Geek Humor

Okay, cute meets dorky. With all of my searching around for presentation-worthy images, I stumbled across this one. Couldn't resist...

Pig Tetris?

I apologize to any of my gamer friends... I don't mean to give your girlfriends/boyfriends even more ammunition (and lets be real, its not like the pigs are playing Halo or anything)! But, this research caught my eye.

Article from Eston Martz, reporting on the research of Candace Croney et al., at Penn State:

"Can pigs think? And if so, what do they think about? That is what Candace Croney, a doctoral student in animal science, is trying to find out. She is involved in a novel study of farm animal cognition with animal scientist Stanley Curtis. "We want to answer this question: Do pigs that have wallowed in the mud daydream about mud puddles?" she says. "In other words, what is their level of cognition?"

Croney, a native of Trinidad who grew up in New York City, is the first person in her family to attend college in the United States. "I always wanted to work with animals, even when I was very young," recalls Croney, who earned a B.S. in animal science at Rutgers and an M.S. at Penn State. "For my master's, I studied the effects of handling practices on calf movement and behavior. I examined whether and when it was appropriate to use electric cattle prods. While the prod sometimes is a good tool, we found that in certain situations, other ways of controlling the animal work better. It takes a lot of careful observation to learn how animals perceive and respond to things."

As part of her doctoral study, Croney hopes to quantify the cognitive level of pigs by encouraging them to do something that many parents wish their children wouldn't do so often–play video games. However, the pigs won't be playing arcade favorites like Mario World or Mortal Kombat, at least not at first. "We start with a very simple task," Croney says. "The computer screen has a series of different icons, or shapes, on one side and a single shape on the other. First, we try to get the pig to move the single shape across the screen to touch the one that matches it. Once the pig accomplishes that, we move on to more complex tasks. Pigs are known to be smart animals, and we expect them to do more than recognize symbols. Our tests are similar to many used in child cognitive psychology. They'll give us an idea of how advanced pigs are in mental development."

When it's time for a pig to play a game, the researchers position the computer monitor so that the pig can easily see it while it manipulates a joystick with its snout. "As video game enthusiasts can tell you, some joysticks aren't very durable," Croney says. "They couldn't withstand the strength of a pig. That created an unusual challenge–just how do you modify a joystick for a pig? We came up with a design that encased the shaft of a standard joystick in a steel handle, then added a device like a gearshift knob to the top of the joystick to help the pig control it."

The research team, which includes several undergraduates in animal bioscience, also had to design a special food delivery system. "Food is used as a reward to motivate the pigs to play the game," says Croney. "When the pigs correctly move the object on the screen, a bell rings, telling the pig that it's about to get a reward. Then a treat drops through a tube right into the pig's cup." The researchers also have installed a videotape system to record each experiment from four angles, which can be played back on screen simultaneously. "The videotapes help us carefully analyze the pigs' behavior while they are using the joysticks," Croney says.

"Having pigs play video games may sound frivolous at first, but we have a very serious goal. We have to know what an animal's needs–including any behavioral needs–are in order to meet those needs. We do know that pigs can be trained to turn the lights off and on in their housing facility, but what kind of lighting do they prefer? If we can better understand how pigs see the world, maybe we can learn how they think and feel. These experiments may help us start to get the information we need to make better decisions and judgments about how to care for animals."

Croney's thesis committee includes Karen Quigley, assistant professor of psychology at Penn State, who studies the physiological basis of behaviors such as fight-or-flight responses. The other members of the research team are William Hopkins, a cognitive psychologist with the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center at Emory University; Sara Boysen, a psychologist who works with primates at The Ohio State University; and Julie Morrow-Tesch, a USDA animal scientist specializing in animal behavior at Purdue University. "We're adapting software that Dr. Hopkins and colleagues developed to work with primates," Croney says. "He is trying to establish where different monkeys and apes stand on the cognitive scale. We want to do similar research with pigs. Nobody's done this kind of work with farm animals before."

Eventually, Croney hopes to do comparative cognitive studies of humans and animals, but for now her goal is to help people better understand animal behavior. "For instance, livestock producers really need to be more aware of the animals' behavior," she says. "What humans do affects how animals respond, and we need to identify and quantify what those responses are. There's a lot of work that could be done to make environments more comfortable and healthy for animals–not just on farms, but also in zoos and even in homes."

Review: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: A Novel by David Wroblewski

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Alright. So, I think this may be my last stab at an "Oprah" pick. I had to forcibly stop myself from thinking about the story to enjoy this read, and once I did, the tale is engaging. I have to admit that I wanted to know what was going to happen next and did get drawn into the yarn. Hence, the three stars. I do think that the book is well written and has a unique perspective. Plus I am a HUGE sucker for dogs. Love 'em. It almost doesn't seem to matter that they have no real purpose in the story. Just freakin' love them!



