May 01, 2008
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Southeastern Kansas is a bit hilly and so is southern Missouri. I'm finding that once I get off the plains the state roads get a bit slower and more fatiguing to drive, especially with the winds out here the past couple of days.
With the rising gas prices, I've been a bit concerned LD's gas mileage might suffer on the Interstate but that doesn't seem to be the case. At my usual 65 mph I find I'm running just a tad over 9 mpg pretty consistently.
Night camp:
Wal-Mart parking lot, Sullivan, Missouri
Alex Can Think
Animal researchers are finally beginning to catch up to the little old ladies in tennis shoes who say Fifi the poodle can think. The fights are always between a big group of experts who think animals don't have a lot of feelings or aren't very smart, and a much smaller group of researchers who think there's a lot more going on inside an animal's head than we know. The really nasty fights always seem to go one way: it's always the animal "debunkers" who are on the attack. At least, I don't remember a single big academic fight where someone got fired or lost their funding for doing a study where the animal turned out to be dumber than people thought, and lots of studies like that have been done. Claiming that an animal can't do something isn't considered blasphemous.