Inside a Dog: Book Report

Hey guys, it's Adventure Van here with a blog about 'Inside a Dog', a book about how a dog acts with the world both the same way or differently the same we do, and how we can teach and learn from them. It's written by Alexandra Horowitz, who brings up situations with her dog Pump to add on to her points that she writes about. It's about 300 pages long, and it's a pretty heavy read. However, the info is awesome and makes you look at dogs differently then you would before reading this book.

The book consists of 12 chapters, which each consist of a variety of dogs, their owners, and experiments that all group together to create their own sections, and the author does an excellent job on adding old folk tales and scientific ideas together, as well as adding on her own experience with her dog(s) to the book to create one concise book about the ways dogs work. I really enjoyed reading it, as the style itself was well done, and I haven't really gotten to the actual info in the book yet.

As I said, the book is 12 chapters long, and ignoring the prelude/postscript, there's stuff about Umwelt, the way the author describes how everyone sees and rates things and how you can see things the way other animals/people see them. Then there's a chapter about how wolves became dogs, one about how dogs smell things, as well as ways that they speak and see, the way they can nudge us to do the thing they want us to do, how they can complete simple tasks and even some complex ones while not falling prey to the Clever Hans fallacy.

As well as a huge chapter about what dogs actually know, what we teach them and how they learn, how they teach and we learn, and how we both deal with problems, happiness, and death. It talks about the human in them and the dog in us. It's an awesome book and I recommend you check it out. Did I mention there was a 'version for kids'? It's much less complex and dense, but you'll still learn stuff!

That's Adventure Van, petting out!

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats: Book Report

Hey guys, it's Adventure Van here with a blog about the book that inspired the musical 'Cats', Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, (written by T.S. Eliot, and illustrated by Edward Gorey). In this awesome book, you can read 15 stories about magical, piratical, eating cats in all their glory. You can hear the tales of the great Growltiger, the sneaky Macavity, the battle of The Pekes and the Pollicles, and the Song of the Jellicles. It's a great book, and I'm planning on doing a blog about the musical that spawned from it. It's an awesome collection of short stories, and I'd recommend getting it just to read once or twice. You can find the Amazon link to buy it here. I give it 10 meows out of 10.

That's Adventure Van, mewing out.

Chinese Books.

Hey guys, it's Adventure Van here with a blog about two of my old Chinese Workbooks, Chinese and English Nursery Rhymes, and Hippocrene Children's Illustrated Mandarin Dictionary. I've been using this books for a while now, and they are both very useful. The Nursery Rhymes book gives a look into Chinese Culture while the Illustrated Dictionary is a book that has a large amount of useful words in it. While I may not use these books as often in the future, they're still very useful books that I'm glad to have.

Adventure Van, updating away.

This Thing Exists?: The SPAS.

Hey guys, it's Adventure Van here with another This Thing Exists? This time I'll be talking about the Self Propelled Aquanaut Suit, or the SPAS. Working up to depths such as 1,000 feet, this would allow you to 'be' a submarine, with the added mobility of not being a huge clunk of metal in a sphere shape. There's also a camera that records everything that you can see, as well as 50 hours of life support and the ability to communicate with a control group even at such low depths. As much as they are awesome, the 825,000$ price tag may swerve off those who just have a hobby in exploring underwater.

That's Adventure Van, swimming away.

A God That Could be Real

Hey guys, it's Adventure Van here with a blog about 'A God That Could Be Real' , a book that seems fairly unbiased and agnostic to an extremely controversial subject. It's seperated into 3 parts, parts disproving an all seeing, all knowing, all powerful gods, a part for proving that there in fact might be a god that follows a certain set of rules, and a last part about what to do whether or not you believe in the gods, and how to pray 'to the universe', even if it's just to get stress off your shoulders. I thought this book took a nice, calm, rational approach without being all uptight and tilted towards a side.

That's Adventure Van, thinking.