Telepathy Goes to the Dogs
Telepathy: “The supposed communication of thoughts or ideas between minds by means other than the known senses.” (Stevenson, A. & Lindberg, C.A. (Eds.), (2010). New Oxford American Dictionary, 3rd Edition). New York, N.Y: Oxford University Press, Inc.) Almost all dog owners believe that dogs have minds, and are not just machines driven by instinct. During the last century, academic psychologists have caught up with that conventional wisdom. The strict behaviorist theories of the 1920s-1960s ignored the mental determinants of animal behavior, but have been supplanted by cognitive theories. These cognitive theories include mental constructs such as expectancies, values, intentions and the like to best explain why animals do what they do. (Zentall, T.R....
Read MoreTime in the Desert: Memory Mirages
In my novel, A Second Chance Life, Sara is telling Jude about a dream she’d recently had: “I dreamt about the summer I drove across the desert from California to Utah, to my first job. In my dream I was me, now—well, maybe (in my forties), because Casey was with me. We were driving on a two-lane highway across the Nevada desert when we saw a young woman walking on the shoulder. We stopped to see if we could help her and it was me. Me, as a young woman, walking on the road.” Jude nodded, looking thoughtful. “But Jude, the really weird part is that the whole thing really happened twenty-seven years ago. As I remember it, a couple picked me up when I ran out of gas on my way to Salt Lake. The woman had on a big sunhat tied with a scarf...
Read MoreHank: Death of a Dog
I had to put Hank down today. He was a rescued German shepherd. When I got him, the shelter said he was probably about 10 years old. I’d had him for two years. This morning, he couldn’t walk at all, not even drag himself with his front legs, the culmination of a slow loss of function in his hind end. He also refused to eat or drink, which was the sign for me to call the vet. The vet showed up at 1:00 this afternoon. She was sympathetic and efficient. I wore my Alpha Bitch tee shirt to call up the courage to be the one who makes these decisions. The whole thing took about 20 minutes, which I appreciated. I had already done much of my grieving for this uncomplaining, easy-going old dog and didn’t want something drawn-out. I clipped a bit of...
Read MoreFeeling the Future
Just about everybody has had an intuition or a hunch or a “gut feeling” about a future event. But can we really feel the future? Some scientists are attempting to find out. I’ve decided to describe Daryl Bem’s Experiment 2 from his (2011) publication, Feeling the Future (see reference below). Dr. Bem, a respected research psychologist, magician, and debunker of ESP (psi) demonstrations, seems to me an ideal person to conduct research on hunches. Also, the procedure of the experiment is relatively simple, and the results are statistically quite unlikely to be due to chance. PARTICIPANTS: 150 Cornell undergraduates. 107 women, 43 men. METHOD: Procedure: There were three steps in this experiment, all fully automated on a computer in order to reduce...
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