: Making the Connection , a posthumous collection of Donna Rioux's e-mail New edition of Patricia McConnell's excellent booklet, The Cautious Canine, which should be required reading for all dog owners, even if you don't have a fearful or skittish dog. The changes in the second Irresistibly handy reading for the subway, The Shakespeare Miscellany by David & Ben Crystal, esp. for some of the comments by various actors The Crystals also make a good deal out of when a character uses "thou" or "you," although in some cases, I think their analyses are less than cogent. The rules for second person pronouns in Elizabethan English were complex and vague, a mixture of grammar and manners; I suspect some instances of this or that pronoun were just, well, whatever Shakespeare happened to jot down, rather than the kind of intricate shading of meaning the Crystals infer. The current issue of Dog and Kennel magazine has a cover story on the Belgian Tervuren, including sage advice from The Battle of Mogadishu, ed. Matt Eversmann & Dan Schilling, is an account of the Battle of the Black Sea (that's the official name in U.S. military annals) as in the movie and book Black Hawk Down -- this time, by some of the men who were in the fight. The latest issue of Dog Sport magazine (www.dogsportmagazine.com) Needed something to read on a train ride recently; the trip was going to be long enough I didn't want to risk a book I mightn't like. So I got a copy of Sleeping Dogs by Thomas Perry, the excellent sequel to his excellent first novel, The Butcher's Boy. All of Perry's books are good (and some are superb), and they hold up well on re-reading. In this one, after several years of quiet retirement in the UK, the Butcher's Boy, once a hired killer, is spotted by a young mobster who sets off a hunt. In a lesser writer, this would simply be a brutal tale, more about weaponry than the people using it. Came across the following uncredited advice on www.thepuppyplace.org: Most experts agree that Tug-of-War teaches dogs to compete against their handlers, and they advise against this aggressive game. That's certainly true of Tug-of-War, but Tug-of-Peace is different. It teaches self-control, instead, and provides an "off switch" for excitement. Begin by telling Fido to take the toy, then encourage him to tug a little before you ask for it back using the techniques described in teaching Thank You/Take It. When he releases, praise him. Teach Fido to pull only as vigorously as you do. Let the toy slip through your fingers if he pulls too hard. When you let go without tugging, Fido won't feel he's beaten you and may quickly give the toy back, hoping you'll hold on a bit tighter. Everyone wins Tug-of-Peace, because it's really not a competition; it's a game of cooperation. Keep in mind that even though Tug-of-Peace is a positive game, it should be played in moderation. Overly rough tugging can cause a dogneck strain or jaw problems. Children and dogs must be supervised whenplaying Tug. Another of Alan Furst's superb spy thrillers set before and during World War II. Furst seems to like having a dog make an appearance in his novels. In *The Polish Officer*, a Tetra (sort of the Polish version of a Kuvasz or Maremma). In *The World at Night*, a Terv named Tempête. In Came across a reprinting of *The Dog in British Poetry*, an anthology first published in 1893. Some of the poetry is, um, very minor, and some of it is enjoyable if sentimental. Interesting how much we have lost in |
Horse Breeds of the World Wrap It Up: A Guide to Mexican Street Tacos CIA World Factbook U.S. govt's complete geographical handbook -- country profiles. Very Internat'l Cat Agility Tournaments I'm not making this up! Hidden In-n-Out Burger Secret Menu CliveJames.com Martin Waugh's Liquid Sculpture MissAbigail.com -- etiquette advice based on a collection of books from 1822--1978 Tex's French Grammar (Univ. of TX at Austin) Chili Recipe Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, April--May 1943 Everypoet.com -- another very good poetry repository Professor Solomon -- How to Find Lost Objects ProCon.org -- Pros & Cons of Controversial Issues The Philosophical Lexicon, ed. Daniel C. Dennett Shrimp & Smoked Tomato Marinara -- recipe from the Gumbo Shop in New "A Short Walk in the Wakhan Corridor" by Mark Jenkins-- Terrific article -- originally in Outside magazine, 11/2005 -- about trekking and climbing in a remote part of Afghanistan. First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin: Interactive map of the NYC subway system Going to New York? New York Subway Finder- Subway directions to any Manhattan street in seconds Obituaries 101 Links to all the obits in all U.S. newspapers. Useful if you're waiting to inherit Ode to Joy (*An die Freude*) North American Bear Nice slide show SNOW WOES PLAGUE IQALUIT HOMEOWNERS McCormick "En-spice-lopedia" -- herb and spice encyclopedia [Kinder to chervil than I should think is deserved] Smart Money's 10 Things Archive IVR Cheat Sheet™ Repeatedly pressing 0, *, or # often works, but it's not as emotionally satisfying as a .45 