1.list animals until failure (via) A browser game where you have to write down as many animals as you can think of. I got 200.
2.Rev. Jesse Jackson, a civil rights icon, dies at 84 (February 17) "Jackson, who was at the motel in Memphis, Tennessee, with King when he was assassinated in 1968, did not let up after King’s death. He took his vision for Black liberation even further by founding People United to Save Humanity, or PUSH, in 1971."
2.DHS Was Built to Come After People Like Me. Now, They Are After All of Us. (February 11) "After 9/11, fear changed the U.S. That fear was exploited by our government, fostering a culture of complacency and turning Americans against one another in pursuit of “securing the homeland.” As a first-generation Iraqi American, I understand that on a deeply personal level."
Basically the FCC says if a talk show interviews a political candidate, they have to give equal time to all the other candidates- which is a new rule that, uh, seems very politically motivated. So Colbert was not allowed to broadcast the interview with Talerico on tv, *but* he did put it on his youtube channel.
7.Idaho House Votes, Passes Trans Bathroom Ban In Private Businesses As Bill Rockets Through Legislature (February 18) "The bill, which passed 56-13, would allow individuals to sue private businesses that fail to prevent transgender people from using restrooms consistent with their gender identity. Existing bathroom bans across the country have been limited to schools, some colleges, or government buildings. This bill goes much further, effectively requiring every restaurant, gas station, and retail store in the state to police their restrooms—or face legal liability."
8.The D.C. District Court strikes back (February 13) "Within a 24-hour period, three judges of the D.C. District Court pushed back against the executive overreach in a way that would be unthinkable in another era. In three totally separate cases where the Trump administration has ignored people’s fundamental constitutional rights to advance its program of cruelty and retaliation, judges said, essentially, “Not on my watch,” in the midst of continuing offenses by the Trump administration against the Constitution and the nation’s laws."
1.Love's Work in "Go, Dog, Go" (December 6) "I ask you, who has been changed by their first meeting? She has only become more of herself, while he has adopted a brand-new hat habit."
2.If you hear any noise, it ain’t the boys (December 5) "In practice it’s a lot more complicated because the cover charge and the price of drinks is never the only variable being considered by the “ladies” that Ladies Night is trying to attract."
3. The Reality of AI Animal Content (December 5, via) "AI videos and heavily edited clips can show animals doing things they would never do in a healthy, ethical setting, such as jumping into a person’s arms at a zoo, endangered species at your doorstep, or dancing on cue. This can create unrealistic and even dangerous expectations."
2.Jesse Watters says criticizing boat strikes makes people sound “effeminate” (December 8, via) Jesse Watters really went on tv and said that people *like* the videos of military strikes on defenseless boats, murdering people. "People love these videos. They hit your feed, they're like, yes, let's go." This actually says more about what kind of person Jesse Watters is, yikes.
3.Immigrants kept from Faneuil Hall citizenship ceremony as feds crackdown nationwide (December 5) "'As an immigrant takes the oath of citizenship, it’s a reflection and recognition of the tremendous sacrifice of time, energy, and financial resources they have made in the hopes of becoming a full member of our community and nation,' said Elizabeth Sweet, Executive Director of MIRA Coalition. 'To have that final step canceled is unnecessarily cruel and does nothing to make this country a safer place.'"
And: How Trump is remaking one agency to aid his deportation push (December 10) "'They're reaching deeper into the weeds of immigration policy, and they may be more successful in slowing legal immigration, which at least some members of the Trump administration have stated is their goal,' said Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute. 'That's a pretty different stance towards immigration than we've seen over recent decades.'"
4.Border Patrol left Charlotte. The damage stayed behind (December 10) "Many immigrants in hiding have relied on allies to help with basic services like delivering food and medicine. Volunteers have set up a support network. People deliver supplies, take reports of vehicles suspected of belonging to immigration agents and go check them out, and wear bright yellow vests while they watch over children walking to school."
