Carl sagan’s thought about books:
“When our genes could not store all the information necessary for survival, we slowly invented them. But then the time came, perhaps ten thousand years ago, when we needed to know more than could conveniently be contained in brains. So we learned to
stockpile enormous quantities of information outside our bodies. We are the only species on the planet, so far as we know, to have
invented a communal memory stored neither in our genes nor in our brains. The warehouse of that memory is called the library. A book is made from a tree. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.”
-Carl Sagan, Cosmos

#sagan #carlsagan

@triptych love this but also believe other animals record communal information in the external environment
@xian @triptych This is a fascinating subject to me! I know ants use pheromone trails. Do you have other examples?
@hosford42 @triptych one of the most common is using urine or scat to mark locations — dogs for example can “read” a lot by smelling which creatures peed on something
@xian @hosford42 @triptych I have a poodle mix & she’s a prolific “pee reader.” When I take her for a walk in the neighborhood it’s like she’s reading her social media feed. I tell her, ok, let’s go check your “pee-mails” 😄

@TheMacMommy @hosford42 @triptych yes, perfect analogy!

hard to imagine how much stronger their sense of smell is than ours!

@xian @hosford42 @triptych I I had to have sinus surgery to remove my turbinates so I have a tiny inkling of what it’s like to be able to smell more than the average human. It stinks, mostly, but dogs like stinky things so they’re lucky!
@TheMacMommy /me googling `turbinates`
@xian have fun learning about turbinates! I’ve had a “septo turbinectomy” to correct a deviated septum and remove turbinates. Ask me how fun it’s been trying to survive an airborne viral pandemic without turbinates.
@TheMacMommy i can imagine— i inherited a deviated nasal septum from my father and his father. my doc told me even if I weren’t fat I’d still have apnea
@xian Ever thought of having it corrected? I’m glad I got mine done even if it did slip off center a little from my kids bouncing off me. It all came with consequences, but I’m glad to be able to breathe.
@TheMacMommy I think some family members had surgery that didn’t improve breathing? I do love my CPAP though
@xian @TheMacMommy It's crossed my mind a few times, too. Ehlers Danlos tends to cause sleep apnea, and also I have had sinus issues basically from birth, so I already knew of turbinates a bit.
@hosford42 @TheMacMommy I highly recommend a sleep study.
@xian @TheMacMommy Yeah I have an APAP already. But there's way more wrong with my sleep than just apnea.
@hosford42 hugs — I think sleep and hydration are the pillars of health