Police in Middletown, Ohio responded to a domestic disturbance call last Friday only to find Janice McCoy-Nuttle, 49, drunk on a bed with “one large white parrot… standing on her forehead, biting her in the face. There was another smaller bird on her chest.” According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, “This was in addition to as many as 10 cages with other birds, all of them squawking and causing (six small) dogs to bark. The woman appeared to be so intoxicated, (Sgt. Steve) Ream said, 'that she could not remove the bird off her face.'” After the police arrived, the woman, flipped out, throwing an inhaler at her husband, kicking at the windows of the squad car, and generally causing quite a ruckus. Where is COPS when you need them. “Parrot bites woman, and she throws inhaler” (Thanks, Rick Pescovitz!)

Who Let the Blue Dogs Out? (Woof!) It was Rahm Emanuel, as everyone knows. Well, the Blue Dogs have now joined with K Street lobbyists to set up a shop that promotes their half-witted ideas.

Howie Klein writes:

Blue Dogs are often most reviled for crossing the aisle and voting with Republicans on key issues like healthcare reform and financial reform. Last November, when 39 Democrats voted against healthcare reform, for example, 25 were Blue Dogs. And when the reconciliation changes came to the House March 25, and 32 Democrats voted with the GOP, 25 were Blue Dogs.

Next week it will be one year since the House passed a hate crimes prevention bill that included the LGBT community. Seventeen Democrats crossed the aisle of bigotry and voted with the Republicans.
–
…yesterday six of the most notoriously corrupt K Street lobbyists, including conservative ex-congressmen Bud Cramer (AL) and Charlie Stenholm (TX), formed a new corporately oriented anti-family organization called the Blue Dog Research Forum. Their goal will be to continue pressuring the Democratic caucus to move farther and farther right and to give up on ordinary working families and accept GOP and Big Business guidelines when formulating legislation.

In a letter to Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.), who co-chairs the Blue Dog Coalition, Cramer and Stenholm wrote that they were establishing the organization to “ensure there will always be a forum in Washington to mark that middle ground when it comes to issues affecting the country’s fiscal health.”

The group’s goal is to be an incubator for policy ideas affecting the economy, such as energy, health care, tax policy, national defense and entitlements.

The research forum takes its name from the 54 fiscally conservative Democratic Members who have emerged as a powerful voting bloc on major legislation, but no current lawmaker has been involved in setting it up, according to Cramer, an original Blue Dog and president of the new research forum.

“They actually legally cannot dictate control or dominate what happens here,” Cramer said. “We can involve them. We can involve any Member in the policy forums we will carry forward, and we hope to be able to do that.”

However, as the lobbyists quietly set up the organization over the past several months, they have kept Blue Dog leadership generally informed. And Cramer, who now lobbies at Wexler & Walker Public Policy Associates, said the Members have been supportive so far.

Blue America set up an ActBlue page a while ago called BadDogs, which is there to support progressive primary challengers against Blue Dogs. And now we're running a contest for anyone who donates to the BadDogs page.

Digby explains:

Blue America has a fundraising campaign devoted to ousting these Bad Dogs and Howie has made an offer you can't refuse:

Today, in honor of the attempt by some of the shadiest lobbyists on K Street starting a new Blue Dog think tank to push the Democratic House caucus even further right and to divorce it entirely from the interests of ordinary working families, Blue America is going to give away a genuine RIAA-certified double platinum record award for “Who Let The Dogs Out?”

The award, which of course, can't be purchased, was given to a Baha Men supporter who gifted it to the Blue America PAC to be used to help raise funds to rid America of the scourge of corporate-oriented conservatism inside the Democratic Party. “We already have a Republican Party for that,” explained a Blue America spokesperson. “Shouldn't the Democratic Party represent regular working families who don't hire lobbyists and spend millions of dollars to shape legislation to rip the rest of us off?”

Blue America answers, double yes on that rhetorical question and is offering the double platinum award today. Actually tomorrow morning there will be a drawing among all donors to the Blue America Bad Dogs page on ActBlue. To qualify all you have to donate is $1.00 at this website

The contributions can go directly to progressive candidates Regina Thomas, Marcy Winograd or Doug Tudor, all fighting reactionary Blue Dogs– respectively John Barrow, Jane Harman and Lori Edwards– with strong ties to unsavory corporate lobbyists. Or the donations can go into the Blue America PAC where it will be used in efforts to defeat Blue Dogs in primary elections.

You can join the drawing here.

I don't know about you, but I'm sick of Blue Dog Democrats standing in the way of real progress and supporting the GOP and Big Business over working-class families in America by lying and calling their bloc “centrists”. Nonsense. They are conservatives. And as you would imagine, the southern Blue Dogs are the very worst. Please join in the contest.

no bark collars

Reena Hust

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This article is republished with permission from Charles Hudson’s blog
Something has been bugging me about social games of late. There are a lot of great games out there – I play a lot of them. And you know what many of them have in common? There isn’t enough chaos in most of today’s social games. Let me explain what I mean. I grew up playing two games where bad things can and do happen and they really impact game play. I played a lot of head-to-head Madden football growing up. Every now and then, one of your star players would get injured and go out for the game. There was nothing you could do about that – the player was gone and you had to soldier on. I also played a lot of SimCity. You know what used to really irritate me? When an earthquake would come along and wreck my perfectly designed city. It drove me nuts.