ACP double-tap to the headset Simplehuman household tools, utensils, etc. The Greatest Discovery Since Fire Origins of the microwave oven Anthony Bourdain, chef and author Optical illusion- If your eyes follow the movement of the rotating pink dot... AnsMe.com dictionary Definitions, rhymes, etc. The Hundred Greatest Theorems From the irrationality of the square root of 2 (always a crowd favourite) to Descartes' Rule of Signs (which, of course, is unknown to The Why Files -- The Science Behind the News Cans to Cups Conversion An 8 OZ can is 1 CUP Plain English: A User's Guide by Phillip Davies Roberts. Whenever I read a book on English usage, I feel unsteady in writing or speaking for having been shown the chasms of error one might fall into. How to Shuffle and Cut a Deck of Cards One-Handed WhiteBlaze.net -- Appalachian Trail hiking The Pocket Mod Oh, this is nice. It's an online -- or downloadable -- application for 272 words -- November 19, 1863 Noah's ark quiz I was 80%, which is pretty decent for an atheist iGourmet.com -- specialty foods, esp. cheeses The Reduced Shakespeare Company Razzle Dazzle Recipes Newspaperindex War Poetry of the WW1 and Today Cuisine Perel Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corp. Interactive Chessboard with Diagram Editor Beginners Guide to Computer Hardware Why is Baseball So Much Better Than Football? Only as Americans know Classic article by one of the better baseball writers around. Illustrated History of the Roman Empire |
Building a Bridge: From Training to Testing* by Marsha Smith & Shalini Bosbyshell is Smith points out that obedience is the only dog sport in which the team works in nearly total silence -- at least in trialing. The handler can't coach the dog during a trial, whereas in tracking, you can praise and encourage the dog as he's working the scent, in agility you can be as voluble as your lung capacity allows, and so on. Smith presents a scheme for progressing from teaching and motivating, to confidence building, The book also has some techniques for attention training-- not much new there, but very well presented. If there's still money in the budget, I'll nudge Roseann into ordering a copy for the CRDTC library. The World at Night by Alan Furst, another of his superb WW2 thrillers about spies and treachery. This one, and Red Gold, deal with the unlikely hero Jean Casson, a French film producer who gets caught up in LET DOGS BE DOGS, PETA PRESIDENT ADVISES IN NEW BOOK April 15, 2005 Is Rover excavating the azaleas? Is Fifi barking at the door? Before you scold your canine companions, stop to consider why your dogs are acting the way they are—and what they’re trying to tell you. In her new book, Making Kind Choices: Everyday Ways to Enhance Your Life Through Earth- and Animal-Friendly Living (St. Martin’s Griffin), PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk presents a refreshingly simple approach to living with dogs: Let them be dogs. Royal Canin, the dog food maker, has some interesting books for sale, including *Practical Guide to Sporting and Working Dogs Practical Guide For example, there are two sections on truffle-hunting dogs. The summary of French obedience competition is quite interesting, but unfortunately it's mostly about the classes and scoring system, sans details of the exercises. Each exercise or aspect of performance is scored on a 10 scale; some exercises have a coefficient to double or triple their value. Some nice pictures. The translation (from French) is awkward here and there, and Aussies are called Australian Bouviers, not Shepherds, but the book looks very comprehensive, and yes, we bought one for the CRDTC library, too. Meandering through a bunch of books, catching up, finishing off, going back. A snippet from "In Memory of Sigmund Freud" -- and showed us what evil is, not, as we thought, -- drove me back to Auden's *Selected Poems*, the Mendelson edition which restores some earlier versions and some poems which Auden had disowned. Also reading The Easiest Thing in the World, a collection of short fiction by George V. Higgins. Some of the stories remind you of
Susan Barwig & Stuart Hilliard, Schutzhund: Theory & Training Methods A good dog trainer is patient. He understands that training takes time and is willing to spend the time. He is intelligent, and he thinks clearly about what effect his actions will have upon the dog. Also, he has "feeling," an accurate intuition for what makes dogs do the things that they do. He is decisive -- fast-handed and effective in all that he does. He is not dogmatic, but flexible -- always ready to reexamine his own beliefs and methods and adapt them to the particular nature of his pupil. A good trainer is emotionally disciplined and has an even disposition. He is not prone to temper tantrums and can administer both praise and The trainer must have integrity, in the sense that he is his own person and does not depend upon his dog's behavior or performance to give him a Finally, the good dog trainer has a worldly understanding of his pupil, and knows it for a dog and only a dog.