Sharing this because I will always be on the side of 'we should give immigrants the support they need, to deal with bureaucracy/cultural/language/etc barriers.' But also, I'm a little uncomfortable with the implication that 'the big lesson to be learned from the Washington DC shooting is [whatever my pet cause is]' which I've seen a lot of- from the felon, when he uses this as a reason to discriminate against all Afghan immigrants (and also other countries he doesn't like????), and from those of us on the left, saying this is the MAGAs' fault for sending the National Guard there in the first place, and perhaps I'm also participating in this by sharing this article, as if to imply that the actual problem wasn't the shooting itself, but the lack of support received by Afghans who worked for the CIA. Which is why I am writing this disclaimer. No, let's be clear about this, this is the shooter's fault, there is no excuse to go around shooting people.
6.The fight to beat neglected tropical diseases was going well. 2025 could change that (December 10) "'A group of scientists went to the Hill and made the point that there is a known strategy in treating communities that are infected,' says Wainwright. 'You go in, treat them once a year and if you do it for a set number of years, you can either eliminate or control the disease.'"
8. The Trump-Epstein Emergency Isn't in the Files (December 5) "Trump’s treatment of Maxwell—a convicted sex trafficker— is by far the most glaring, brazen, and openly corrupt part of the current moment involving the president."
1.Reading Halloween (1978) Through the Lens of Labor (October 30, via) "Parents, historically, have been the most recurring threat to babysitters in their capacity to exploit and prey on them, and yet with Michael on set, the threat of the predatory employer-parent gets completely displaced."
5.Too many rats? Birth control is one city's answer (November 1) "For all these reasons, Somerville is trying something else — an anti-fertility chemical that targets the mature eggs in female rats."
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Links related to the antichrist:
1.America's immigration crackdown is disrupting the global remittance market (October 28) "What leads Yang to argue this is that immigrants in the United States send a jaw-dropping amount of money back home to their families. These remittances, as they're known, have dwarfed the size of official foreign aid that the U.S. spends on things like economic development, health, and humanitarian assistance."
3.Trump administration sets lowest-ever cap on refugee admissions to U.S. (October 30) "'It is egregious to exclude refugees who completed years of rigorous security checks and are currently stuck in dangerous and precarious situations,' said Sharif Aly, president of the International Refugee Assistance Project. He said that the number of those with confirmed travel plans to the U.S. is greater than the new refugee cap."
4.Trump Admin Attempts To Ban Trans Youth Care Nationwide With New Federal Rules (October 30) "Now the administration is escalating with a blitz of three new rules that could effectively end most transgender youth care nationwide if enacted—pressuring many medical institutions to drop trans patients from receiving the care they need out of fear of federal reprisal, and punishing those who do not comply."
5. The Myth of the Woke Right: A Response to the New York Times (October 24) 36-minute video from Big Joel about how that felon never actually understood "free speech" to mean "free speech"; how the New York Times wrote an article about "The Woke Right" but that's not really a thing, and the people who use the term use it to mean all sorts of different things; and the difference between cancel culture and government censorship.
And: Trump administration faces Monday deadline on use of contingency funds for SNAP (November 3) "The situation leaves millions with uncertainty about how they will feed themselves. Benefits will be delayed in November regardless of the outcome of the court cases because many beneficiaries have their cards recharged early in the month and the process of loading cards can take a week or more in many states."
1. If you are a North Carolina voter- The Griffin List: Find N. C. Voters Whose 2024 Legal Votes are at Risk of Not Counting "On April 4, 2025, the North Carolina Court of Appeals sided with Griffin’s argument that over 65,000 votes should be tossed out – including those of military members serving overseas." Check to see if you need to "cure" your ballot to make sure your vote is counted. Spread the word.