As frustrating as these seemingly stochastic elements were in the game, they made the games more fun. There was an element of chance and risk that was beyond the control of the player. And the consequences of those seemingly stochastic elements was often grave – losing your star QB in the first quarter of a game of Madden can be lethal. Recovering from a catastrophic earthquake in SimCity is not easy and can erase tons of progress. But those elements and risks are always in the back of your mind and they make those games fun.

Why haven’t we seen that in social games? Why isn’t there flooding, frost, drought, locust plagues, and other stochastic elements that can really wreak serious havoc on your farm in Farmville? Island games where volcanoes can erupt and cover the island in ash, erasing progress? Virtual pet games where pets are resistant to training, care, or any attempt to make them obedient? I’ve seen some movement toward light penalties in games, but when will someone really push the envelope and try something riskier here?

The only reason I can see why folks have been shy in terms of integrating these kinds of game mechanics is the belief that today’s crop of social game players have a high degree of loss aversion. Put another way, the belief among social games developers is that putting in real stochastic penalties in games or other forms of anti-progress activities would not be well tolerated by the folks who play these games today. Nobody *likes* losing things in games – it’s not fun. But it can make a game so much more vibrant and complex. I do think there are some players who would rebel against changes like this – but who wants to play a game that’s almost always up and to the right so long as you do what you’re supposed to do? I think we’re missing out on something by not having more random bad things that can happen to you in the current crop of games.

Do you build or play social games? If you have thoughts on this topic, feel free to leave a comment.

PS – Hat tip to Shanna Tellerman for the blog post title and Justin Hall for chatting about it over coffee.

Charles Hudson is the host of the upcoming Social Gaming Summit.

You only have to look in that box titled “AMERICAblog Reader Pets” in the upper right hand corner of this site to see how much we all love their pets. We've received hundreds and hundreds of pet photos — and they keep coming. Last week, John — finally — joined the rank of pet owners. So, all the animal lovers should read this article from today's New York Times about dogs who have come to the aid of vets dealing with PTSD:

The dogs to whom they credit their improved health are not just pets. Rather, they are psychiatric service dogs specially trained to help traumatized veterans leave the battlefield behind as they reintegrate into society.

Because of stories like these, the federal government, not usually at the forefront of alternative medical treatments, is spending several million dollars to study whether scientific research supports anecdotal reports that the dogs might speed recovery from the psychological wounds of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In dozens of interviews, veterans and their therapists reported drastic reductions in P.T.S.D. symptoms and in reliance on medication after receiving a service dog.

The article is really worth a read. And, hat tip to Senator Al Franken:

Under a bill written by Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, veterans with P.T.S.D. will get service dogs as part of a pilot program run by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Training a psychiatric service dog and pairing it with a client costs more than $20,000. The government already helps provide dogs to soldiers who lost their sight or were severely wounded in combat, but had never considered placing dogs for emotional damage.

dog bark control collar

Cicely Gamache

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Add Some Hooch to Your Pooch

According to folklore and Woody Woodpecker, St. Bernards once carried barrels of brandy around their necks to revive stranded mountaineers. Now such barrels can go around your dog's neck to revive you for $50. [Kegworks via TheGreenHead via OhGizmo!]

Send an email to Mark Wilson, the author of this post, at mark@gizmodo.com.

Did you miss Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson’s superb Ghost Stories at The Lyric Hammersmith? Your second chance is coming, as the show is transferring to the West End this July and is booking now for dates into November. I’d recommend buying your tickets for the Duke of York season right now. Note how there’s no show listed for Halloween? I bet they’re planning something special.

Alongside the full-scale festival, there’s something altogether more humble gearing up for a little run around Cannes: it’s the Cannes in a Van fest, in which films get screened… well, from out of the back of a van. This “four-wheeled film festival” is now in its fourth year and publishing a daily blog. Here’s their promo video:

That was cut to promote a documentary about the scheme back in 2008, but it does give some idea of what they’re up to.

Ray Winstone is to star in the “British caper/thriller” The Hot Potato. Screen Daily will tell you more… if you’re a subscriber. They are also reporting on Acts of God, a UK-to-France road movie with Ed Hogg and Robert Sheehan, but that’s also locked behind their paywall.

Bill Forsyth has given a retrospective interview to WNYC (though, apparently, not an WNYC in the US). He’s still one of the best filmmakers we ever produced so any interview with him is essential listening for me.

My home viewing for the week has been Dumbo, the Walt Disney classic about a little Elephant with big, big ears. It’s now available in a DVD and Blu-ray double pack, region coded B and C. Which means, essentially, that the US is going to have to wait, the way they did for Monsters Inc.

This Dumbo release has been out for a couple of weeks now but only just popped through my letter box. At least that’s one good thing that came to he who waited.

I’ve always loved Dumbo, and always found it somehow different to its Disney peers. As I grew older and began to understand more and more about animation and cinema, a few key reasons why it had such a different tone started to become clear. For one thing, it’s very brief, and resolves very, very rapidly; for another, it’s atypically bright and colourful throughout, whereas most Disney films span a far wider and more subtly graduated series of colour schemes; and finally, the animation itself is in a looser, more free and maybe even impressionistic style than any of the Disney features. There’s a lot of ways in which Dumbo looks more like one of the early Silly Symphony shorts, with their rubbery anatomies and almost entirely graphic style of design work, than say, Lady and the Tramp or Jungle Book, and most definitely Pinocchio. Of course, this is not to say that this style has not been executed with great artistry and flair.