A. C. Grayling, professor of philosophy at Univ. of London, seems to be the heir to Bertrand Russell -- not only for the lefty humanism, but also the clear, "plain" style (a tradition of English prose associated with Orwell, Shaw, Hazzlitt, Swift) and a way of bringing logic and clarity to the problems and issues of real life and ordinary people. I'm Book by Martha Covington Thorne, Handling Your Own Dog for Show, Obedience, and Field Trials: The second dog, bred for color and size, collapsed from The third dog was free health problems but it couldn't The last dog, a faultless mover with none of the others' Incidentally, the book by Marta Thorne, though out of print, is quite good -- an old-fashioned (1960s) book from the days when people wrote and read at length -- indeed, it's really too long, too chatty and discursive, as though Thorne figured no atom of advice could be offered without two-pages of supportive anecdote -- and also from a time when Daniels has a certain aspect of demeanor which I associate with other very accomplished dog trainers, irrespective of The Easiest Thing in the World: The Uncollected Fiction of George V. Higgins -- for some reason, he didn't have the audience in the U.S. which he enjoyed in the UK, except, of course, among writers and readers who knew that Higgins was a master of dialogue -- and monologue. For a friend, I got Ski Spot Run: The Enchanting World of Skijoring and Related Dog-Powered Sports by Matt Haakenstad & John Thompson, and then read it myself. It's quite well done, very funny, good illustrations. Nice jute Frisbee-type toy with a squeaker. Double thick. Seems pretty sturdy, but hard Darlene Arden's, Unbelievably Good Deals and Great Adventures That You Absolutely Can't Get Unless You're a Dog * Two book from a new TFH series -- The Simple Guide to Grooming Your Dog by Eve Adamson & Sandy Roth and The Simple Guide to Showing Your Dog by Richard G. Beauchamp -- would be very good for junior handlers, maybe 4Hers interested in a career as a handler or groomer. In one of Edwin Tufte's books on graphics, there's a discussion of "chart junk," the kind of supererogatory effects that distract or even distort the presentation of information in a chart, graph, or table. Well, some of the book design here is like that: photos framed as though snippets of film or as though Michael Dirda, editor of the Washington Post Book World has a pleasingly plump collection of reviews, Bound to Please: An I don't know what made Donald Westlake resurrect his "Richard Stark" pseudonym and the series of thrillers about Parker, a professional thief, but I'm glad for all that and his latest, Nobody Runs Forever. I'm told that real heistmen read the Parker novels the way real cops read Elmore Leonard
|
Robert G. Ingersoll Mid-life crisis car Sudoku Drive yourself crazy Online Etymology Dictionary One of the sources for this is A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language by Ernest Klein, who had been rabbi of Nové The Blackwing 602 -- The Final Chapter Back to Bach (Johann, not Catherine):Bach Central Station, J.S. Bach Home Page Reviewing the Evidence (Barbara Franchi) reviews of mystery novels Home Town News -- links to U.S. newspapers' Web sites *A Cook's Notebook: Reflections on Food and Life with Ali Berlow* -- NPR radio program Ghost Town Don't miss this site. Belongs to a young Ukrainian woman whose father is a nuclear physicist. She often rides her motorcycle into Chernobyl and the surrounding villages -- now ghost towns -- and has some truly stunning Sign and Sight -- English version of the German online magazine *Perlentaucher* Quiz Farm Medieval Cookery Rhonda Vincent and the Rage |