4.Why Your Brain Blinds You For 2 Hours Every Day (March 18) 12-minute video from Kurzgesagt. I am really interested in this- how our brains take all the raw data we constantly experience, and compress it down to some kind of model of how the world works which makes sense to us. Filtering out a lot of things because it's just not possible to handle all of that data. It means our awareness of reality is an imperfect model- it can never be the real reality.
6.our place in the justice paradox (March 24) "In this reading, the text in question becomes a charge to work for the structural changes that will eventually bring about the end of poverty while also meeting the pressing needs of those around us."
2.Tesla Falls for 'Wile E. Coyote-Style' Fake Road Wall (March 17) Oh I am really interested in this test, because working with lidar and camera data used to be my actual job. (I recommend watching the whole video from that link- really cool stuff about sensor data!)
Here's the important thing about sensors for robotics (including self-driving cars): Every sensor has its weaknesses- some situations where it won't give you reliable data. Rain, darkness, objects of a certain color, too far away, etc. So you have to know what the weaknesses of your sensors are, and combine data from different sensors, to make up for those weaknesses. And probably calculate some kind of confidence value to indicate how much you should trust your data. You could see in the test with lidar and the jets of water, the lidar wasn't able to really make out whether there were any objects among the jets of water- so it stops the car there. You have to stop the car, because you can't have any confidence about whether there are any obstacles in there or not. But, the problem is false positives when you take that approach.
Still, though, if you literally can't be sure there's not an object there, the car absolutely should not be driving there. If this gives you too many false positives, you need a different sensor setup- the sensors you're using aren't right for the application you're trying to use them for. Honestly I don't know that there are any sensors (including the human eye!) that can reliably identify whether there are any actual obstacles among sheets of heavy rain- maybe that's a sign you shouldn't be driving at all.
5.Skin bleaching is terribly popular — and takes a terrible toll (March 25) "Within a few years, she moved on to a stronger product called Dermovate — at the time, the in-vogue skin whitening body lotion, recommended by her friends at high school. They knew most boys in her school were more interested in lighter skinned girls."
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Links related to the antichrist:
1.Columbia University agrees to Trump demands in effort to restore federal funding (March 22) "On Thursday, 41 of the roughly 100 members of the university's history department warned the university against allowing the administration to interfere in its policy. They compared the administration's actions to attempts by "authoritarian regimes" to seek control over independent academic institutions."
Political cartoon showing two Greek soldiers looking at the Trojan horse. One of them says, "Then, after we unwittingly roll it in, they leap out & attack us, according to this groupchat I'm in with Pete Hegseth." Image source.
Image text: "'I Messed Up At Work Again,' Crestfallen Michael Waltz Texts Wife, National Geographic Editorial Staff" (from the Onion). Image source.
1.Justice Sotomayor's dissent in Donald J. Trump vs United States (July 1, via) "Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law. Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity."
2.Texas’s Abortion Ban is Killing Babies (July 3) "But the people most at risk, in my opinion, are people who DO want children. Because while abortion in the early weeks and months of pregnancy is now safe and easy, pregnancy remains a very dangerous condition. You may be able to detect a nonviable fetus early and fly somewhere to get an abortion if you can afford it, but even a well-off woman can experience an emergency and simply not have the time to get somewhere they can access decent medical care. In an emergency, a pregnant person will need to go to a local hospital, and in Texas a doctor will be forced to decide how much risk they want to take on. Is the woman close enough to death to perform an abortion? Should we roll the dice and hope she lives? Personally I wouldn’t want to bet my life on a doctor prioritizing a fetus over me."
Yes. This. When I was pregnant, I was following all the news stories from the US about wanted pregnancies which had gone horribly wrong. It's so heartless, the way these "pro-life" politicians treat women. Imagine being pregnant, and you love your baby already, and then you find out the baby has some terrible medical condition and is very unlikely to survive, and you spend so much time researching it, trying to see if there's any hope, and finally you come to the terrible conclusion that the least-bad option is an abortion- and then you have to FIGHT for it, fight for something you don't even want, you wanted a living baby but that's not an option, and these "pro-life" politicians act like they love your baby more than you do, like you're the one being bad and immoral, on the worst day of your life when you are finally able to get the abortion.