The disc’s picture quality is, as you’d imagine, quite impressive indeed. I took a good hard look at the integrity of the lines and they looked great, with no obvious artefacting or DNR damage. Of course, I didn’t have an old copy to compare this new release with, but I can at least tell you that it stands on its own terms. This goes also for the colour tones and levels, which seembrilliantly balanced and well-tuned, though I can’t pledge personally that they’re in anyway true to the original 1941 cinema presentation. Is this the Dumbo that Walt and co. wanted us to see? I can’t say, but I’m pretty sure that if Walt came to it cold, sat down and screened it, he’d think it looked wonderful.

The key special feature on the disc is a Cine-Explore commentary which sees Pete Docter, Andreas Deja and journalist and Disney historian Paula Sigman pop up as a picture-in-picture track. Their contributions are regularly punctuated by archive audio and video, most notably some comments by Ward Kimball who appears in some hugely charming film clips. I’m a commentary track addict, and these Cine-Explore options are like catnip to me. Essential viewing, I’d say.

There’s also a couple of featurettes – one carried over from the old DVD, another exclusive to the new release. It was nice hearing John Canemaker, Eric Goldberg and other animation luminaries placing Dumbo into context and highlighting a wealth of information about its production and release, though there was a great deal of cross-over between what they were discussing and the material included in the Cine-Explore thread. The solution would be to assume all viewers would screen both, whereas here the editorial policy seems to be set by thinking that viewers would plump for just one or the other.

One special feature I’m not at all interested in is the so-called Disney View, which adds lightly-animated side panels to the 4:3 image to fill out a 16:9 TV set. Frankly, if you’re put off by “black bars” then you need to pull your socks up and snap out of it, not compromise the artistic integrity of the film by fiddling with its format. I’m sure the side panels are as sensitively handled as they could be, but they are still fundamentally a bad idea. If nothing else they indulge the great many people with absurd prejudices towards aspect ratios that don’t “fill” their TV sets.

All in all, Dumbo is a hearty recommend though, of course, I’d say the same thing about a VHS copy if that was the only way to see this odd, beautifully crafted little wonder.

Of big screen release the one I want to talk about is Crying With Laughter. I’ve got a video interview with the star and director of the film coming soon – essentially once some frustrating technical issues are ironed out – but in the mean time, I at least want to send you out to see the movie. It starts screening today in select cinemas across the UK, and will slowly move across the land in the next month or so.

For the first five minutes or so, the more cynical viewer will probably expect Crying With Laughter to spin out as some slice-of-life shakicam drama about a misanthropic stand-up comedian. Slowly, though, threads start to become apparent, and then almost as slowly, they start to be woven together. As the tapestry suddenly becomes clear, you’ll realise: what you’re watching is a thriller.

Hal Hartley called his film Amateur a “thriller with one flat tire”. Crying With Laughter is a thriller in which the car sits dormant for a while, engine running but just waiting. And then, eventually, the pedal goes down and the film starts to make a new kind of sense as it hits the highroad.

Once Crying With Laughter goes up a gear, you actually get a refreshed appreciation for the earlier scenes. Obviously it’s not ideal that the first act seems a little short on engaging hooks, but to its credit, there’s a lot of groundwork being done, and it is all essential stuff. In a perfectly balanced scenario, you’d get something like Tarantino’s Jackie Brown. This is more like Jackie Brown standing on one leg and occaisonally hopping to not fall over – but it doesn’t fall over.

Very often, the secret weapon in a very, very low budget film – and Crying With Laughter cost considerably less than you would guess, I think – is the lead actor. In this case that’s Stephen McCole. He co-created the role of Joey Frisk with director Justin Moltnikov through a series of workshops, and it’s tempting to assume he’s poured a lot of himself into the role it’s so comfortable a skin on him. The plot of the film is all about Frisk and his changes, the lessons he learns and the risks he takes – as well as the stupid things he does, the memories he’s struggling with, the past he’s crashed and burned. It’s also about the way one simple flaw in his character becomes a great crack, and how others take advantage of this. A tragedy about a comedian, basically.

Ultimately, the film leaves some loose ends for the audience to tidy up themselves and more than one question of plausibility. Nonetheless, there’s enough of what works to encourage.

Molotnikov and McCole are collaborating again on another feature, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see their ongoing collaborations cement Crying With Laughter as a cult “I knew them when” bragging item.

The official Crying With Laughter site will tell you when the film is going to be in your neighbourhood, and also when you’ll be able to see McCole do some real, live stand up comedy.

best no bark collar

Karren Leneau

I’m mostly in lurker mode through all your work/posts/commenters through this “torture doc” process. My interest is to comprehend it thoroughly. Don’t really know purposes of everyone participating here and related (Leopold/Kaye etc.), but for me purpose is to solidify and detail conditions in the world/USA etc., as this whole torture saga is (again, for me) a bell weather “canary in the mine” condition: all that it encompasses… the people involved, the ferocious misrepresented advocacy and misrepresentation to the public, the corrosive affect on institutions/gov AND cause/effect response internationally… again for me, at the very least, comprehending severe moral hazards as they exist is a required known.

