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Dec. 21st, 2007
Christmas is when...
Dec. 21st, 2007 08:44 pm... I remember that other people have different tastes. I've bought two presents this year that I then realised wouldn't be suitable for the people I bought them for. There might be others, of course, but if the recipients don't like them, it's too late now!
I bought a copy of "If Dogs Could Talk", which is a really good book by an ethologist and dog lover that looks at how dogs show social intelligence. He's a good enough scientist to avoid anthropomorphising his pets and enough of a dog lover to criticise laboratory-based experiments for not examining dogs in their social environment. It's a popular science book, not an academic text, but even so it's a bit too heavy for the dog-lover I had in mind. Also, it's a hardback and she's got arthritic thumbs which means she can't easily read heavy books. D'oh.
The other was a great piece of Hungarian folk music. It's really good. But it is a little far from the main stream. Not as far as free jazz or noisy electronica or suchlike, but when I listened to it with a potential recipient in mind I realised that this might not be the ideal present.
Oh well, at least I do sometimes recognise the mismatch. I'm sure there was a time when I wouldn't have noticed at all...
I bought a copy of "If Dogs Could Talk", which is a really good book by an ethologist and dog lover that looks at how dogs show social intelligence. He's a good enough scientist to avoid anthropomorphising his pets and enough of a dog lover to criticise laboratory-based experiments for not examining dogs in their social environment. It's a popular science book, not an academic text, but even so it's a bit too heavy for the dog-lover I had in mind. Also, it's a hardback and she's got arthritic thumbs which means she can't easily read heavy books. D'oh.
The other was a great piece of Hungarian folk music. It's really good. But it is a little far from the main stream. Not as far as free jazz or noisy electronica or suchlike, but when I listened to it with a potential recipient in mind I realised that this might not be the ideal present.
Oh well, at least I do sometimes recognise the mismatch. I'm sure there was a time when I wouldn't have noticed at all...