There is a Horse in the Apple Store • Hacker News Board

Re: There is a Horse in the Apple Store

#71

Post by Mz » Sat, Sep 04, 2010, 1:58 PM UTC

qq66 wrote: post #7

Charuru wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is not the topic of submission here either, but I can't help but feel that picture in the wikipedia of the guide horse is horrible abuse. All those straps and chains, UGH. /shudders

Blind people generally tend to be so doting on their guide animals that I'm sure the straps and chains are more than compensated by the shower of love he gets from his owner.

My understanding is that guide animals (and drug-sniffing dogs) are intentionally starved for affection and only showered with loving attention for doing what is needed of them. That is how they are kept useful. Showering them with affection and positive attention at other times actually destroys their usefulness as a guide animal. Or so I have heard.

Re: There is a Horse in the Apple Store

#72

Post by 10ren » Sat, Sep 04, 2010, 2:05 PM UTC

ugh wrote: post #2

I know it’s not the topic of the submission but I would have very much liked to get an explanation. Is it maybe a guide horse? See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guide_horse

I wouldn't have expected horses to be as intelligent as dogs. Probably because I have more experience with dogs. EDIT google's only giving me informal discussions: http://www.petqna.com/other/1014-1-other-petqna.html It seems while they are less intelligent than dogs, they can still give effective assistance.

Aside: I saw a guide dog on a sweltering day in peak summer last year in Melbourne. It was clearly very uncomfortable, licking its lips. But it was also clear there was no chance it would let down its owner. It was touching to see such faithfulness; now I often donate to the guide dogs.

Re: There is a Horse in the Apple Store

#73

Post by zackattack » Sat, Sep 04, 2010, 2:05 PM UTC

retube wrote: post #56

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #50

Maybe I'm just drunk, having just been kicked out at bar time from the place around the corner[1], but this resonated with me: "When does the magic of a situation fade? When do we get acclimated to the exceptional?...We define a pattern, no matter how exceptional, and acclimate ourselves to it?" I'm surrounded by exceptional situations every day and they just seem mundane. Tonight I congratulated a guy who just signe…

There is a well-known corollary here with happiness. People think that if they are million- or billionaires, or have a super-fit girlfriend, or drive a ridiculous car or live in a massive house or whatever they'll be happy, or at least happier. However all studies have shown that rich people are not happier than poor(er) people. And more interesting is people that have suffered catastrophic accidents or contracted di…

Your statement is just wrong. Angus Deaton at Princeton found "Each doubling of national income is associated with a near one unit increase in average life-satisfaction measured on an eleven point scale from 0 ('the worst possible life') to 10 ('the best possible life')". I'm all for deluding yourself with baseless platitudes to rationalize your lack of success, and then getting a Yeah! Yeah! rally of upvotes from people similarly situated, but please don't advance such falsity here.

Re: There is a Horse in the Apple Store

#74

Post by albemuth » Sat, Sep 04, 2010, 2:08 PM UTC

rokhayakebe wrote: post #46

ugh wrote: post #2

I know it’s not the topic of the submission but I would have very much liked to get an explanation. Is it maybe a guide horse? See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guide_horse

Guide for? I hope not blindness since the guy seems to be looking at a computer.

real life scenario training perhaps?

Re: There is a Horse in the Apple Store

#75

Post by zackattack » Sat, Sep 04, 2010, 2:11 PM UTC

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #50

Maybe I'm just drunk, having just been kicked out at bar time from the place around the corner[1], but this resonated with me: "When does the magic of a situation fade? When do we get acclimated to the exceptional?...We define a pattern, no matter how exceptional, and acclimate ourselves to it?" I'm surrounded by exceptional situations every day and they just seem mundane. Tonight I congratulated a guy who just signe…

I think that ending every night out at the bar with ice cream would probably make it less exciting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habituation

Re: There is a Horse in the Apple Store

#76

Post by jeberle » Sat, Sep 04, 2010, 3:58 PM UTC

Had he been paying attention, he would have noticed there's also a man in a kilt.

Re: There is a Horse in the Apple Store

#77

Post by joshbert » Sat, Sep 04, 2010, 4:16 PM UTC

I loved the article. Like someone said above, it's like reading a mini-drama.

What really made it for me is how I can relate to it. I'm constantly taken back and think things like 'So many people are trying to take the world into new directions, myself included, and some are successful. The rest of the world gets the end results and we get accustomed to them so incredibly fast. Often times ignoring all the work done or the brilliance of the piece itself.'

Like, for example, I can literally work on my idea for a business, listen to virtually any record that has ever existed that I want to listen, watch any movie that I could possibly want to watch and thousands of other activities all in a single day and without leaving my house.

I could witness the huge developments that other people are making all around the globe and watch some of the most brilliant minds the world has, often the developers themselves, give feedback on said events. And yes, I'm talking about HN.

All in all, it's a great age to live. I'm only 20 and not particularly wealthy, but boy has the trip thus far been incredible.

Re: There is a Horse in the Apple Store

#78

Post by tel » Sat, Sep 04, 2010, 4:21 PM UTC

neilk wrote: post #48

I am in love with the title. "There is a horse in the Apple Store". I want it on t-shirts and cereal boxes and in graffiti on highway overpasses. I am not even sure what it really means. I know it's purely literal, but it's almost poetic.

It's not purely literal, Frank Chimeri generalizes the experience to whenever something is naturally astonishing but somehow now impossible to notice.

The "tiny horse" effect!

Re: There is a Horse in the Apple Store

#79

Post by FraaJad » Sat, Sep 04, 2010, 4:24 PM UTC

DavidSJ wrote: post #54

But there are no children in the Apple Store, for the same reason you would not see a child in a jewelry store: things are small and fragile and expensive and shiny. In my experience, there are usually quite a number of children in Apple Stores.

Our local apple store even has kid accessible iMacs for them to play with. And there are always kids during "normal" hours.

Re: There is a Horse in the Apple Store

#80

Post by albertzeyer » Sat, Sep 04, 2010, 4:38 PM UTC

It reminds me on a passage in Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy by D.Adams. He basically says that people unconsciously ignore / blind out strange not-explainable things.

He also had a funny term for that but I forgot it...