Makes me so mad.
(And also, if you just simply don't want to be pregnant, that's a valid reason to get an abortion too.)
3.‘The Political Violence Of Herod’ (July 15) "Voter suppression and voter intimidation is political violence. Forcing women to carry health-threatening, nonviable pregnancy is political violence. Deporting 20 million people is political violence. Declaring some presidents to be above the law is political violence that endorses political violence."
4.LLM error rates (July 16) "If you expect LLMs to have god-like reasoning skills, or to magically know things they were never taught, it’s not going to work. If you expect them to perform well on a task that realistically speaking requires 99+% accuracy, they don’t do that. But if the LLM is trying to complete a task that would otherwise be done humans, we’re also extremely prone to error, so there must be some level of error tolerance. In this case the LLM doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to do better than our sorry human asses."
Also from Sixth Tone: China’s MBTI Obsession Has Gone Too Far, Academics Say (July 17) "Users are swapping tips on how to game tests during job applications, and some companies have even begun advertising MBTI tutoring services to help job seekers align their answers with employers’ expectations." Oh geez.
plastic surgery used to make me uncomfortable, but then someone I loved had terrible dysphoria about her small breasts & wanted implants. I said surgery couldn’t fix emotions. But I was wrong! She’s been fine & happy fifteen years on. It helped me understand gender affirming care https://t.co/VArLlB5tWJ
This is interesting to me because I grew up evangelical, and in that culture people are always talking about how if there's something you really really want, and you feel like you can't live without it, and you feel like it would solve all your problems, well that's never true. Evangelicals say that the truth is only God can satisfy our desires- if you finally get that thing you really really want, it still won't be good enough, you'll still be unhappy and desiring even more. You're making it an idol. The only solution is to learn to truly be content in God, to truly believe that none of those other desires really matter. (Philippians 4:12)
Fast forward to when I became an adult, making adult decisions about things like my job and where I would live, and- get this- when I made changes to improve my life, it really did make things better! Like "wow I'm so glad we don't live in that old apartment any more." Being much happier every single day because of a life change. Wow! Is it supposed to work that way? Wasn't I just supposed to "be content in God"? (See: In Which John Piper Doesn't Tell You To Find A New Job and I knew Desiring God ideology is spiritual abuse, but wow.)
So this tweet is about getting breast implants- as a cis person, not for transgender reasons- and how it really did improve someone's life. To be honest, I've always wondered how it worked getting breast implants, because in pop culture it's always talked about as a joke. I wonder, do you go to the doctor and say you want bigger boobs, and the doctor is all wink-wink-nudge-nudge-giggle-giggle, like the wedding dress consultants on those reality shows talking about making "the girls" look good? ("The girls" means one's boobs.) Or is the doctor very professional about it and talking frankly about what exactly you want? And what would you even say, in a frank conversation about how you want your boobs to look?
Anywayyyy just linking the tweet here because the idea of breast implants genuinely improving someone's mental health (and not related to transgender reasons) is something I haven't thought about before.
I'm very excited to share with y'all my photos from the Shanghai Natural History Museum. I love science and dinosaurs and all that stuff! This museum was just opened last year, and it's super cool.
This exhibit was called "The River of Life", and it included a huge variety of animals- from the oceans, land, and air; prehistoric and modern; models, fossils, and dead stuffed animals.
There were many kinds of dead taxidermied animals here. This photo shows the exhibit with tigers, lions, and other big cats. There were also bears, moose, deer, pandas, wolves, monkeys, goats, and others.
There was a butterfly house, with live butterflies.
There were a bunch of exhibits with live animals in them- reptiles, fish, big bugs, that kind of thing.
