Early meditations on Mind

[Manta Obscura]

Crows are super-smart, for sure. Also, incredibly strange. Every time I've been pregnant the local crows have been fascinated with me (maybe they do this with all pregnant women? and there was a large family of crows that lived near my last home that was OBSESSED with my oldest daughter. They would congregate around the house and if we went to the store several would go with us, and be waiting outside the store to follow us home again. If we were in the back yard they would come around back to watch us. They were pretty cool, really, but it creeped out some of my friends. Then we moved, and the new crows seem to like us (especially after I had another baby) but not like those other ones did.

A few years ago a crow decided it couldn't stand my friend Pete, and would dive-bomb and harass her every time she left the house. He'd follow her for BLOCKS on foot, trying to drop stuff on her head, and would throw things at her car as well. He kept it up for months.

The crow is now the official Discordian bird.

I agree, although I think the dodo or the puffin would be good choices, too.

Has anyone ever made a thread suggesting various "official" Discordian animals/plants/songs/whatever? It would be funny to hear what everyone came up with because, hell, it's funny hearing what some of those things are for states, so it would be a riot hearing the Discordian take on it.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Official Discordian flower: Titan arum, one of the famous "carrion flowers."

Official Discordian non-flowering plant: Venus flytrap

Official Discordian non-placental mammal: Echidna and/or platypus

Official Discordian song: Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in C minor

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Official Discordian non-placental mammal: Echidna and/or platypus

FUCK YOU: PANGOLIN OR GTFO

[Nast]

Official Discordian non-flowering plant: Venus flytrap

Actually the venus flytrap, like most other carnivorous plants, is an angiosperm.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Official Discordian non-flowering plant: Venus flytrap

Actually the venus flytrap, like most other carnivorous plants, is an angiosperm.

You come up with something then, smarty pants. I hope you enjoy your new compulsory appointment as head of the Department of Agriculture.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Official Discordian flower: Self Raising

Official Discordian animal: candiru

Official Discordian song: Twinkle twinkle little star

[Cainad (dec.)]

Official Discordian flower: Self Raising

Official Discordian animal: candiru

Official Discordian song: Twinkle twinkle little star

....

[Nast]

Official Discordian non-flowering plant: Venus flytrap

Actually the venus flytrap, like most other carnivorous plants, is an angiosperm.

You come up with something then, smarty pants. I hope you enjoy your new compulsory appointment as head of the Department of Agriculture.

I recommend sphagnum moss, since it sounds like "spagnum", and it's used in the production of whiskey. 

[Payne]

Official Discordian Anthem: Dance Commander.

Or GTFO.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Official Discordian Anthem: Dance Commander.

Or GTFO.

I appoint you Secretary of Mittens and Win.

[Kai]

Official Discordian non-flowering plant: Venus flytrap

Actually the venus flytrap, like most other carnivorous plants, is an angiosperm.

Who are you again? Because we need to talk more often.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Official discordian tribe of jungle pigmies: Pirahã (click for why)
Official discordian surprised photographed pedestrian: This guy

[P3nT4gR4m]

Official discordian tribe of jungle pigmies: Pirahã (click for why)
Official discordian surprised photographed pedestrian: This guy

...If BME did furries 

[Triple Zero]

Intelligence seems to be, on a mechanical level, a brute force decryption of reality.  Whatever that is. 

Google for timewave zero. Look at the graph, then look at the graph of memory usage in a brute-force search (such as solving a complex problem in prolog). Then look at the scientific method.

i think i saw the timewave zero graph, but i'm not sure if it's the same one. i'm not sure about the memory usage in a brute-force search graph though, would you perhaps mind looking up the pics you're thinking of link them and expand on this subject?

BTW, dolphins and corvids (ravens/crows) have been shown to be 'self aware' in that they can recognize themselves as a specific individual when shown their reflection in a mirror.

ever bother to look that up?

I think I don't know enough about it to really make any statements about it, besides knowing there are mammals and birds that are self aware, and apes that are capable of tool making and "simple need" communication through ASL. I don't have a clue if they are capable of the complex abstract thought processes we are or not. I do believe there are less degrees of separation than most people think between great apes such as chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas and humans.

according to Steven Pinker in The Language Instinct the sign-language experiments on apes were flawed. it was a high amount of wishful thinking and the very same human projection errors we are talking about here, on the researchers part. the one researcher who was deaf and actually knew sign language wasn't convinced the ape was using ASL at all, but was hushed down by the others for not noting down enough "obvious" examples of sign language use. what the ape was communicating was no more than something "me eat me banana me eat eat banana" without any differentiation between those three signs (me/banana/eat), just some vague conditioning that producing any number of those signs in any order would result in food. you could call that "simple need" communication, but it's really got not much to do with sign language at all, just a slightly harder to memorize variant of "push button, receive food".

[Cramulus]

  I do love that stephen pinker. I've shot down so many people with the footnotes from that part of the book.