With that said, your comment:

Because, as I pointed out here, they want to describe this as an “evolution,” but they’re basing that evolution on his diaries, which they had from the start. So if they’re claiming they’ve just decided the diaries are the only truthful way of determining who he was, then it means they ignoerd it to sustain claims that he was more than that.

I would assume that would be obvious to most who have followed your detailing of this. I find, however, that at times details tend to overwhelm the mind and I have to “step back” and take a few breaths.

But in that statement, the process of slip-shod moment-in-time assessments used as foundation upon which to propel wide ranging action, w/subsequent slip-shod >> more actions… rinse & repeat, on and on, error upon error… mess upon mess.

This is the “condition of things” out there. Looks to me like a tapestry, much wider and deeper, and much much more corrosive seen in it’s entirety than individual pieces and parts along the way.

So when you say:

This is the Iraq war all over again for them.

… for me anyway, I am always mindful of just that. Part of the larger tapestry, exemplary of enough individual events to constitute a way of doing this on such a scale that this way sucks the vitality out of so much else, sickening people who aren’t already corrupted, so on and so forth.

At the core, all the torture details are in most fundamental core, institutionalized dishonesty (lies). And this core was expressed through much more than 9/11 >> Iraq >> torture and that whole continuum.

The deceptions were expressed in most every avenue of government under the Bush Years: econ & all it’s related tentacles (SEC/FED/TREASURY/FICA-HUD, etc. etc.). It was expressed through the whole Ca. Energy Crisis/Enron thing, and in fact a whole process there similar to what topic of your article here was:

* lie about original cause (Ca. shortage of generation)
* Stock FERC w/cronies to “toe the line” (don’t look)
* ignored the forced/timed blackouts, ignored cutoff gas supply from Texas, not even look at generator plant shutdowns, etc. etc.
* Squeeze and force higher gas (fuel) prices based on fruadulent shortage.

After it was over… +/- 2 yrs after the fact, after saturating media w/original notions:
* CA. had it coming w/”not in our backyard” mentality
* ENRON (and related… there were many others) embodied morally grounded “free market” principles

… and FERC’s public denial of crimes throughout, they posted on their website confirmation that everything that CA. (and anyone watching w/clear eye) could see and said from the beginning, which I summarized above. They actually posted this. They also mistakenly posted their agreement w/various energy companies involved: that in exchange for admitting and detailing planned outages, there would be no fines/prosecutions/PUBLIC DISCLOSURE.

That template looks to me near identical to what you’ve described/summarized here.

As public was being fed “patriotism”, “freedom fries” and “liberation” along the way, I vividly recall having conversations w/people who were looking beyond headlines and deciphering details. Among common statements I (and others… both locally, in blogs etc.) made, was observation that cumulatively… eg. everything Iraq, one mega-tax cut after another concurrent w/mega-offshoring i>everything, w/simeoultaneous pronouncement of “economy is strong”, then W’s privatize SS initiative…

It seemed as though, w/these guys utter disdain for most anyone outside their elite circles, that they were deliberately setting out to backrupt the country… financially, morally, culturally.

It was Blitzkrieg on every front… saturating. Far and wide media saturation, far and wide financial reorganization, far and wide military action… and all of it covered up w/cheap, meaningless jingoism and primate based metaphors.

So now, in what could have been a major cleanup stage… this torture thing process seems just like the financial thing process:
* crimes & lies well documented, well enough detailed for anyone taking the time to comprehend them to understand.
* the public (gov) institutions w/power & authority to do something about ‘em… each and everyone corrupted along the way, gets to a point where there is opportunity for an accountability moment, as in the DOJ AW “evolution” filing that is topic of this post.
* whether financial, energy, or torture… as this opportunity arrives, these authorities utterly fail to do the job: we get something like what we’ve got in this DOJ “pleading”: “fuzzy math”, meaningless dismissall of self-evident facts/crimes w/massive (and I stress that word) affects… essentially, it seems to me, implicit acknowledgement from feds that all this shit is now institutionalized w/in US government, w/fall out in culture a factor not worthy of consideration.

Not good, not good at all. The good ship USA taking on a lot of water these days, and captains are telling the passengers to be calm.

Very useful to maintain a clear eye these days.

Music fans of tomorrow are kids of today, and the way they pay for digital content is through virtual worlds like Farmville and Penguin Town, which turn the acquisition of virtual goods — and digital music is nothing if not a virtual good — into a game.

Conduit Labs’ Music Pets app for Facebook may look cute, but it could have tangible ramifications for how music is discovered and sold in the future.

The goal of Music Pets is to entertain a virtual pet by training it to like the music you like, then using points to send the pet out to find more music to add to your collection. It sounds silly, but this cartoon-ish virtual world includes every element of the real-world music experience: getting recommendations, deciding whether you like songs, collecting music, and going over to your friends’ “houses” to play songs from your collection, which, as with just about everything else, requires that you expend points.