There was a whole section on dinosaurs. In this photo, a museum employee is telling us about the fossils.
This huge animatronic T-rex can open its mouth and roar.
Here's another animatronic creature, protecting its eggs.
There was an exhibit on human evolution, which was very interesting to me because I'm interested in re-learning evolution.
Here's an activity where you put the various skulls under the scanner and it tells you the brain capacity.
This exhibit showed local Shanghai wildlife.
There was a whole big exhibit of African animals.
I'm pretty much 100% sure that kid is not allowed to climb up there.
A bunch of animal skins, laying flat like rugs. SUPER CREEPY.
The "Bird Tree of Life", which has dead stuffed birds arranged according to their species classification and such. (Guess what? This is related to evolution.)
Here's a science kit in the gift shop, with English and French on the packaging. On the back of the box, a label with a ton of Chinese text had been stuck on. It's an interesting example of how a lot of science and technolocy education stuff in China is imported from western countries.
Here's an exhibit with some artifacts from China. This part shows movable type, which was first invented in China.
I really liked the exhbit on human evolution. Also, I noticed a lot of the exhibits were arranged with evolution in mind- for example, the different fossils or specimens were put in order of when they lived, and from simple to more complex, with labels explaining that one species developed into the next. It feels very strange for me... because I've definitely been to a LOT of museums that set up their exhibits this way. And the different human-like ape-like species- I've seen those fossils before.
Somehow, I've seen all this before, was excited to learn it because I love science, and yet never realized how much it all assumed evolution as its context. When I was a kid, I knew that Christians DEFINITELY don't believe in evolution, but it was very unclear what exactly that meant and what we were supposed to believe instead. I remember seeing in a science book one of those drawings of the series of creatures from ape to human, each standing up a little straighter than the one behind it, and I quickly skipped to the next page because I knew that was something bad and we weren't allowed to look at it. And yet, I would read statements like, "Many people think pandas are bears, but actually they are more closely related to raccoons," and not realize that it was talking about evolution. (A google search reveals that currently, scientists believe pandas are more closely related to the spectacled bear of South America, rather than raccoons. How about that.)
I would go to museums and love looking at all the animals and learning about them. I would see them arranged in different types- for example, different kinds of turtle-like animals would be together- and I would read about how this one lived so many million years ago, and later this other one descended from it, and I would believe all of it except the part where one descended into another. I guess. I never really thought about it though. I mean, OBVIOUSLY I didn't believe in evolution- but I didn't realize that all these things in my books about dinosaur fossils were actually about evolution.
If this sounds confusing, it's because IT IS. I thought I never actually encountered evolution until 9th grade biology class, but now I realize that so much of everything I learned about fossils and animals and biology was assuming evolution as its context. I had no idea- I knew Christians weren't allowed to believe in evolution, but nobody ever specifically said to me "hey this part about animals being 'related' to each other- no, that's bad, we don't believe that" or "this bit about 100 million years, no that's not what the bible says, we don't believe that."
I actually asked a Christian adult one time, if dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago, and never lived at the same time as humans, but everything was created in 6 days, well, how does that work? They told me it was a good question, and they didn't know the answer- maybe nobody knows. It wasn't until I was in high school and started looking for better answers than this vague suspicious feeling anytime someone says the word "evolution" that I heard about young-earth creationism (and converted to it).
(My experience with this is different from that of a lot of other former young-earth creationists I've met in the land of blogs. I've read about people who grew up in a fundamentalist church and learned a pretty awful version of science which was anti-evolution and actually consistent, unlike my "regular science class in public school but I just ignored any sentence with the word 'evolution' because I'm a Christian." Lucky me. Could have been A LOT worse.)
