Turtles and Humans Have Much in Common
 

Turtles and Humans Have Much in Common

I had once concluded it to be natural that when confronted by a new idea humans tended to do a turtle; withdraw into their shell until the coast was clear.

After some time posting in cyberspace I have modified my view somewhat. I think that we tend to display two types of turtle responses to our encounter with new ideas.

The terrapin withdraws quickly into its shell and the snapping turtle hisses, spits, and snaps when such an encounter happens. I suspect that cyberspace has allowed many people to display a more vulgar attitude than they would in face-to-face encounters.

I think that age is a factor in this equation. The young tend to be snappers and the older tend to be terrapins. I think that our teachers and professors have imprinted on the minds of their pupils that there is a legitimacy aspect to knowledge. That knowledge introduced by the teacher is legit and the rest should be avoided when possible.

Instead of graduates eager to learn and to earn we have constructed an educational system that qualifies citizens for a life of mindless production and consumption. Instead of turtles we need cats as a model for schooling.

A cat travels through the forest alert and curious to all that is in her range of perception. Instead of withdrawing into a shell the cat stealthily examines everything in its path. After a quick examination the cat very well may dart away for cover. The cat is, I think, more likely to survive in a dynamic and dangerous world than is the turtle.

Everyone is ignorant of 99.9999…% of the knowledge in the world. Understanding this fact I think is the first step toward setting each one of us free from any embarrassment we might feel about our ignorance. We should use our ignorance as a catalyst for discovering the joy of learning to understand what ever portion of the world’s knowledge that interests us.

We were born smart enough but we weren’t born intellectually sophisticated enough to handle this high tech world we have invented.

What is the difference between “being smart” and “being sophisticated”? I would say that we can use the handyman and his tool box as a good analogy for comprehending this difference. The number and quality of the instruments in a handyman’s tool box is a measure of his smartness and his experience using those tools is a measure of his sophistication.

If a handyman has only a hammer then every job is a job that will get hammered on. If that handyman has a great tool box but has experience only with a hammer then that handyman will look for things that can be hammered into place.

What’s in your tool box that you can use efficiently?

Do you know how to become more intellectually sophisticated? Become a self-actualizing self-learner.

My cat likes to creep into empty carrier bags, and be picked up and carried around the room in them.

That's funny, because my dog likes to climb up to the highest point he can get to (ie the sofa) whenever he feels threatened.

Do you?

My friends turtle is adventurous, but slowly. She was overwhelmed when I gifted her a patch of turf from my lawn, when I was digging it up for garden. She meticulously examined every sector, and found several worms, which she ate with turtle gusto.

The average life span of a box turtle is 50 years. Housecat, 15.

Is that a kind of sauce?

I saw 7 turtles yesterday. One was competing successfully with geese for some fish food being thrown in the water.

Oh, and you guys are changing the subject, talking about actual animals instead of metaphorical animals. It's just another form of retreating into your collective shells. You turtles!

There are 79,500 Google hits for when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

See, that almost made coffee shoot outta my nose.

Too many funny people dwell here! :p

(Man I luvz you guyz!)

Strangely Enough, this thread is not the first hit when you google

"The terrapin withdraws quickly into its shell and the snapping turtle hisses, spits, and snaps when such an encounter happens."

A remarkably similar thread in Physics forums is:

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=242751

At least we know what to do with such threads.


:lol:

but LOLcats live 4eva

I also have a long-winded monologue that everybody has to read! It's all about how I thought up a metaphor for some stuff that I saw and then I liked it so much that I decided to apply the same metaphor to everything because it made life easier to understand but then I realized that it would only really work if everybody else agreed to be part of my metaphor so then I decided I have to go out and tell everybody all about how I have figured everything out and I have the ultimate answer of how everybody can line up in neat little columns for me so the world won't be so scary and complicated.

so what was the metaphor?

Oh, crap. Am I a snapping turtle?

Oh, snap. Am I a crapping turtle?

the answer is 42 Flint

i couldn't handle flint x 42. just too much awesome for one planet to contain.

Dude. There's 123 of you.

They had to divide you into 123 parts before the mass of your awesome didn't form a singularity.

thanks.:sniff: that's much better than what my mother told me. she said the first 122 lookouts were so worthless she had to drown them. She gave up when I was born.

Stop crapping in my Turtle Snapple.

Turtles and Humans Have Much in Common

So true:
We both live for over three hundred years
We both lay our eggs on the beach at night then hightail it out of Dodge
We both swim several thousand miles through the ocean
We both are prized for our flesh which is made into wholesome soups
Ancient Chinese fortune tellers used our shells as oracles

Why, the similarities are mind boggling.

Well, we do fertilize our eggs on the beach at night, then hightail it out of Dodge. ;)

i just never thought that guy was funny.

Him as the first Pres Bush (creator of the first gulf war...coincidence, I think not) was pretty funny...I also loved his piano player "Choppin' Broccoli" skit.

and "Foxy Lady"

and "Church Lady" and "Wayne's World" and the ahnold "pump you up" bits

Wouldn't be prudent. Not at this juncture.

ok, i'll cop to being the one guy in amurka who didn't find dana carvey that funny.

That's OK...I may be alone in that I don't find Adam Sandler funny. At all. Oh, and the John Candy wannabe, Chris Farley, who was really good at running around in a speedo shaking his fat for laughs. I (didn't) know John Candy, and you're no John Candy. :p

Really, not fond of most SNL cast members since 1989, with some obvious exceptions of brilliantly funny people who were just caught up in "every skit must have someone naked, someone screaming, and must last about 20 minutes."

ahem

Chris Farley in Tommy Boy and Black Sheep? Hilarious. Everything else... not so much. I used to see him in Chicago. Nice guy.

Adam Sandler in Happy Gilmore hilarious. 50 First Dates ok. Everything else...not so much.

John Candy in Summer Rental, one of the best crap movies ever.

Don't worry, it's a family trait.

John Candy in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Who didn't love that annoying yet sweet man.

Neither Tommy nor Happy do it for me. Have not seen the others. My younger brother would have me shot for dissin' the Tommy and the Happy!

well, i won't shoot you, but i'm thinking about disowning you. you'll have to change your name if i do. tread carefully.

and if forgot about planes trains and autos. good stuff.

Ohhh, and Uncle Buck! I loved him in that.

Don't disown me...I've made you the beneficiary on my life insurance. YOU tread lightly, mister man!

We have completely drifted away from Mr CT's vision of this thread, haven't we? ;)

Life insurance? Life insurance? I'm up to my elbows in Life insurance right now. I've got seven different policies in process right now for clients and that is a lot of freaking paperwork... trust me. so beneficiary or no, we don't joke about the life insurance.;)

(shit, something he knows something about...crap!)

:bolt:

Livin in a van down by the river was some funny shit.

Don't joke about Shawnee's life insurance policy when they are about to find out she has inoperable "festivity of the taint."

It's just not cool, so don't go there. KTHXBYE.

It may fossilize. I've seen turtle coprolites -- Eocene unless I misremember.