As with similar games, you can get everything you want for your pet and your music collection for free, so long as you have the time to add them to your pet’s training regimen by engaging in repetitive, somewhat amusing activities, including a Plinko-style game that has you trying to bounce balls onto all of the letters in a band’s name. Powering up for more points without spending lots of time requires that you pay up in real money, which is something many people simply don’t do for digital music in other contexts.

Conduit Labs passes on a percentage of revenue to labels, which then pass some of that along to artists and publishers. Is it possible that little furry cartoon characters from Tamagotchi-land will succeed where industry heavyweights have failed: in convincing kids to pay for music?

So far, the Music Pet Facebook app has drawn over a million users since its launch about a month ago, and the company recently inked a deal with the biggest record label in the world, Universal Music Group, to complement its healthy selection of independent labels (Beggars Group, Domino, Downtown and Modular) in Music Pet as well as its other games, Loudcrowd, which launched at SXSW last year and Super Dance. Rather than selling music at a specific price, the company keeps price vague, because users earn music through a combination of effort and time.

“The public perception of the value of a song is very skewed and has little to do with its actual price,” Conduit Labs founder Nabeel Hyatt told Wired.com. “We believe offering fun, social, interactive experiences with music is the best way to monetize.”

If the idea of grown men and women discovering and collecting music using a cute little avatar sounds absurd, you probably haven’t watched Jesse Schell’s DICE talk. If you don’t have the 20 minutes it takes to watch the whole thing, it can pretty much be summed up in one sentence: In the future, he claims, everything will be a game. It’s either a horrifying Orwellian vision of what’s to come or an indication that we’ll all be more amused in the coming years, depending on how you look at it.

In the real world, people typically discover music through other people, give it a listen, decide whether to acquire it, and then take it out for a spin every once in a while and maybe play the song for friends.

Music Pets replicates all of that, except that it makes every stage into a game. If Schell is right, this is a template for how the kids of today will purchase music tomorrow.

Here’s how it works:

training collars

Nicolle Overocker

When I picked up my dog Ruby on Long Island nearly seven years ago, I was surprised to discover that she talks like a human. When I ask her a question (Are you hungry? Do you want to eat dinner? Are you going to bed?), she looks me in the eye, nods her head, and opens her mouth in agreement. For years I tried to figure out the reason for her mysterious behavior — was it genetic? — by trying to track down her parents or siblings, but that search only resulted in some phone calls with sympathetic and sometimes suspicious miniature pinscher breeders who told me I should just give up. It finally dawned on me last week to ask an animal behavior expert. So I pinged Victoria Stilwell, who hosts the hilariously informative dog training show It's Me or the Dog on Animal Planet. Here, Stilwell explains why Ruby talks, why dogs aren't like humans, and how dog training techniques can be applied to tame unruly children.

Why does Ruby talk? Does she think she's human?

It's a human thing to think that a dog thinks it's human. There are some things that dogs do that make people think, oh they're acting human! But dogs are just trying to work out what brings rewards, what will make them feel good.

She probably made a link that it's a form of communication that she knows will get your attention. That's probably why she repeats it — she knows it will get a positive outcome.

Is Ruby really just thinking about cookies and toys and going outside all day?

Dogs are pretty live in the moment. You're eating something that stimulates hunger, so therefore it wants to eat. Dogs are not manipulative — that is a very human trait. People say, I found urine on my bed; the dog peed because it was spiteful. Well, no. Spite is not a word you can use for a dog, it's a very human thing. The dog was just anxious and the pee was a way to transmit anxiety.

A dog will do what it needs to do to survive. It will also move towards things that give them pleasure and move away from things that make them uncomfortable.

Why do dogs tilt their heads? Do they do it in the wild too?

When a dog tilts its head to the side, it's weighing its options, and trying to understand a situation. I think they do it in the wild too, when they're assessing a situation.

Can you apply dog training techniques to human children?

Absolutely. I'm the mother of a six year old child, and I really believe that the behavior principles I've learned through training dogs can be applied to children. If you reward and make a child feel good about good behavior, she's more likely to feel better and behave better. If she does something that's not good, I'll mark the bad behavior, and she'll get a time out or have something that she values taken away from her. She's at the age now where we can talk about it. I'll say, you did this, so now you have two options: you can continue down the road you're going or you can take the other option. It's similar to the way we train dogs, where we give them choices. That promotes confidence.

What's wrong with anthropomorphizing dogs? Why can't we treat them like babies?

We're bringing these animals to live in our domestic environment, where they have to live by human rules. That can be very hard — why can't they poo and pee everywhere? In the dog world, they go when they need to, and chew and mark as they please. We have to teach them to be successful in our world. Where a lot of trainers who use the dominant style go wrong is that they misunderstand this fact.

A dog's physiological experience and nervous system are the same as a humans. But dogs might not experience emotions the same way. We don't know for sure how the dog feels love, or how it feels jealousy. I think that's the danger of anthropomorphizing — it's okay to do it to some extent but not so it clouds our understanding of dog behavior.

A lot of people think positive reinforcement training is just for little dogs and nandy pandy behavior, but it's actually based on the science of learning. If your dog does something good, you reward it, and that'll make him feel good and want to repeat that behavior. Discipline shouldn't be used to make a dog fear you — you get much better results if you use it as a guide.

Is it bad to domesticate animals? It seems apparent that it's clearly not natural for some animals, like killer whales. Can the same be said for dogs?