Under pressure, we all of us leak some oil. Going into the obedience * Rehearse well, so the experience is not overwhelming. * At a dog show, plan for a bit of quiet time with your dog just before entering the ring… Because our bodies react the same to all of these emotions, never deny your own anticipation and bodily changes; * Control your voice… Make sure your pace, motions, and gestures are the same as your practice activities. Your dog will respond positively if you "act as if you are used to it." Most of us feel that our dogs have something like human consciousness and understanding. Stanly Coren's new book, How Dogs Think, relates a folktale from Zimbabwe which explains why dogs don't speak, although they once could. According to story, the hero Nkhango makes a deal with the dog Rukuba. If dog would steal fire from the god Nyamaurairi, humans Finally, Nkhango decides that dog should be a messenger, but this is too much for dog. After all, since dog gave people fire, he feel he should be allowed to just lie near it in comfort. Rukuba thinks to himself, "People will always be sending me here and there on errands because I am clever and can speak. But if I can't speak, I can't be a messenger." And so, from that day, dogs have chosen not to speak. Chef's Secrets: Insider Techniques from Today's Culinary Masters by Francine Maroukian is another collection of *trucs* -- kitchen tricks and some recipes using them. However, what steals the show are the sidebars, snippets of interviews with the chefs in which they descant on *On the Right Track: A Beginner's Guide & Workbook on Tracking* by Michelle Ross seems to be a nice little primer. Mark Derr's new book, A Dog's History of America: How Our Best Friend Explored, Conquered, and Settled a Continent, is somewhat dry and humorless, but seems to be very well researched.
Being confronted with a friend's daughter's essay on Romeo and Juliet -- and figuring I may have more of this during her ensuing high school battles with the bard -- I acquired the Arden Shakespeare, now available in paperback. Seems to be one of the better editions, although I'm not sure there's much difference for the general reader in choosing the Riverside, Norton, Oxford, et al. You might as well choose by typeface or other convenience. The Arden seems to be a favorite among some acting companies, and the pb seems pretty sturdy.
|
The Columbia Guide to Standard American English Bertrand Russell and Frederick Copleston, SJ -- 1948 BBC Radio debate on the existence of God Associated Press Online Bookstore You can order, among other things, the 2005 AP Stylebook in a handy, The Cheese Counter (Steve Jenkins) Pictoral guide to 15 common knots and hitches The Julius Caesar Site -- sources and resources for studying Shakespeare's play Great Images in NASA (GRIN) Allen Wyatt's WordTips Mexican recipes: Carmelized *Carnitas* -- appetizer, Drunken Turkey (*Guajoloto Borracho*) MeMo: Cultural Blog by Kyrie O'Connor of the *Houston Chronicle* All 3 Every 3 Explorer XP -- shareware file explorer for Windows [Nice alternative to Windows Explorer for file management] Tie a Bowtie & Fold a Pocket Square Chorizo a la Sidra/ Sausage in Cider Political Compass How to Change a Tire Written by students in a technical writing course at Louisiana Tech Columbia Gazetteer of North America, ed. Saul B. Cohen Fun with Words: A Celebration of the English Language Gourmet Spot Recipes and other foodie stuff Guide to Grammar and Writing Cooking by Numbers Cook with whatever is in your fridge Map24 locations and driving directions Delia Online -- RecipesChristo & Jeanne-Claude The year of the rooster begins 2/9/2005 Tasty Fries vending machine Windows 5 Support Ctr La Grande Boucle Féminine Internationale Tour de France pour les femmes |
Most of us feel that our dogs have something like human consciousness and understanding. Stanly Coren's new book, How Dogs Think, relates a folktale from Zimbabwe which explains why dogs don't speak, although they once could. According to story, the hero Nkhango makes a deal with the dog Rukuba. If dog would steal fire from the god yamaurairi, humans will be the friends of dogs forever. Rukuba keeps his part of the deal and gives people fire. Nkhango then asks him to help hunt dangerous animals, stand guard, herd flocks, and so on. Dog does all these things. Finally, Nkhango decides that dog should be a messenger, but this is too much for dog. After all, since dog gave people fire, he feel he should be allowed to just lie near it in comfort. Rukuba thinks to himself, "People will always be sending me here and there on errands because I am clever