I see this as a really good example of how Christians trying to be "less extreme" doesn't really work. The Christian adults in my life probably thought they were at a reasonable middle ground- they weren't like those fundies who had all those bizarre anti-science beliefs, but they also weren't like the evil worldly culture which denied the bible and claimed we came from apes. But in reality, their position was an ill-defined, logically-inconsistent blend of two completely opposite idelogies, which couldn't even answer THE MOST OBVIOUS question that a kid who loves dinosaurs would ask about the creation story. Coming from this background, it was pretty much inevitable that I would become a young-earth creationist. They were the only ones who gave actual answers to my questions and also emphasized the importance of "following the bible over the wisdom of the world"- that perfectly matched the view of the bible I was taught in church.
And now that I've decided I "believe in" evolution, I'm surprised to find that all these things I learned in science class and never saw as unbiblical are actually related to evolution. It's pretty cool, and I'm excited to keep learning more.
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Readers: If any of y'all are former creationists, I'm interested in hearing about the context in which you became a creationist. Was it explicitly taught, or did you just sense this weird vaguely-bad feeling from church culture any time evolution was mentioned, like I did?
Also, I'm looking for recommendations of books I can read to learn more about evolution. Anybody know any good ones?
I'm writing this post because, you guys, look how cute and smart these dogs are. But actually, turns out it's more serious than that: in China, a country with 1.3 billion people, millions of whom are blind, there are only around 50 or 60 seeing-eye dogs. There's a huge need- for more people to get dogs and for society to accept the rights of blind people to walk around with their dogs in public places.
The Chinese word for "seeing-eye dog" is 导盲犬 [dǎo máng quǎn]. 导[dǎo] means "guide", 盲[máng] means "blind", 犬[quǎn] means "dog". (In your Chinese 101 class, you may have learned that 狗[gǒu] means dog. You're right! Good job paying attention in your class! Usually we use 狗[gǒu]. For example, if you want to say "I have a dog" or any everyday sentence about something a dog did, you say 狗[gǒu]. 犬[quǎn] is a more official word which is used in the names of specific breeds of dogs, or in this case, the official name for seeing-eye dogs. Sort of like in English we have "dog" and "canine", where "canine" is way more official/scientific. To be clear, I am NOT saying that 犬[quǎn] means "canine"; usually it should be translated as "dog". 犬[quǎn] is more official than 狗[gǒu], just like "canine" is more official than "dog", but the cutoff between 犬[quǎn] and 狗[gǒu] is at a very different place than the cutoff between "canine" and "dog". Translation is hard.)
I found several videos showing guide dogs in China:
I put this one first on the list because it's in English. It's about the dog training center in Dalian, a city in northeast China. The center was founded in 2006 and seems to be the only training center for guide dogs in China.
This is a nice video showing Candie, a yellow lab who works as a guide dog in Beijing. Candie was born in California and trained in the US; you can see her owner giving her commands in English. Other than that, the whole video is in Chinese. For y'all who can't understand Chinese, I still think this video is worth watching because it shows a lot of very normal everyday-life things in a big Chinese city like Beijing. You can see what it's like to ride the subway [5:35-11:00], walk on the street [4:00-5:35], go to a taichi class [11:00-14:30], etc.
"Turn right." Qin Lian gives commands to Candie in English. (Click image to see larger version.)
People on the subway sneakily take pictures of Candie. (Click image to see larger version.)
Beijing subway. (Click image to see larger version.)
Candie waits while her person is at tai chi class. (Click image to see larger version.)
Random people pet Candie and tell her she's a good dog. (Click image to see larger version.)
Qin Lian and Candie. (Click image to see larger version.)
Playing. (Click image to see larger version.)
Grocery shopping. (Click image to see larger version.)
Customers at the grocery store pet Candie. Candie's owner tells them not to pet her when she's working. (Click image to see larger version.)
The video mainly focuses on the dog, rather than the owner. However, near the end of the video [23:10-27:40] we see that the owner, Qin Lian, is involved in programs to educate the public about guide dogs.
Qin Lian lets people pet Candie, and teaches them about guide dogs. (Click image to see larger version.)
