Gary Larson - The Far Side - Cows — synthesis

Hah. Funnily enough a recent walk took me along a path which divided 2 fields of cows and I was paying attention. They were close up to the fence and I felt wary.
I looked into their sad brown eyes and felt pity for them. I felt under close scrutiny too.
I slowed down my pace and talked to them, ''Hello cows, nice cows...''.
And then I listened to some of their voices. The tone of the moos.
Hmmm. Gentle, low moos for the most part but then from the back came a most disgruntled and loud one. A bit like someone frustrated at the end of a long queue. A deeper voice answered from the field opposite - hmmm.
Unfortunately, I couldn't stay to watch the next episode. We never really know the life of a cow...

Farmers might have a clue and the language of cows has been the subject of research:

How do you moo?’ – language of cows cracked by scientists

...They reckon moos are deep and more sonorous when cattle are talking about happy things, such as their food; where as when they are complaining about the weather, their noises are lower pitched.
“We found that cattle vocal individuality is relatively stable across different emotionally loaded farming contexts,” says Alexandra Green, the study’s lead author.
The team think their findings could help farmers improve herd welfare by understanding each cow’s mood through translation of their individual moos.

It’s an interesting idea, but we think these researchers might be milking it a bit. — Oliver Hill

Your interest in 'barking' has been noted.

Nerd Sniping
https://xkcd.com/356/

I believe this to be the best cartoon of all time... — synthesis

Its pretty good, but nobody can beat Leunig.

That's a lie :wink:

Your interest in 'barking' has been noted. — Amity

Hey! I resemble that remark.

Hey! I resemble that remark. — T Clark

Is that a 'woof' I hear :wink:

From: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/canine-corner/201211/how-dogs-bark-in-different-languages

....there is no universally accepted sound that humans use to represent dog barks. Even in a single language, there may be a number of different words used for a dog's bark, for example, in English, we recognize "woof-woof," "arf-arf", "ruff-ruff" and "bow-wow." Many languages also have different words for the barks of large versus small dogs, thus "yip-yip" or "yap-yap" are used in English for the barking sounds of small dogs, never for big dogs. The only thing that seems to come close to being unanimously agreed upon about dog barks is that dogs almost always speak twice—thus a Hebrew dog says "hav-hav", a Japanese dog says "wan-wan" and a Kurdish dog says "hau-hau".

...American Sign Language (ASL) → Both closed fists held horizontally together-fingers in towards each other. Quickly open the fists together to expose the fingers twice.

Like this ? :cheer: :cheer:

Turned sideways...or upside down...where is the emoticon for dogs barking ?
Is this a blatant case of dogism...or what ?

[Edit to add ] Wow. Who knew there was so much out there on 'dogism' ? :roll:

https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/albatross/article/view/19078/8240 · PDF file

....dogism inspires a new culture and spirituality according to which the murder of dissenting or nonconforming dogs takes on a sacrificial quality. Atticus and his followers, the doggists, come to view their new gift of consciousness as an immoral contagion that must be suppressed or, ideally, exorcised.

With Fifteen Dogs (2015), André Alexis presents the riddle of what it means to be human without prescribing his own solution. The task of deciding which of the hybrid dogs’ behaviours arise from which of their constituent elements—human or dog—is left up to the reader. This essay presents a theoretical exploration of the human-like violence found within Fifteen Dogs.

I argue that the violence exhibited by the hybrid dogs is of a distinctly human quality and is fuelled by a fascistic ideology, which I call dogism. *

Attention is given to two particular manifestations of such violence: the sacrificial culling of the pack and the Garden of Death.

Greek gods making bets over drinks at a Toronto bar? Dogs capable of abstract thought?
With Fifteen Dogs (2015), André Alexis clearly sets out to defamiliarize the familiar.

