A Dog Knows

(Image from pet poo skiddoo)

Acting calm before a threatening dog won't fool it if you're fearful inside. A dog knows: [bold added]

Dogs are champion sniffers, equipped with 100 to 300 million olfactory receptors in their noses—compared with a mere 6 million in our own—and an olfactory cortex 40 times as large as ours. They can be trained to detect disease in human beings, including cancer cells, a latent epileptic seizure, or a Covid infection, just by sniffing—no blood samples, biopsies, MRIs, antigen or PCR tests required.

In a study published in September in the journal PLoS One, Ms. [Clara] Wilson and colleagues tested whether dogs can read and respond to our emotional states, without the benefit of facial expression, tone of voice, or social context...The results offered overwhelming confirmation that dogs can smell psychological states as well as physical ones. On average, the four dogs picked out the stress sample 94% of the time, with individual dogs ranging between 90% and 97% accuracy.

A barking dog can smell your fear. Acting lessons won't help you, and neither, probably, will psychological self-trickery (e.g., meditation).

As for me, I plan to have liquid courage close at hand.

Happy New Year: Time to Face Our Fear

I make it a point never to laugh at a person because of his lack of knowledge. The balkanization of culture insures that there is very little knowledge that Americans, or more broadly Westerners, widely share. (I have my own knowledge gaps, for example 21st century pop music.) Nevertheless, I had to laugh at an educated Brit's response on a TV game show.

Well, this did me in pic.twitter.com/njBVwTjb3W

— L Johnston (@FinalBullet) December 26, 2020

King Ghidorah, Megalon, and Mothra are among creatures to have fought which enduring film character in films made between 1964 and 1992?

"Lassie."

Being totally unfamiliar with kaiju is nothing to be ashamed about, but naming her as the principal slayer of movie monsters shows that one is totally unfamiliar with Lassie, too.

Speaking of the answer to the question--after a year of contending with an enemy too small to be seen with the naked eye, and inspired by the above, I spent a couple of hours this morning watching Godzilla: King of the Monsters.

Taking full advantage of special effects technology that exploit today's high-resolution screens, the producers made Godzilla and his fellow monsters truly terrifying. The most powerful weapons, i.e., nuclear bombs, that humans can throw at Godzilla only make him more powerful.

If a fire-breathing, mountain-sized monster is coming toward you, you're allowed to be scared. However, in the New Year resolve not to be afraid of something that can be warded off with a flimsy cloth mask.