This video focuses on Chen Yan, a 19-year-old blind girl who has a guide dog named Jenny. Again, it's entirely in Chinese, but again, it's nice because you can see pretty typical everyday scenes in China.
This video is a lot of talking- Chen Yan talks about her dreams, sometimes sounding hopeful and sometimes not. (At one point, she mentions that some people think the only job blind people can do is give massages. THIS IS A THING IN CHINA. There are special massage places which advertise that their masseuses are blind. Supposedly blind people are really good at it.) She feels a big responsibility: because she is lucky enough to have a guide dog, she believes she should travel and take the dog to as many places as possible, and also work to advocate for acceptance of guide dogs in Chinese culture.
Chen Yan talks about her dreams- including playing the piano. Actually she plays very well. (Click image to see larger version.)
Chen Yan and Jenny. (Click image to see larger version.)
Chen Yan and Jenny eating ice cream together. (Click image to see larger version.)
Jenny. So cute and so hardworking. (Click image to see larger version.)
Chen Yan helps to educate people about guide dogs. Here she is having Jenny lead this boy around. (Click image to see larger version.)
A volunteer stands outside a store, holding a sign that says, "我愿意与导盲犬一起买酸奶。 [I am willing to buy yogurt with a guide dog.]" Advocating for the right to bring guide dogs into stores and other public places. (Click image to see larger version.)
自然密码 [zìrán mìmǎ] ("Natural Code") is a nature documentary show, and this episode is about seeing-eye dogs. (Again, it's all in Chinese.) There is a bunch of footage of the training school in Dalian, and it also discusses the need for more education and advocacy for the rights of blind people in Chinese society.
A group of dogs playing together at the training school. All of them are labs or golden retrievers. (Click image to see larger version.)
Trainer and dog. (Click image to see larger version.)
This dog is named Sherry. (Click image to see larger version.)
Sherry and her person at the subway station. (Click image to see larger version.)
This video is fun because you see a lot of how the dogs are trained. My ABSOLUTE FAVORITE PART [10:05-11:15] is when the dog and trainer are walking on the sidewalk, and the trainer pretends to run into a post and fall down. He then gives this entire monologue to the dog, in Chinese, about how you need to pay attention to stuff like that, blocking the sidewalk, and when you're with your blind owner you better not let them run into stuff. Meanwhile the dog is just wagging its tail and jumping around so happily.
As the trainer gives a speech about how you can't let your person run into stuff, the dog jumps on him happily. (Click image to see larger version.)
Trainer: "Come look at what this is."
Dog: "This is the happiest day of my life." (Click image to see larger version.)
Trainer: "Get it? In the future you'll remember, right?" (Click image to see larger version.)
Training the dogs to not be distracted by anything. Like, for example, a chicken leg dangling in front of them. (Click image to see larger version.)
Massive group of dogs playing. (Click image to see larger version.)
Sherry and her person. (Click image to see larger version.)
There were a few points in the videos where the dogs' owners got into arguments over their right to bring the dog into a public place. In video 3, at the 9:30 mark, Chen Yan is yelling at a grocery store employee who won't let her bring the dog into the store. In video 4, at the 25:05 mark, Sherry's person (sorry, I didn't catch her name) argues with a taxi driver who won't let the dog in the taxi. (A lot of yelling about "she doesn't bite!") Before he drives away, she tells him she's going to make a note of his taxi ID number and report him. As far as I can tell, legally, people have the right to bring a guide dog to all these public places, but in reality, they often get stopped and not allowed in.
Overall, though, the videos showed that most people in public who saw the dogs were curious about them. There were a lot of people taking cell phone photos, lots of comments about how well trained the dogs are, and lots of petting the dogs (which they're totally not supposed to do).
Several of the dogs' blind owners talked about how much their dogs changed their lives and helped them become more independent. Hopefully, in China's future, even more people will have that opportunity.