A good argument can be made that if the dog had a choice, it would choose this life over hunting squirrels for a living. The fact is, we have domesticated dogs and they wouldn't know how to survive in the wild.

Fox News:

The Democrats’ proposed crackdown on Wall Street excess goes too far, critics say, arguing that the proposed new regulations would poison the well of innovation rather than protect ordinary Americans.

The new regulations Senate Democrats are proposing for the financial industry include setting up a mechanism for liquidating large firms and the creation of a consumer protection agency — steps they say will prevent a future national financial collapse.

But James Gattuso, a senior research fellow in regulatory policy at the Heritage Foundation, said the legislation contains 14 fatal flaws that would hurt consumers and the economy and make another financial crisis or bailout even more likely to occur.

Among those flaws, Gattuso said, is the consumer protection agency, which he says would wreak havoc with the new rules and would lead to “lost innovation that was never offered.”

“It’s sort of like the dog that didn’t bark,” he said, explaining that if consumer rules were too strict 20 years ago, they may have prevented the creation of the debit card or impede Paypal.

He also said the regulations could restrict currently available products, such as a five-year adjustable rate mortgage that offers low payments for five years before a dramatic increase.

“It’s good if you’re going to sell your home in five years,” he said. “I don’t know what regulators think of that but I can see that being banned.”

President Obama argues that the rules are needed to protect the little guy from the predators on Wall Street.

“I believe in a strong financial sector that helps people to raise capital and get loans and invest their savings its part of what has made America what it is, but a free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it,” he told a Wall Street crowd Thursday in a speech at Cooper Union college in lower Manhattan. “That is what happened too often in the years leading up to the crisis.”

The Consumer Financial Protection Agency would police lending, credit cards and other bank-customer transactions.

Karl Rove, a former senior adviser to President George W. Bush and a Fox News contributor, said he’s not convinced there’s a need for another government bureaucracy.

“If you got problems, solve the problems within the existing agencies,” he said. “Let’s not create a new bureaucracy.”

Banking consultant Burt Ely said the bill potentially harms the economy by producing a “riskier financial system that is less efficient and more costly.”

“I’m a big believer in the ironclad law of unintended consequences that [the provisions] could make the financial system riskier in ways that we can’t even imagine,” he told FoxNews.com.

Ely said there will be “a lot of hidden costs and hidden shaping in the marketplace.” He also predicted the regulations could lead to more economic bubbles from products like subprime mortgages that sound too good to be true.

He compared the regulations to squeezing an inflated balloon, causing it to bulge in another place, and squeezing more until the balloon finally bursts.

But Democrats have portrayed the legislation as protecting taxpayers from the reckless behavior and practices of Wall Street. Obama has said the U.S. was destined to endure a new economic crisis that sticks taxpayers with the bill unless Congress tightens oversight of the financial industry.

Steve Verdier, director of congressional affairs at the Independent Community Bankers of America, said his association wants to the bill to pass but is seeking to lift some of the regulations on community banks.

“We don’t think it makes a lot of sense,” he said. “The provisions are designed to clamp down on big firms. Smaller banks don’t need that sort of burden.”

But Verider said he supports the crackdown on nonbanks because they have been allowed to compete against community banks without the same supervision.

“The situation we have now, and one of the things that led us into the financial crisis were consumers were granted loans by companies that were not sufficiently regulated,” he said citing payday lenders as one example.

“If you have the same regulation of nonbanks, there would not have been the abuse of consumers or the losses that the economy suffered,” he said. “So you have to balance the cost of additional supervision with the cost of not supervising.”

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Gavin Younghans

Humans wear underpants, so why shouldn’t dogs? Neena Pellegrini came up with a line of Pants for Dogs after her male bichon frise kept "marking" her female dogs:

First product up: cute, comfy and — of utmost importance — absorbent doggie undies and thongs.

Sounds crazy to anyone who hasn’t had a dog with a bit of an incontinence/dribbling problem, or a female dog that hasn’t been fixed. But those of us who have owned and loved such a dog have spent more than a few minutes wishing Depends came in canine configurations.

Neena Pellegrini to the rescue.

She’s the founder of Pants for Dogs (pantsfordogs.com), a little Seattle-based cottage industry filling hundreds of orders for tiny- to massive-sized panties for female dogs, and, for male dogs, items she calls cummerbunds (although the waist isn’t, in a precise sense, the true target, of course). Each garment in its own way protects rugs, floors and whatever else needs protecting from the drips and streams we’d rather not contemplate (and certainly not discuss).

The business started four years ago when Pellegrini’s little male dog kept marking her little female dogs. A training issue, most would
say. But improvement doesn’t happen overnight. How do you protect the girls?

Sharon Peters of Pet Talk has more: Link | Pants For Dogs website

Posted by Adam Charles (acharles@filmschoolrejects.com) on April 7, 2010 Share

“You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get it and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!”

Synopsis

About fifteen years since the events of Rocky V and The Italian Stallion is trying to deal with life following the death of Adrian.  He’s opened up a restaurant, named after her, in which he tells stories of the old days to his customers and gets by on his charm and good nature.  When the opportunity presents itself for Rocky to get back in the ring for an exhibition fight against the world champion (himself looking to revitalize his public image) Rocky starts to reignite the old interior battle flames for one final match to leave it all out on the table, but to the dismay of his son who struggles to break out of his father’s shadow in his own endeavors.

