Slashdot Mirror
Former Slashdot Contributor Jon Katz Believes He Can Talk To Animals (amazon.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland got a surprise when he visited his local bookstore:
Jon Katz turns 70 this August, and he's published a new book called Talking to Animals: How You Can Understand Animals and They Can Understand You. Katz was a former newspaper reporter (and a contributing editor to Rolling Stone) who wrote for HotWired, the first online presence for Wired magazine in the mid-1990s, before becoming a controversial contributor to Slashdot during the site's early days. Katz left Manhattan in the 1990s to live on a farm "surrounded by dogs, cats, sheep, horses, cows, goats, and chickens," according to the book's description, an experience he writes about on his blog. His new book promises that Katz now "marshals his experience to offer us a deeper insight into animals and the tools needed for effectively communicating with them."
Shit nerd is batshit crazy haha.
He first made his author bones writing crap that pandered to and was about "nerds", who in the 90s where not nearly as cool as the "tech bros" of today, but then the nerds, who tend to be fairly smart, exposed his bullshit (Apple II buried under a yurt in Afghanistan? lol) and so he was forced to find another socially isolated group to sell books to: people who are so lonely they try to talk to their pets, which is to say cat ladies.
Katz is a douche. That said, maybe I'll see if I can find a used copy of "Voices from the Hellmouth" or whatever on eBay for a nostalgia trip back to the days when nerds were nerds and frat bros went into finance.
People have been talking to animals since time began... it's easy to train them to specific commands and to recognize their body language to know when they're hungry or playful... but I have yet to find anybody able to have a stimulating conversation with one. Even dogs, the animals most adapted to life with humans, aren't capable of that...
Now if he said he had been working with apes and teaching them to sign I might be more willing to believe... but as things stand now I'm pretty sure he's fucking nuts.
Katz offers an exclusive video demonstrating a dog sitting and shaking hands, clearly in response to human speech.
I missed you! How's it hang'in!
I really liked your writing!
But do they understand what he's saying?
And if they do, how the hell does he know? Do they talk back?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
See, this is the type of shit that happens when you hang around this place too long..
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
I just asked my dog if he wanted a hug. He gives awesome hugs.
Now go over there and talk to those 2 very big nice gentlemen in the white coats......
Man, it's been a while.
I sense a musical a'comin...
Good dog.
I remember when everyone hated him for not actually knowing anything and writing heavily-slanted pieces on whatever bullshit stories people told him that flattered his politics. Little did we know then that the future of blogging was a world of Jon Katzes.
The title, "How You Can Understand Animals and They Can Understand You" needs an edit to:
How You Can Understand "domesticated" Animals and They Can Understand You.
This is because he's only dealt with such animals and none from the wild. If he's up to the challenge, I welcome him to the Sahara, where coming face to face with some of its four legged inhabitants [without protection], immediately invokes the question, "Could you be my next meal?" in the animal's mind.
"tech jocks"
FTFY - See example, Uber.
Sad cat diary
Sad dog diary
I just don't expect them to talk back, except for the human ones (and sometimes not those ones).
Anyone can talk to animals. Now getting them to talk back, and understanding them... that is the tough part.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
They just don't answer.
Say Hi to your mother for me, okay?
In the post Columbine era ....
He used a ghost writer.
You know Slashdot has gone downhill when even bringing back Jon Katz would improve this place.
Hey Jon, if you're reading this, glad to hear you're still going strong! God bless you! If you can survive Slashdot, you can survive anything.
This is news? I see here lots of loons that wrote books like: Talking to Linux: How You Can Understand SystemD and IT Can Understand You.
I saw it on the Far Side
Former Slashdot user finds that its easier to communicate with dogs and cats than the animals that visit Slashdot. Whether its that they actually listen to more than their giant air hole or that they actually realize that they don't know everything about every subject we may never know.
When I make my nose go up and down a bit my rabbit answers me by doing the same. Very cute.
-- Cheers!
But can he talk to CowboyNeal?
We've known this our whole lives
Numerous examples; Bugs Bunny, Micky Mouse, Sylvester the cat, Plankton, Sponge Bob, Squidward
The list goes on and on
He can only speak to Katz.
but evidently not as a topic.
"met with a hostile reaction in segments of the Border Collie community. Notable examples of this criticism have included Donald McCaig's review of The Dogs of Bedlam Farm in [The Bark] magazine, and Penny Tose's review of Katz on Dogs in The American Border Collie magazine"
Completely barking.
I do it all the time. The thing is, I can't tell what it is that they are replying, or even if they are replying.
Me, too. There was some kind of willful fuzziness going on with Katz that was simply incomprehensible.
