Ya think it's easy?

“Where’s Waldo? What does he smell like?”

I have so many questions for dogs.

That’s a funny observation, and I want to make it the first line of a book someday, but it really is no joke: In my personal ‘Freaky Friday’ fantasy I get to quiz dogs about everything.

As noted, I think academics are useless when it comes to apprehending ontology, so my very first question might be: “How do you see?”

Not the optics or the bio-mechanics, but simply this: “What means what to you in this chaotic tableaux?”

We are Greeks – thoughtless ones – so we have been rigorously trained from birth to focus on differences: “Which bunny is brown?” “Color only the triangles.” “Where’s Waldo?”

Why would your dog go about things that way?

Here’s fun: You know you can easily hide things from your dog simply by covering them. A ball under a tee shirt is a comedy triumph to a toddler and a complete mystery to a dog. Try hiding things in plain sight: Put something the dog loves to see into a setting so chaotic the dog persistently overlooks it.

Give a Bloodhound like Odysseus one of Waldo’s dirty socks and that skinny emo freak has no place to hide. You can get your dog to watch videos – if they’re about dogs and involve lots of motion and barking. But show a dog a static still life expecting anything but boredom? Good luck with that.

In other news:

Housing Wire: Mortgage rates dip slightly to 2.86%.

Redfin.com: July Marked 12 Straight Months of Double-Digit Price Increases.

City Journal: No Home for Innovation: Why China will never have the world’s preeminent economy. Innovation is D or I, not C. You can’t be both new and perfect. Perfectionism is the enemy of all originality.

Asia Times: Are Taliban planning to massacre Americans? The Taliban know their history well and they want to make the Americans pay for the last 20 years of warfare.

The Federalist: Homeschooling Is Surging Across America. Homeschoolers Told Us Why.

Dr. Ben Carson: Does The Definition Of ‘Fascism’ Apply To The Biden Administration?