Why We Love It

Of all the sequels in one of cinema’s most popular franchises this one feels most authentic and honest to the original, or at least the most connected since the third film.  Not to diminish the entertainment value of the other installments (even the fifth…to a degree), Rocky Balboa is just more of a return to the emotional struggles of the character.  With the passing of the heart and soul of the main character’s heart and soul there’s more turmoil for Rocky than ever before, which he of course meets face on like the champion that he is, thus making for some very effective drama.

This is also the first film in the series which ties most in to the actual climate of the boxing world.  Not necessarily the fighters, or even the fighting when it finally comes to that in the finale, but an objective view of the lack of popular heavyweight competition in a sport that thrived on that weight class for an entire century and came to an indefinite halt with the retirement of Lennox Lewis earlier this decade.  That’s the state of affairs the film’s heavyweight champion (played by prior light heavyweight champion of the world Antonio Tarver) finds himself in, and to his own detriment needs Rocky for more reasons than one.  He needs a fight that’ll not only increase the public interest in the heavyweight class again, but he also needs that special challenger – the one that doesn’t know how to quit moving forward and testing an opponent’s limits.  Despite Rocky’s age we know him to be that challenger.

Unlike the other films in the series though, this film doesn’t build up to the fight.  It has its training montage, and it’s got the blood and guts of the other main events from the prior five films, but the highpoints of Rocky Balboa don’t come with the final fight and lead-up training; at least, not in terms of what is most enjoyable to revisit.  It’s in the moments where Rocky unleashes his wisdom onto his son (proving that wisdom and intelligence are not hand in hand), lets the boxing license commission get an earful of their own injustice, and pours his heart out to his brother-in-law Paulie about just how painful it is to be without the best thing that ever happened to him – and it isn’t boxing.

Moment We Fell In Love

The same day every year Rocky takes a tour of Philly to all of the places most significant to his life with Adrian; the old pet store, their first home, and the ice skating rink that’s no longer there.  Paulie comes along for the ride, as he’s done for the past three years, and at first it appears like he’s just being typical Paulie – constantly asking Rocky if he’s ready to leave each spot, talking about how he’s happy the ice rink was torn down, and just adding a negative vibe to Rocky’s attempt to reminisce about the greatest thing he’s ever known.  Rocky turns to Paulie and asks what his problem is and the torment finally comes out, Paulie can’t think back on the times that Rocky finds so endearing because all he can recall is how badly he treated his sister.  It’s Paulie’s moment of honest remorse uncovered in a touching recap down memory lane of one of the most loving relationships in cinema.

Final Thoughts

I don’t recall any of the other films in the series having as many moments of blunt honesty as Rocky Balboa.  I never expected that my favorite parts to a Rocky film would take place outside of a ring or gym, but some of the monologues and dialogue exchanges feel as authentic in their delivery as if they were words spoken and not words being read.  It feels like the first film since the first film that Stallone needed to make and not just wanted to make, because there was more to say and not because there was more that could be done.

Click here to read about more Movies We Love

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Margarette Tutoky

I’m mostly in lurker mode through all your work/posts/commenters through this “torture doc” process. My interest is to comprehend it thoroughly. Don’t really know purposes of everyone participating here and related (Leopold/Kaye etc.), but for me purpose is to solidify and detail conditions in the world/USA etc., as this whole torture saga is (again, for me) a bell weather “canary in the mine” condition: all that it encompasses… the people involved, the ferocious misrepresented advocacy and misrepresentation to the public, the corrosive affect on institutions/gov AND cause/effect response internationally… again for me, at the very least, comprehending severe moral hazards as they exist is a required known.

With that said, your comment:

Because, as I pointed out here, they want to describe this as an “evolution,” but they’re basing that evolution on his diaries, which they had from the start. So if they’re claiming they’ve just decided the diaries are the only truthful way of determining who he was, then it means they ignoerd it to sustain claims that he was more than that.

I would assume that would be obvious to most who have followed your detailing of this. I find, however, that at times details tend to overwhelm the mind and I have to “step back” and take a few breaths.

But in that statement, the process of slip-shod moment-in-time assessments used as foundation upon which to propel wide ranging action, w/subsequent slip-shod >> more actions… rinse & repeat, on and on, error upon error… mess upon mess.

This is the “condition of things” out there. Looks to me like a tapestry, much wider and deeper, and much much more corrosive seen in it’s entirety than individual pieces and parts along the way.

So when you say:

This is the Iraq war all over again for them.

… for me anyway, I am always mindful of just that. Part of the larger tapestry, exemplary of enough individual events to constitute a way of doing this on such a scale that this way sucks the vitality out of so much else, sickening people who aren’t already corrupted, so on and so forth.

At the core, all the torture details are in most fundamental core, institutionalized dishonesty (lies). And this core was expressed through much more than 9/11 >> Iraq >> torture and that whole continuum.

