Was it REALLY a coyote that was video-taped running down State Street the other morning at 3:00 a.m.? Since no animal official has CONFIRMED that it was a coyote, how come it is being called that? I watched the footage and it looks like a German shepherd to me. (http://en.terra.com/latin-in-)america/news/coyote_runs_wild_through_chicago_streets/hof12528
Assuming that it WAS a coyote, I was surprised at the cavalier attitude of Brad Block, a supervisor for the Chicago Commission on Animal Care and Control who said that coyotes are in the Loop to deal with rats and mice. "He's not a threat...He's not going to pick up your children," Block said. "His job is to deal with all of the nuisance problems, like mice, rats and rabbits."
Block also said he thinks the coyote might be one of the animals fitted with a GPS device by the state of Illinois to monitor its whereabouts, but it was unclear whether this “coyote” is part of that program.
WAIT!! The state has GPS on coyotes that they let run free to deal with rodents? I had never heard of this before. Has anyone else? I researched and found programs about the Illinois Department of Natural Resources monitoring coyotes with GPS, but no articles about a coyote/rodent program. I encourage legislators to look into this.
In Japan, a singer, Hatsune Miku is topping the music charts and is a pop diva. She sells out concert stadiums and has become a cultural phenomenon. She has legions of screaming fans. You can watch footage of one of her concerts at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEaBqiLeCu0. Please view this before you continue reading the story.
What is so incredible about Miku is that she does not exist; she is a computer-generated avatar hologram with sings with a live band. She was created by recording the voice of Japanese actress, Saki Fujita, making individual phonetic sounds at different pitches and tones. The mad scientists then recombined the samples and fed them through synthesis software to produce a combination of words and sounds.
Even though people can watch her on their home computers, and even create their own songs, fans still attend “live” concerts. At these sold-out shows, she materializes as a 3-D hologram and parades and dances around the stage as she belts out pop-rock songs, while her human band provides the music.
She is not real! Just like the coyote on State Street. But we believe what we want to believe.
What if the Dingo eats the baby?
ReplyDeleteBusy week! Took me a bit too long to read/comment on this one...
ReplyDeleteThe first topic: fleeing canine. I certainly won't try to say I can confirm it one way or another, but I must say to me it looks far more like a coyote than a german shepard. A few points - at ~24 seconds in you can see his back clearly enough to tell it's predominantly gray/brown, where a german shepard's typically is black. His tail, while sporting a black tip very common to both coyotes & shepards, is far thicker than one is likely to see on a shepard, but matches that of a coyote's splendidly. His legs also are much lighter & gray than you typically will see on a shepard - whose legs are light, but generally more brown than gray - though are very common on coyotes. Finally his demeanor - if he was a shepard, whether he was somebody's pet or not, he's domesticated, which would make running through the streets like that in what seems to be a panic very unlikely. Not impossible of course, but a domesticated dog (repetitive I know) more likely would be walking, exploring - significantly calmer. A wild animal like a coyote would be more likely to behave as the one seen in the video.
As I said, I can't confirm it one way or another, but I'd be inclined to consider it a coyote. And while I agree that a single coyote in the city (especially in the middle of the night) would be incredibly unlikely to harm anybody, the rodent explanation definitely is a bizarre one! Stranger things have happened! Like that mountain lion they cornered & shot unprovoked in one of the burbs that had made its way there from my home in the Black Hills of South Dakota!
As for Hatsune, that's awesome! I think it'd be really interesting to see something like that in person just for the spectacle, though I don't think I'd pay for concert tickets. But really, I don't see people packing stadiums to see "her" out of the ordinary in the slightest. Think about it - is going to a live concert really all about being able to see the performer clearly in real life? I went to a U2 concert at the United Center in 2005 (I think :P), & I was up in the boonies. I couldn't see a thing: the band themselves looked like specs, & I ended up watching the projection screens way more than the live stage. I had a blast, & it certainly wasn't because I was able to see the real live performers. I enjoyed myself so much because of the music, my fellow fans, the atmosphere, the cheering, the fun, etc etc. It was entertainment! Who cares if the actual performer isn't technically real?? The experience itself is real enough to make up for it, & everyone gets to have a great evening!
The song's pretty catchy too, to say nothing of the technology, despite it not technically being a real hologram...
Dangit, I just realized I misspelled shepherd as shepard in my entire comment!
ReplyDeleteHate it when I do that :P