Okay. Now that I have all the nice bits out of the way, I can feel free to engage my brain and actually say what was racing through my head when I wasn't suppressing my urge to think about what I was reading:



*Caution: Major spoilers ahead*



Most importantly: Why in the world are we supposed to feel sympathy for Edgar? The nagging voice in the back of my head kept saying - "Uhm... This guy is kinda a prick..." Okay, so Edgar gets dealt some rough cards in the form of a really crazy uncle. He is also a young teenager and, ya know, hormones and all that jazz. I really tried to keep that in mind as Edgar spiraled down deeper and deeper into himself as the story progressed. But I just could not shake the feeling that I really don't like this kid. He is selfish and stubborn to an extreme and seems to feel no need to consider his actions in the context of how they affect anyone else. We are with him, and his character alone, for a long period of the book. Yet his inner life is remarkably flat and his attention mostly focused on the menial tasks of the day to day.



For example, at the age of 14, he basically murders the money-grubbing Doctor Papineau. We're not talking about the son of an abusive father, or a child hardened by the cruelty of life, Edgar is a very sheltered boy who has barely had interaction outside of his mom, dad, and the family dogs. Yet, the amount of time that Edgar spends ruminating on his homicide is fairly scanty. We are essentially told by the narrator that he really cares and wants to make right with the doctor's son, Glen - yet we see no evidence of this from Edgar's actions. Later, I was especially confused at the striking dichotomy of Edgar's inner emotional life and his actions when he then blinds Dr. Papineau's son with burning quicklime and completely ignores him as he thrashes about in agony for basically the next 60 pages. Really? He is deeply sorry about Dr. Papineau?



But worse, is the callousness with which Edgar abuses and manipulates his mother. I kept thinking, what happened to Trudy?!? The poor woman, who in a moment of panic, sends her child away to keep him from jail. Stunned from Edgar's near physical assault, she then gets to watch him murder a family friend, and then Edgar runs off for months, leaving no trace. Her husband is dead, her child is missing, and the family business is falling to pieces. I couldn't shake the feeling that this story should have been about her. Instead, we are stuck following Edgar through the woods as he steals from countless people, takes pleasure in terrifying small girls, takes advantage of the kindness of strangers, and is apparently so unsympathetic that not even his dogs are willing to stay with him.



Edgar shows no identifiable remorse for the situation he has left his mother in. Edgar at least knows that she has lost her husband and is losing the business. He is convinced that she is becoming deeply involved with a homicidal killer. Plus, if he bothered to think about it, he would know that she must be stricken with worry and guilt over his little disappearing act. Yet his "beloved mother" Trudy is hardly mentioned, for all of our many pages traveling with Edgar in the backwoods. Instead, Edgar spends his days obsessing over his last childish acts towards the family dog, Almandine. Then, when Edgar returns to the farm in the last pages, he bullies his mother into passivity by cruelly threatening to run away again.



What kind of cold-hearted monster is this child? Why should I be rooting for him instead of hoping that the police pick him up and toss him in jail? (this coming from a die-hard liberal, btw...)



Anyway... The dogs are nice! If somewhat confusing... They seem to linger at the border of man's "best-est friend ever" and supernatural psychic-canines. Which had me confused for a while. For all of the discussion of the dogs in this book, I remain unsure of the point or metaphor that they are supposed to serve... But hey, who can resist a fuzzy snout and liquid brown eyes? I wondered at numerous times if the mere presence of the dogs in the story was the reason that this novel has taken off.



Finally, the finale. A lot of people seem pretty pissed off with this ending. After all, it is shocking to see the barn burn, nearly all of the main characters maimed or killed, and the work of generations of creation disbanded in a single night. But, I was actually holding out for something worse. Up until the very ending, I kept thinking that "evil uncle Claude" was actually going to just be human instead of some two-dimensional gremlin. I kept expecting there to be some epiphany, where Edgar would realize that he was wrong and that he has just destroyed everything in his misguided attempts to be a lone vigilante. Which, given my low opinion of Edgar, would have been perversely satisfying and would have a lot more moral value than the real ending.



So I also dislike this ending, but for entirely different reasons. I think that Wroblewski had to make it big, mostly because I don't think most readers would have been satisfied with an ending that wasn't somewhat epic. If Wroblewski could have avoided the potential cloying cheesiness, I even would have been satisfied with an ending where the dogs did something to save the day. Perhaps a message of redemption of sorts for all of the years of hard work that went into their care... Or really ANY ending where Edgar is forced to confront all of the shallow-thinking that has led him to this point would have been nice. A recognition that the world doesn't operate solely in either light or shadow.



Instead we get a slash and burn ending. We rip back the curtain AND!!! everything is exactly as we thought...



Claude is the monster that we were lead to believe all along. Edgar is at least consistent in his utter indifference to his mother, leaving her literally wrestling on the ground with the enraged "bull-like" Glen. Who, by the way, Edgar has now orphaned AND blinded and who is thereby the only legitimate tragic figure of the story, other than Trudy. For her part, Trudy is still the passive woman who helplessly stands by while an ocean of bad luck crashes around her. Finally, the dogs turn out to be exactly as ordinary as any other pack of animals in the moment of truth (despite all of the foreshadowed paranormal happenings earlier in the book).



I don't care that everything burns. The only two characters with any redeeming traits are left standing in the end anyway (albeit, one is seriously disfigured physically, and the other will most likely commit suicide shortly thereafter). But what is the point of it all?



Yuck.



But it was at least entertaining brain candy!






View all my reviews.