The deceptions were expressed in most every avenue of government under the Bush Years: econ & all it’s related tentacles (SEC/FED/TREASURY/FICA-HUD, etc. etc.). It was expressed through the whole Ca. Energy Crisis/Enron thing, and in fact a whole process there similar to what topic of your article here was:

* lie about original cause (Ca. shortage of generation)
* Stock FERC w/cronies to “toe the line” (don’t look)
* ignored the forced/timed blackouts, ignored cutoff gas supply from Texas, not even look at generator plant shutdowns, etc. etc.
* Squeeze and force higher gas (fuel) prices based on fruadulent shortage.

After it was over… +/- 2 yrs after the fact, after saturating media w/original notions:
* CA. had it coming w/”not in our backyard” mentality
* ENRON (and related… there were many others) embodied morally grounded “free market” principles

… and FERC’s public denial of crimes throughout, they posted on their website confirmation that everything that CA. (and anyone watching w/clear eye) could see and said from the beginning, which I summarized above. They actually posted this. They also mistakenly posted their agreement w/various energy companies involved: that in exchange for admitting and detailing planned outages, there would be no fines/prosecutions/PUBLIC DISCLOSURE.

That template looks to me near identical to what you’ve described/summarized here.

As public was being fed “patriotism”, “freedom fries” and “liberation” along the way, I vividly recall having conversations w/people who were looking beyond headlines and deciphering details. Among common statements I (and others… both locally, in blogs etc.) made, was observation that cumulatively… eg. everything Iraq, one mega-tax cut after another concurrent w/mega-offshoring i>everything, w/simeoultaneous pronouncement of “economy is strong”, then W’s privatize SS initiative…

It seemed as though, w/these guys utter disdain for most anyone outside their elite circles, that they were deliberately setting out to backrupt the country… financially, morally, culturally.

It was Blitzkrieg on every front… saturating. Far and wide media saturation, far and wide financial reorganization, far and wide military action… and all of it covered up w/cheap, meaningless jingoism and primate based metaphors.

So now, in what could have been a major cleanup stage… this torture thing process seems just like the financial thing process:
* crimes & lies well documented, well enough detailed for anyone taking the time to comprehend them to understand.
* the public (gov) institutions w/power & authority to do something about ‘em… each and everyone corrupted along the way, gets to a point where there is opportunity for an accountability moment, as in the DOJ AW “evolution” filing that is topic of this post.
* whether financial, energy, or torture… as this opportunity arrives, these authorities utterly fail to do the job: we get something like what we’ve got in this DOJ “pleading”: “fuzzy math”, meaningless dismissall of self-evident facts/crimes w/massive (and I stress that word) affects… essentially, it seems to me, implicit acknowledgement from feds that all this shit is now institutionalized w/in US government, w/fall out in culture a factor not worthy of consideration.

Not good, not good at all. The good ship USA taking on a lot of water these days, and captains are telling the passengers to be calm.

Very useful to maintain a clear eye these days.

Depending on whether or not you're heading to movie theaters this weekend, you might learn a little something or two about “How To Train Your Dragon.” In all likelihood, you're not going to encounter too many fire-breathing winged beasts in your life — I would hope not, anyway — but in case you do, DreamWorks' latest 3-D animated feature should teach you a couple of tricks on how to tame such a mythical creature.

But if you have plans that prevent you from heading to the local cinema in the near future, never fear — there are plenty of other films that have already laid out a few lessons on how to train your pet dragon, or at least how to avoid getting killed by one!

After the jump, check out some of the lessons we've learned from other cinematic dragons.

Cover Up Your Underbelly: Although the vast majority of dragons are capable of massive amounts of destruction, that's not to say they're without their weaknesses. Take Smaug in the forthcoming “The Hobbit,” for example — powerful though he may be, the lack of gold plating on one portion of his belly proved to be his undoing. When training your dragon, it's important to identify any weakness that could be exploited by a potential opponent.

Don't Assume Too Much: It's easy to look at a dragon and find yourself terrified at the creature's ferocious appearance, but don't be so quick to judge a book by its cover — or, in this case, a dragon by its scales. Draco, the Sean Connery-voiced dragon at the center of “Dragonheart,” is certainly sarcastic and has a bit of a mean streak, but if treated with respect and appreciation, he can become an invaluable ally.

Don't Stare A Gift Dragon In The Mouth: As a trainer, it's important to know your limitations against a dragon — for instance, leaping at a dragon while clutching a battle axe in your hand is most likely going to lead to you being swallowed whole, like Matthew McConaughey's character in “Reign of Fire.” It's best to deal with these creatures diplomatically, since violence isn't going to get you anywhere aside from a dragon's digestive tract.

Establish A Friendship: Beyond diplomacy, appreciation and respect, there's a lot to be said for loving your dragon. In “Pete's Dragon,” Pete and Elliott the Dragon have an excellent relationship due to the young orphan's affinity for the cartoon creature. By solidifying a loving relationship between yourself and your dragon, you'll find yourself not only with a partner in crime, but with a true friend.

Get Lucky: In life, education and ability aren't always enough — often, you need some luck on your side in order to achieve your dreams. So if you're ever at a point where you can actually select your very own dragon, you would be wise to find a luckdragon like Falkor from “The Neverending Story.” While he's not as strong and menacing as some other fictional dragons, he's impossibly lucky, and that's an invaluable skill to have on your side.

What other lessons have you learned from movie dragons? Tell us in the comments on on Twitter!

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Val Fernsler

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