* author Erin Chewter

That's a lie :wink: — Amity

You have no understanding! :smile:

And one for the mods. :smile:

Follow up to: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/529106

More moos and moosik. From mentalfloss website:

The Song That Eases the Anxious Bovine Mind Blasting R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts” at 5 a.m. might not seem like the best recipe for increased productivity, but it works for cows. Researchers in the United Kingdom have shown that playing slow, melodic songs can reduce bovine stress, prompting cows to produce nearly a half a pint more milk per day than they would without music. Of all the songs the scientists tested, R.E.M.’s ode to empathy led the list of songs that yielded the most milk, especially when played daily from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. If you are a lonely cow, living in a barn, with your udders constantly being tugged, maybe it helps to know that everybody cries, and everybody hurts, sometimes.

This is just too weird. Posted R.E.M. song here, just a few days ago:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/526539

Hah :100:
Ain't that the truth :cool:

Ain't that the truth :cool: — Amity

Shhhh! they might hear, and relegate the thread to the lounge. :grimace:

'11 Funny Cartoons That Perfectly Illustrate The Struggles Of Modern-Day Living'

https://www.awesomeinventions.com/cartoons-struggles-modern-day-living/

10 Signs You Are a Dickhead (3:24)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6g9zUxDCxk

Martin Rowson on Labour’s hopes in Hartlepool byelection – cartoon

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2021/may/05/martin-rowson-labour-hartlepool-byelection-keir-starmer-boris-johnson-cartoon

Yup.

Labour has suffered a humiliating byelection defeat in Hartlepool after the party’s former heartland town elected a Conservative MP for the first time in 62 years.

The Tories won 15,529 votes, with Labour recording 8,589

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/07/hartlepool-byelection-result-labour-starmer-conservatives

Nothing but the Tooth - Winnie The Pooh

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3beg5h

Another Walt Disney.
Also on music thread : https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/540587

A Symposium on Popular Songs is an animated Disney short that originally released to theaters by Buena Vista Distribution on December 19, 1962. It features Ludwig Von Drake lecturing on the state of popular music punctuated by a number of stop-motion musical numbers.
The songs were written by Richard and Robert Sherman, with each song represented a different era in musical history. The brothers considered this one of their favorite Disney assignments.

"The Rutabaga Rag"
"Charleston Charlie"
"Although I Dropped $100,000 (I Found a Million Dollars in your Smile)"
"I'm Blue for You (Boo-Boo-Boo-Boo-Boo)"
"The Boogie Woogie Bakery Man"
"Puppy Love is Here to Stay"
"Rock, Rumble, and Roar"

https://www.existentialcomics.com/comic/267
Hume and Avicenna

Avicenna, an 11th century Islamic philosopher, gave his "floating man" thought experiment to prove the existence of a soul, or a transcendent self. He asks us to imagine a person with no sensory experience at all:...
David Hume, six hundred years later, ran through basically the same thought experiment, but came to the opposite conclusion. That there was no such thing as a self without some experience attached to it:..

Thought experiment: what if we took other people's intuitions as seriously as our own? — existential comics: thought experiment

Lyrics

https://xkcd.com/1538/

The Troll Song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yy0Bvu7vy9I

Brilliant :cool:
Each cartoon could be the start of a fascinating discussion.
Who needs a perfectly written OP :wink:

'One mustn't imagine X as being/wearing Y'.
Discuss.

So, how should we imagine Sysyphus ?
How do you imagine this character ?
Do we need to use our imagination - or are we told enough to 'know' ?
Isn't this all down to the usual arguments about interpretation ?
Perhaps art does it better than never-ending debate...

Climate Change

First Dog on the Moon cartoon
Why do we care about wet bulb temperature and could they have given it a better name?
Because we could die and yes.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/16/why-do-we-care-about-wet-bulb-temperature-and-could-they-have-given-it-a-better-name

with BTL comments.

Also this:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/16/climate-scientists-shocked-by-scale-of-floods-in-germany

Gotta love First Dog on The Moon :heart:
( and the BTL comments )

If all we have left to us is fleeting moments of joy we better make them good. Like these ones!
Everything is always bad so that is enough thanks no more news. No more sadness. Only snacks and fun. — First Dog on the Moon

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/26/if-all-we-have-left-to-us-is-fleeting-moments-of-joy-we-better-make-them-good-like-these-ones

Have always liked Paul North's Duckrabbit War.

Two opposing armies converge on a battlefield, strangely with same banner, Duckrabbit. Someone on the ground shouts: "There can be no peace until they renounce their Rabbit God and accept our Duck God."

