Dogs Can't Get Enough of Their Subarus in Brand's Latest Ads:
Subaru of America is launching a new installment of its "Dog tested. Dog approved" campaign via Carmichael Lynch, so let's get one thing out of the way straight off. Awww, they're so cuuuuute! Pooch-powered commercials introduce Grant Weber, a dealer who sells cars to dogs. At one point, he promises a great deal and slides a calculator displaying the numbers across his desk to a canine customer. We hear a contemptuous growl, and a furry paw slides the calculator back. He he—good doggie! Another spot shows a hatchback crammed full of deli meats and sausages—hey, just like the trunk of my car! There's also a Facebook app with an "Ask a Dog" chat function. Lars, Gypsy and Sasha bat their paws across keyboards to answer your questions! (It's kind of like Chatroulette, but with better-looking participants.) Most of the doggie replies to my car-centric queries focused on going for walks, chewing on or digging up stuff and chasing tennis balls. One example: "Walk leash, walkleash walk?" Also: "Handsniff, hand? Sniff hand?" And my personal favorite: "Chomp squirrel, chomp." I've had conversations with human car dealers who weren't half as articulate.
As you probably remember, tests such as IQ tests, GREs, and SATs focus on basic skills like reading, writing, and analytical abilities. The tests are favored because on average, they predict scholastic success. But they do not measure the full capabilities of each person. They do not explain Ted Turner, Ralph Lauren, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg, who all dropped out of college and became billionaires.
A cognitive approach is about celebrating different kinds of intelligence. Genius means that someone can be gifted with one type of cognition while being average or below average in another.
Temple Grandin, at Colorado State University, is autistic yet is also the author of several books, including Animals Make Us Human, and has done more for animal welfare than almost anyone. Although Grandin struggles to read people’s emotions and social cues, her extraordinary understanding of animals has allowed her to reduce the stress of millions of farm animals.
The cognitive revolution changed the way we think about intelligence. It began in the decade that all social revolutions seemed to have happened, the sixties. Rapid advances in computer technology allowed scientists to think differently about the brain and how it solves problems. Instead of the brain being either more or less full of intelligence, like a glass of wine, the brain is more like a computer, where different parts work together. USB ports,keyboards, and modems bring in new information from the environment; a processor helps digest and alter the information into a usable format, while a hard drive stores important information for later use. Neuroscientists realized that , like a computer, many parts of the brain a specialized for solving different types of problems.
One of the best-studied cognitive abilities is memory. In fact, we usually think of geniuses as people who have an extraordinary memory for facts and figures, sine such people often score off the charts on IQ tests. But just as there are different types of intelligence, there are different types of memory. There is memory for events, faces, navigation, things that occurred recently or long ago — the list goes on. If you have a good memory in one of these areas, it does not necessarily mean your other types of memory are equally good.
Ultimately, the notion of multiple intelligences is what informs the research on dog cognition:
There are many definitions of intelligence competing for attention in popular culture. But the definition that has guided my research and that applies throughout the book is a very simple one. The genius of dogs — of all animals, for that matter, including humans — has two criteria:
A mental skill that is strong compared with others, either within your own species or in closely related species.
Bringing you (ad-free) Brain Pickings takes hundreds of hours each month. If you find any joy and stimulation here, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner:
You can also become a one-time patron with a single donation in any amount:
Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.
Brain Pickings takes 450+ hours a month to curate and edit across the different platforms, and remains banner-free. If it brings you any joy and inspiration, please consider a modest donation – it lets me know I'm doing something right.
Durham Bulls Job Fair on February 16: The Durham Bulls are teaming up with the Durham JobLink Career Center to host a Job Fair on Saturday, February 16th to fill part-time game day positions for the 2013 baseball season. The Job Fair will take place from 10:00am until 2:00pm at Northgate Mall in Durham. MORE>
Obey: How the Rise of Mass Propaganda Killed Populism: “A populace that can no longer find the words to articulate what is happening to it is cut off from rational discourse.” British filmmaker and illustrator Temujin Doran has previously delighted and stimulated us with his visual love letters to language and illustration, his opinionated meditations on democracy and the art of protest, and his poetic documentaries about a small Arctic town and a dying occupation. His latest film, made entirely out of footage found on the web, is based on the book The Death of the Liberal Class (public library; UK) by cultural critic and foreign correspondent Chris Hedges and explores how the rise of the Corporate State precipitated everything from income inequality to environmental collapse to the mainstream media’s metamorphosis from a tool of public service into a weapon of private interest.
We unite behind brands, behind celebrities, rather than behind nations. We have become more than nation states — we are corporation states.
At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.
Complement with Adam Curtis’s excellent BBC chronicle of consumerism, The Century of the Self.
Donating = Loving
Bringing you (ad-free) Brain Pickings takes hundreds of hours each month. If you find any joy and stimulation here, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner:
You can also become a one-time patron with a single donation in any amount:
Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.
Brain Pickings takes 450+ hours a month to curate and edit across the different platforms, and remains banner-free. If it brings you any joy and inspiration, please consider a modest donation – it lets me know I'm doing something right.
