[OSList] occupy Open Space?!

[icataiw at ms69.hinet.net]

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
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