and can speak. But if I can't speak, I can't be a messenger." And so, from that day, dogs have chosen not to speak.Stanley Coren's new book, How Dogs Think: Understanding the Canine Mind, is very good. (The style and vocabulary are simple, and easily suitable for a youngster.) Indeed, it's good enough that reading it on the subway the other morning, I missed Park St and read myself to Gov't Ctr, which made for a nice, brisk walk to work. Coren's comments on canine vision, for example, are informative of what colors to choose for retrieving toys, maybe of the color shirt you'd wear in distance exercises The Lion in Winter is one of my favorite movies, with bull's eye performances from Peter O'Toole and Katherine Hepburn. The recent remake with Patrick ("Engage!") Stewart and Glenn Close was longer, slower, and softer. It reminded me of those very precisely enunciated, condensed Shakespeare productions which local theatrical troupes brought to grammar schools. In the earlier version, O'Toole and Hepburn, and for that matter, Anthony Hopkins (as Richard) and Timothy Dalton (as the French king), spoke quickly, like in a screwball comedy. O'Toole was louder, too; he was the king and didn't have to modulate his tone for anyone. This new version was more restrained, slower in speech, and barded with camera shots which could have had subtitles, "Visual symbol." I suppose audiences are, or are considered to be, stupider nowawadays. K9 Suspect Discrimination by Adee Schoon & Ruud Haak is almost completely useless to me, but it's fascinating for its account of scent training for police dogs, and has some interesting historical anecdotes about early police dogs (the famous "Duwe" murder case) and especially some anecdotes of Belgianological interest, as in this story of one of the foundation Malinois, Tom: "While we walked together along the canal, M. Huyghebaert gave me his wallet and during a moment when his dog, Tom, was not watching, I threw the wallet in the brushwood about three meters from the road. After walking for a longer distance, Tom's master began to search his pockets and gesticulated as if he [had] lost something. Immediately the dog went back to the place where we had briefly paused[,] and came back without having found anything. Seeing his master still inspecting his pockets, [Tom] ran back faster, first tracking and then searching with his nose in the air. Soon he came back with a triumphant look in his eyes and the wallet in his mouth." Geoffrey Nunburg's second collection of language commentaries, Going The latest in Resi Gerritsen & Ruud Haak's K9 series is K9 Complete Care: A Manual for Physically and Mentally Healthy Working Dogs. Like some of their other books, this one is textbookish, like something for a course of study for police or military handlers, but there are some interesting, cogent hints on warmups and other stuff. Donald Westlake wrote, under the pen name Richard Stark, a series of terrific thrillers about a professional thief named Parker. (He's recently revived the series.) At one point, a Parker novel he was working on just turned silly, and Westlake converted it into a kind of Betty loaned us a video from Agility in Motion sort of a monthly magazine on video. There are several training lessons alternating with runs from various agility trials (all in CA, I think). This tape had Rachel Sanders with some excellent hints on using a play reward, even with a dog who's more accustomed to a food reward, Nancy Geyes on jumping, and Jim Basic on distance control. The only quibble is that on the trial segments, the camera seems to be very distant from the action, compared with, say, The Incredible Dog Challenge. Re-reading the Jane Simmons-Moake books on agility (see *Not of General An "explainer" is newspaper jargon for a supplementary article, usually a sidebar or boxed note, giving background information, definitions, and so on. *The Explainer* is a collection from *Slate Magazine* and includes, for example, how it's possible for Bill Clinton to become president again (something that may frighten some people, enticingly gratify others), what ear rocks are and how they cause positional vertigo, and who certifies or declares an economic recession. |
