{"id":35519,"date":"2011-05-21T13:00:04","date_gmt":"2011-05-21T13:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/having-a-ball-on-caturday-bad-astronomy\/"},"modified":"2011-05-21T13:00:04","modified_gmt":"2011-05-21T13:00:04","slug":"having-a-ball-on-caturday-bad-astronomy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/having-a-ball-on-caturday-bad-astronomy.php","title":{"rendered":"Having a ball on Caturday | Bad Astronomy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today is Caturday, expanded in these parts to include all animals, things animal-like, and pretty much whatever I want it to mean. <\/p><p>Including dogs. My brother-in-law Chris is a photographer, and snapped <a rel=\"nofollow\">this funny picture<\/a> of my pseudonymous dog Canis Minor just as she was about to do one of her favorite things in the whole world: catch a ball.<\/p><p><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/24229547@N03\/5728493223\/sizes\/l\/in\/photostream\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/30583_canisminor_ball.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"609\" height=\"426\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32105\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><\/p><p>I love my dogs. They&rsquo;re friendly, smart, quirky, and loving themselves. But it&rsquo;s pictures like this that remind me that while we may have domesticated them (really, domesticated each other), there remains some of that fierceness of their pack hunting past in them.<\/p><p>I was in a conversation recently about how smart dogs are, and whether they are self-aware. It was an interesting topic, and it centered on humor; it seems logical that to have humor you must be self-aware. Do other animals besides us have senses of humor? Dolphins? <\/p><p>Maybe dogs don&rsquo;t (they can&rsquo;t pass <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mirror_test\">the mirror test<\/a>, apparently<a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/pipes.yahoo.com\/pipes\/pipe.info?_id=b1f7827b1dfe342d3c7cc9be64d477ac#footnote\">*<\/a>), but they <em>sure<\/em> know how to have fun. Check out <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/24229547@N03\/5728492883\/in\/photostream\/\">the next picture<\/a> Chris took of Canis Minor if you&rsquo;re not sure. <\/p><p>I&rsquo;ll note ...<\/p><p><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/tPd9LPCpsrQYlGZbpSgMmyU1Ays\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/30583_di\" border=\"0\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><br><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/tPd9LPCpsrQYlGZbpSgMmyU1Ays\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/30583_di\" border=\"0\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><\/p><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/30583_8jXHDbkfAJs\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/30583_wRBnQR8vvrU\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today is Caturday, expanded in these parts to include all animals, things animal-like, and pretty much whatever I want it to mean. Including dogs. My brother-in-law Chris is a photographer, and snapped this funny picture of my pseudonymous dog Canis &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/having-a-ball-on-caturday-bad-astronomy.php\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35519"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35519\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}