I saw once piece at large by Katz in subsequent years that wasn't half bad, from his early days of animal farm, IIRC.
A tiny piece of the same mind fungus can be sometimes found in the writings of Clifford Stoll.
Theodore Dalrymple would figure prominently on any list of the same mind fungus manifesting sporadically on the other side of the brain.
Unclassified bio-hazard level 3: What scares the new atheists by John Grey.
Another guy capable of level-10 wool porn is Alain de Botton.
Over the years, I have trained many animals to communicate with me. For instance, we put bells on the doorknobs for the cats to signal when they want out.
There is a limitation to this communication, however. My animals have never expressed a nuanced concept to me. Thinking that this might be a mental capacity issue, I had the veterinarian put a chip in, but my pets are still stupid.
Or are they smart enough to fool me into being their slave?
That's gonna take barnyard sodomy to a whole new level of eww.
I like animals and the idea of being able to communicate with them more effectively is appealing to me so I am listening to a copy of book right now.
I like it so far, interesting stories and asides. He does seem to hint at some sort of "telepathy" going on (transferring mind pictures is how me puts it) which some may find controversial, but well, as I say, so far I'm enjoying it.
Cleerline
This is a perfectly reasonable statement. I talk _with_ animals. I farm and have a large pack of livestock guardian herding dogs. We communicate with about 300 words and phrases. It is two way communications. Some of it is vocal. Some of it is body language. Some of it is sign language. I can tell the dogs things and they can tell me things and they talk to each other - no surprises there. People have been doing it for thousands of years.
What is unfortunate is that urban people have lost this connection to the natural world. Dogs raised as singles don't typically get the cultural knowledge passed down generation to generation like dogs in a farming pack. Pet dogs typically are all alone much of the day and when you get home you greet them and then ignore them in all too many cases. This results in both you and the dog losing the ability to communicate with each other.
Oh, and it isn't just dogs. Pigs have about 30 words they use, sheep use about ten words and chickens use about six words. Learn their words and you can understand what they're talking about as well as talking to them. When we're herding livestock we typically use a couple of the target animal's words to help with the herding. I say we as in both we humans and the dogs. The dogs are multilingual. They pickup the words we use to tell pigs to move forward and they use them too to get the pigs to do the same thing.
And here goes years and years of good Karma. Does Karma still matter on /. ?
His Hellmouth piece was great and brought some geek issues to the forefront and got some issues talked about in normal non-geek circles.
I joined /. because of Jon Katz and the Hellmouth piece.
Not all of his work was good. In fact some was quite awful but it always inspired conversation rather that what we now have here.
A man and his dog walk into a bar. The man says, "I'll bet you a round of drinks that my dog can talk."
Bartender: "Yeah! Sure...go ahead."
Man: "What covers a house?"
Dog: "Roof!"
Man: "How does sandpaper feel?"
Dog: "Rough!"
Man: "Who was the greatest ball player of all time?"
Dog: "Ruth!"
Man: "Pay up. I told you he could talk."
The bartender, annoyed at this point, throws both of them out the door. Sitting on the sidewalk, the dog looks at the guy and asks, "DiMaggio?"
Have gnu, will travel.
Those are not animals, but Democrats. I know that they act alike, have no class, manners, and are unable to restrain themselves but they are still consider 'human' and just not animals.
Well, by their definitions they are human.
...on the internet you never know if you are talking to a human, or a dog:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you%27re_a_dog
FTFY ==> see subject, https://hkar.ru/PIeD
boy, I wonder how many more are out there... well, actually I don't wonder. 197 across 40 sites. Of this image with 15 variations in text.
I'd have sworn he died in a freak pack of raccoons accident some years ago. Funny story, the only reason I got my UID when I did was because he would not shut the fuck up about Columbine. Every day on Slashdot with it. He's also the only contributor on slashdot that I ever banned from my feed.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Yes, very limited. 60 words is useful, real, but limited.
Google: "By the time a child reaches school age and heads to kindergarten, he/she will
have between a 2,100- and 2,200-word vocabulary. The 6-year-old child typically has a 2,600 word expressive vocabulary (words he or she says), and a receptive vocabulary (words he or she understands) of 20,000–24,000 words."
GLENDOWER
I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
HOTSPUR
Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?
-- William Shakespeare, "Henry IV, part 1", Act 3, scene 1.
I can talk to animals. I can even get some to listen and follow actions.
Now, what would be huge, would be to listen and eavesdrop on animals talking to each other, and UNDERSTAND what they're saying. That would be huge.
But anyone can talk to animals. I have seen enough crazy cat ladies talking to their dozens of cats to know that is not a significant talent whatsoever.