The Old Corral -- tribute to "B" western movies ThinkExist.com quotation database "On Becoming a Philosopher" by A. C. Grayling News portals: Recipe America Searchable. Also, tons of links to other recipe collections Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Just in case you want a quick summary of Russell's Paradox or John Rawls's notion of "original position" or you're still wondering how the hell Sartre could be an existentialist and a Marxist The Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form Color Contrast Check for Web Site Design Winterizing Your Car -- Practical Tips for Safe Winter Driving Quotationdot.com -- Searchable in a somewhat unweildy fashion *Bullitt* -- the movie, the Mustang, and Steve McQueen Team Ellen Blue State Shirts Whole Foods markets' recipes
|
Re-readings, actually. First, Karen Pryor's Click to Win! Clicker Training for the Show ing. Second is one of my favorite books,Schutzhund Obedience: Training in Drive by Sheila Booth & Gottfried Dildei, because I have to work on SOOM and DOOM for Quip for the BH test. . What I've been doing is stepping in front of him as I give both voice command and hand signal. Over time, I'll "slice the pie" so that I'm not stepping in front of him and not pausing; and we'll try to fade the hand signal, because the BH requires voice commands only. (It's very German. Impassive body language and Teutonic yawps.) R. L. Trask Mind the Gaffe: The Penguin Guide to Common Errors in English is another compendium on usage and solecisms. Trask, like Bill Bryson, is an American who has worked as an editor in the UK -- and Bryson has also written a usage book (or two). This book is quite good, even if it gives me jitters about whether I've botched some idiom,ignored some distinction in meanings, flubbed in verb tenses. "There never was a golden age in which the rules for the possessive Commuting on the Green Line these days, I'm reading more, such as one of David Brierley's "Cody" thrillers, Snowline. For some reason, these books haven't been popular -- or even published? -- in the U.S. I heard that there was a film version planned of one of them, with Elizabeth Hurley as Cody, which isn't quite the casting I'd want. Wait a minute: Did I just complain about Elizabeth Hurley? Let's stop now. And just for the sake of the old erudition: John Barton's Playing Shakespeare: An Actor's Guide, which is sort of a transcript of a series of TV shows with some very good actors (Ian McKellen, Judi Dench, Peggy Ashcroft, David Suchet, Patrick Stewart, Roger Rees). Also, a collection by one of my favorite poets, Wendy Cope, If I Don't Know. A little more somber than usual. And From Here to Eternity, an anthology of poetry selected by Andrew Motion, the current Poet Laureate in the UK. Unusual selection. Finally, another book on solecisms, Between You and I: A Little Book of Bad English by James Cochrane, a British editor. It's quite sensible, and the introduction by John Humphreys of the BBC is terrific. "Man and Dog," by Siegfried Sassoon, Who's this -- alone with stone and sky? What share we most -- we two together? Here's anyhow one decent thing |
David Perdue's Charles Dickens Home Page Mountain Lions The Global Gourmet Recipes, cookbooks Paul Szep Pesto by Hand Corby Kummer -- which is about as good a name as Basil Pesto -- in The Atlantic Monthly, 8/98 Goldwynisms"I'm giving you a definite maybe" Albert Camus Critical Interpretation Essays by and about Panicware Pop-Up Stopper Freeware plug-in to suppress pop-up windows in your Web browser "Oor Hamlet" (aka "The Three-Minute Hamlet") by Adam McNaughton Who's on First? The classic Abbott & Costello routine Database of file extensions and programs that use them 125 Thai recipes A Castle for Rent G.J. Demko's Landscapes of Crime Fairness & Accuracy and Reporting -- nat'l news media watch group French Food and Cook Everything E-Mail -- instructions, advice, resources, on e-mail *The Midnight Special -- Folk Music with a Sense of Humor* (Rich Warren) Out of Chicago; locally on WUMB- FM. Terrifically well done program Tiger Aid Foundation 100 Most Often Misspelled Words in English Anti Virus 101 -- Computer Virus Software and Protection Weird Foods of the World The Duck Tape Club Duck tape. Duct tape. Along with drywall screws, one of the great forces in the universe Titles from Shakespeare Barbara Paul's collection of book titles derived from lines in Shakespeare Hamlet on the Ramparts *Says You!