The vast entries of the subreddit, "I'm Sorry Jon" are hilarious(ly disturbing). It's basically the creep of cosmic horror into the Garfield comic. Garfield became a cosmic entity, a Lovecraftian god, which would haunt and terrorize Jon until the end of time.

Thank you. At first glance, I thought not for me...but then...woweee :nerd:

Have always liked Paul North's Duckrabbit War. — Nils Loc

I couldn't find the cartoon but the message certainly pinpoints the essence of war. Its absurdity and waste of life... for what ?
The cartoon makes you think.
Just as other art; novels, paintings, music...

https://www.thepostil.com/war-and-absurdity/
The article starts with stark painting:
“For What?” by Frederick Varley, painted ca. 1917-1919.

“They were afraid of dying, but they were even more afraid to show it.” This sentence, from Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, encapsulates the contradictory posture that war imposes on human beings, and this contradiction leads to the recognition that war itself is an absurd act, bereft of any meaning, and existing solely for its own sake.
Thus, war can only invoke and provoke a bleak vision, and an absurdist response, which forms the basis of both Fernando Arrabal’s Picnic on the Battlefield, and Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. In fact, both these works explore the theme of war as an absurd act, in which meaning of any sort cannot possibly exist. — R.T. Ginn

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Did you mean Paul Noth ? This site shows his artwork for sale:
https://condenaststore.com/art/paul+noth

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When I googled duckrabbitwar, I got this guy:
https://www.duckrabbit.info/blog/2011/07/the-war-photographers-biggest-story-themselves/
Article: 'The war photographer’s biggest story: themselves'
'...Something is missing and that’s the Libyans who were also hurt in the attack. What happened to their stories? The stories of the people that the photographers are risking their lives to tell have been written out of the picture...'
And what about the medical team who saved Martin’s life? Nothing. The real heroes don’t count.

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Turning to Garfield. I had no idea how the cat turned so scary. But now I do:

https://hybridtechcar.com/2019/07/27/im-sorry-jon-how-the-internet-turned-the-cat-garfield-from-the-innocent-comic-book-hero-into-a-lovecraft-monster/

Intriguing - how one artist sees the real Garfield as being exhausted with hidden insanity.
'An immortal who knows the pain of eternal life'.

I see this rethinking or replacing of a 'good' character into a surreal nightmare not so much about immortality but about humans. Again, the question of who we are...the mix.

I enjoyed one cartoon which began in usual 'good' mode and then came the undercurrents.

Conversation of John and Garfield over a cup of coffee could end up in that the cat actually controls the master’s mind and inspires the illusion of a normal life.

But John doesn’t suspect anything. — Garfield and John

To view, scroll down through the scary collective mind of the internet... :scream:

Did you mean Paul Noth ? — Amity

Yes, sorry, I should've linked the cartoon at least. An Army Lines Up for Battle

So true.

Latest in English Education System:

£4m scheme will form part of government effort to counter subject’s reputation as elitist.
According to a British Council survey, Latin is taught at key stage three in less than 3% of state schools, compared with 49% of independent schools.

The education secretary, Gavin Williamson, said: “We know Latin has a reputation as an elitist subject which is only reserved for the privileged few. But the subject can bring so many benefits to young people, so I want to put an end to that divide.” — The Guardian: Education

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/jul/31/latin-introduced-40-state-secondaries-england
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Ah, the issue of 'class division' and the benefits of certain subjects to young people.
It made me think of this thread by @javi2541997 which discusses increase violence in the young.
Causes and solutions.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/11504/consideration-and-reciprocity-as-an-objects-to-avoid-violence-in-our-modern-era/p1

We have to develop a better educational system and teach how bad the violence is. I feel we are living in an Era where people literally do not care about harm others. For this reason, it is time to focus on Ethics and provide more empathy along our relationships.

And my response which looked at role of school exclusions and covid restrictions:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/574024

The suggestion by @javi2541997

The ethics class should be prepared as a gift.

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So, I kinda :smirk: when I saw this cartoon and read the BTL comments:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2021/aug/01/ben-jennings-on-latin-and-vaccines-cartoon