Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shouldn't that be the other way round then, according to the article?
That's the joke.
I'm not getting it
How to tell a raven from a crow (2012)
31–40 of 104 posts
Re: How to tell a raven from a crow (2012)
#32Have you ever exchanged a look with a stranger and their expression was such that you immediately got a deep impression of their inner life, of their humanity, and felt a connection? That happened to me with a raven, while we were both enjoying a stunning view of a sunset at Petrified Forest National Park. It was a large, old, rumpled, wise seeming creature.
Surely that environment primed me for the experience. The mostly likely explanation is that I had a kind of moral hallucination. But it's changed the way I've seen ravens since. I attribute self awareness to them. When they caw what I hear is laughing ... at a ground bound inferior like me.
Reading _Mind_of_the_Raven_ only reinforced this feeling.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/254704.Mind_of_the_Raven
Re: How to tell a raven from a crow (2012)
#33Many will have heard the collective noun for crows via the Simpsons episode reference or otherwise (a “murder of crows”), but ravens get one of my absolute favorites: an “unkindness of ravens”.
What's the real story of these supposedly normative collective nouns? They don't seem to stem from natural development of the english language, rather seem to have been poetically constructed at some point — is that true?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_noun#Terms_of_vener...
> intended as a mark of erudition of the gentlemen able to use them correctly rather than for practical communication
Re: How to tell a raven from a crow (2012)
#34Re: How to tell a raven from a crow (2012)
#35Birds are so awesome. They make me feel so happy. They are also so much more elegant than anything people made that can fly, I think. I absolutely love them.
I think you'd like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI63Rbxml5U
4K POV of an eagle soaring through the Alps
Re: How to tell a raven from a crow (2012)
#36I think the entire corvid family is fascinating. They are extremely intelligent. Some of them not only use tools but actually make tools: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvidae#Intelligence
Corvids don’t just have the capacity for making and using tools but also metatool use, i.e., using one tool on another [0]. In this respect their cognition apparently exceeds many species of primates.
[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098220...
Re: How to tell a raven from a crow (2012)
#37Re: How to tell a raven from a crow (2012)
#38Birds are so awesome. They make me feel so happy. They are also so much more elegant than anything people made that can fly, I think. I absolutely love them.
I think you'd like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI63Rbxml5U 4K POV of an eagle soaring through the Alps
Thanks. Now I need to look at this on a big screen.
Re: How to tell a raven from a crow (2012)
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the real story of these supposedly normative collective nouns? They don't seem to stem from natural development of the english language, rather seem to have been poetically constructed at some point — is that true?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_noun#Terms_of_vener... > intended as a mark of erudition of the gentlemen able to use them correctly rather than for practical communication
Here's the relevant page in Archive's scan of The Book of Saint Albans: https://archive.org/details/cu31924031031184/page/n111
Re: How to tell a raven from a crow (2012)
#40Have you ever exchanged a look with a stranger and their expression was such that you immediately got a deep impression of their inner life, of their humanity, and felt a connection? That happened to me with a raven, while we were both enjoying a stunning view of a sunset at Petrified Forest National Park. It was a large, old, rumpled, wise seeming creature. Surely that environment primed me for the experience. The m…
Scott Alexander has a good post on bird intelligence here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/03/25/neurons-and-intelligen...
Though they have much smaller brains, there is evidence to suggest that their brains are 10x more computationally dense.