Thanks for the cows/circles reference, Harrison. Dick reminded me of
the old country western song title from my Colorado childhood, "Run
for the roundhouse, Nellie, (he can't corner you there)" :-)
Gail
There is a wonderful movie called "Temple Grandin." It is the
strangely beautiful story of an autistic woman who loves animals and
spent a lot of time watching them - particularly cows. She noticed
that cows do not naturally like to walk in a straight line, they
prefer circles. When forced to walk in a straight line, they become
anxious and disoriented. In a word, Temple observed a normative
function of a natural (self organizing) system - Cows walking is
circles. The practical application of this observation may be a
little distasteful for some of us, but instructive for all that;
having to do with the layout of stock pens for loading cattle,
dipping them, clipping horns etc. Standard layout (at least here in
the US) was always in straight lines - Straight shutes from the
field to the truck, or whatever. Temple noticed that the cows did
in fact move from the field to the truck, but often they tended to
bunch and panic - resulting in injury and sometimes death. She
proposed curved shutes that followed the natural path of the cows.
Result? No bunching, no panic - healthy cows..
Are we then just cows? I'm not sure I want to go there. But what is
true, I think is that we, like cows, prefer circles to straight
lines - no matter what our education.
Harrison
--
Gail West
ICA
3F, No. 12, Lane 5, Tien Mou West Road
Taipei, Taiwan 111
8862) 2871-3150
SKYPE gwestica
www.icatw.com
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