* NPR radio quiz program. The American Tricruiser -- tricycles Fagan Finder (Michael Fagan) Fagan Finder Quotations Camping and hiking recipes: *The Pocket Guide to Converting Measurements*(this is a PDF file) Pareto's Principle: The 80-20 Rule The Two Things (Glen Whitman) The Hudson River Sampler on WAMC Julia Child Lessons with Master Chefs |
|
Historic Cities -- maps Southern Foodways Alliance (SFA) Risa Fashions Choose the Best Search for Your Information Need Timeline of the History of Information Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures Carb Wire -- news about carbohydrates [I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I want spaghetti alla carbonara, goddammit] Chile-Head One Bag -- the art of travelling light. Good hints on packing Hoax-Slayer online newsletter on Internet hoaxes and scams Cockeyed.com Shakespeare's Globe Theatre Tastingmenu.com The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau World 66 "open content" travel guide Textalyser online text analysis tool Feed it some text and you get word counts, readability level (Gunning Fog Index), character count, and so on "How to Obscure Any URL: How Spammers and Scammers Hide and Confuse" The Wine Anorak online magazine (UK) À La Carte (Peter Hertzmann) Eats, Shoots & Leaves Meals for You -- recipe database Chinese Calendar-- Next Year of the Dog will begin, on the Gregorian calendar, Jan 29, Malt Madness -- single malt scotch whisky "The Pluperfect Virus" by Bob Hirschfeld Craig Claiborne's Mother's Chicken Spaghetti
|
Headline of the Day Resource Shelf (Gary Price) Chacarero (Boston MA) Computer Gripes "All right, then, I'll go to hell" Ghost Town Identity theft La Belle Cuisine The New Partridge Robert Kennedy's speech in Indianapolis on Martin Luther King's assassination, April 4, 1968 -- several URLs for the same text:
|
Resources for anti-spam, -spyware, -popups, etc. Isaac Bashevis Singer centennial The Slot -- Bill Walsh, copy editor at the Washington Post [Don't miss the Sharp Points" and "Carets and Sticks" pages. From Rick in Canada: These questions about Canada were posted on an International Tourism Website. EXAMPLE... Q: I have never seen it warm on TV, so how do the plants grow?(UK) "Front ends" for Google:Soople Classics Unveiled The Food Section (Josh Friedland) Foodie writing and photography Common Errors in English (such as "for all intensive purposes")Paul Brians, professor of English, WA State Univ. Chowbaby.com Directory of restaurants (USA) Columbia Journalism Review* (CJR) Campaign Desk New Search Portal[No-frills directory of links for news, searches The Apostrophe Protection Society (UK) RecipeSource NightStar magnetic force flashlight (no batteries) FactCheck.org -- Examines recent statements by politicians or organizations of any party, and assesses the truthfulness of those statements Aroma Wheel (for wine tasting -- well, sniffing): Nutrition Lowdown Collection of Word Oddities and Trivia Cameron Davidson aerial photography Langenberg search portal Vitamin Q -- Roddy Lumsden in Bristol UK Irresistible blog, lists of all sorts, curiosities, jotting, such as the Bristol Royal Infirmary's scale for stool forms to aid diagnosis in patients with bowel problems Original Pat's King of Steaks Philadelphia Cheese Steak recipe Allfood.com recipe database The Mencken Society Honoring the Sage of Baltimore -- one of my favorite writers, despite I have to blink at his private racism, anti-Semitism, and other sins. (Same with Pres. Truman, it turns out. Via Michelin Like Mapblast or Map Quest, but with maps for Europe Back of the Box -- recipes taken off packaging The Poem Tree Online anthology of -- mostly -- metered poetry Educator's Reference Desk Including the ERIC database and searchable repository of lesson plans |