Roosters have shown signs of recognizing themselves in mirrors, challenging conventional wisdom about the cognitive abilities of chickens. In an article published by the New York Times, a study led by Sonja Hillemacher, a researcher at the University of Bonn, suggests the self-awareness in roosters using a modified version of the classic mirror test. This sheds new light on the intelligence of these birds and potentially prompting re-evaluations of animal smarts.

The mirror test, originally introduced by psychologist Gordon Gallup in 1970, has been used to assess self-awareness in various species by marking individuals and observing their reactions in mirrors. While only a few species, such as dolphins and elephants, have passed this test, the researchers argue that it may not be suitable for animals with different sensory abilities and social systems.

The study found that roosters failed the classic mirror test when marked with pink powder, showing no inclination to inspect or touch the marks. Instead, the team designed an alternative experiment that focused on rooster self-awareness using their natural behavior of alarm calling in response to predators. Roosters alerted other birds when they saw a hawk silhouette projected on them through a mirror, but they remained silent when alone or when another rooster was present but blocked from view by a mirror.

These findings suggest that roosters may possess a form of self-awareness and that they recognize their own reflections. While this study presents strong evidence for self-awareness in roosters, it may require further experiments and research to persuade all scientists. Masanori Kohda, a biologist at Osaka Metropolitan University in Japan says, “Potentially, this study shows strong evidence for self-awareness, however, these results will not be enough to persuade all scientists.” Regardless, the authors hope that their approach can be used to test other animals’ self-awareness in ecologically relevant ways, potentially allowing a more accurate assessment of various species’ self-awareness abilities.

The representative Mike Johnson won election on wednesday and became the 56th speaker of the house of representatives after three weeks of infighting and dysfunction. Three other canidates where quickly discarded. Representative Tom Emmer, who was let go from his speakership bid by the hard right on Tuesday, called the bitter process Republicans just went through over the past three weeks “open, honest, transparent and a true display of what democracy looks like in action.”

The paragraphs are small and add statements from Biden and others in leadership positions. There is a good perspective from many angles. The inverted pyramid is used as the most important information is mentioned first then there is more information added on later. There is quote after quote from Johnson added in. There is talk about a government shutdown if funds can not be acquired. But overall there is celebration of the new election and hope for the future.

A new bride was shot by her husband only three hours after getting married on the front porch of their home 617 Black street. Saturday at 5pm Richard Brunson 50 shot his wife Laurette Kenny Brunson 38 with a 22 caliber handgun. The incident happened after she threw a plate of wedding reception macaroni at him. An eye witness described the scene this way

The couple had been living together for four or five months before they were married and about 30 relatives and friends attended the wedding. When shots were fired a neighbor called the police. By the time the police arrived the groom was gone. Mrs. Brunson is in St. Luke’s hospital and is in satisfactory condition as she was shot in the abdomen. Police are still on the lookout for Mr. Brunson Another eyewitness describes how he left.

There was a deadly blast at a Gaza hospital on Tuesday that American and Israeli officials said their intelligence showed that the blast was caused by a Palestinian group. The Palestine claim that and Israeli strike caused the explosion. Neither side’s claims about the responsible party have been verified independently. The intelligence that caught what happened was a satellite showing a launch of a rocket or missile from Palestinian fighter positions within Gaza. Also open source video recordings collected by journalists and others showing that the the strike came from the same direction.

The NYT article explained well what happened and they use short paragraphs which makes it an easier read for people. After the first initial explanation of what happened, there is explanation of the specific damage caused by the strike such as how many people were injured and died as well as what part of the hospital was hit. There is more discussion about the photography that was captured even more in depth the further you read the article. The ending ties it all together by explaining that the United States regularly uses infrared satellite collection to analyze launches.

More than 25 business honors students will use the cafeteria kitchen to bake, pack, label, then deliver over 1,500 freshly baked cookies to students. At Morningside students are nearing midterms and are restless for fall break. Some students will be working over fall break and some will be driving home. Others will relax on campus. No matter what they are planning on doing, most of them have worked busy and tireless schedules during this first quarter. So business honors has created a fundraiser to deliver some love from their parents to soften their load. 

Marilyn Eastman, the head of Business honors, describes where Smart Cookies came from. She explained that this year 2023 will be the 5th year of doing smart cookies. It came out of the idea of needing a fundraiser for business honors. “This is because in order to get club funding and to become a club through student government you have to do fundraisers.”  The honors group uses the fundraiser for trips and sometimes conferences. This year business honors will take a trip to Omaha. 

One of the goals of business honors is to help students network with executives in their field. Not just people doing regular jobs but people doing CEO level jobs and big jobs. Dr. Eastman says she likes to take her students to a city and go to big companies to give them an experience of what it might be like. Because there are a lot of students here at Morningside that come from smaller towns and have probably not traveled much and have not seen what a big corporate office building looks like in a big city. Dr. Eastman says, “I think it is important for students, especially honors students, to aspire to things that maybe they don’t know.” 

She went on to say “These honors students are already really bright and hard working so they would have the opportunity to go work for a Deloitte or a Linked In or a Union Pacific. So if students don’t ever know what that is like, how do they know that it is what they want to do?” 

In order to have these unique experiences, business honors really wanted to look and find something unique and profitable but not too much work. Dr Eastman came up with the idea of smart cookies after getting a forwarded link from her sister. From Saint Olaf up in Northfield Minnesota the idea blossomed. Dr. Eastman’s niece went there and Dr. Eastman’s sister forwarded her a link where you could order cookies for your students. She brought that idea to the business honors club and they loved the idea. Then that sort of just developed into the Smart Cookies idea. 

One aspect that has been a challenge for Jes Lumsden the administrative assistant has been managing the ordering systems. She has to make sure that the order has gone through and that the order has been paid for on separate spreadsheets. The hardest thing to manage, she says, is “Just the systems because they don’t talk, making sure that the payment was made and the order was placed.”  This is Jess’s first year managing Smart Cookies and she is hopeful that next year there will be a better system in place. 

Once the orders are in, the fundraiser is done all in one night. Business honors uses the cafeteria kitchen to bake the cookies which is not how it has been done in the past. There has been much revision done in the past years to make smart cookies as fool proof as it is now. 

When they first started they cooked the cookies in the dorms themselves. So they would bake the cookies in Dimmitt and Roadman and such. That was so complicated and so much work. Another thing that made it more complicated is that instead of using the cookie dough that is already balled they used the scoop out cookie dough which made things more time consuming and complicated. Also the groups were separated and missing out on coming together to accomplish the goal while bonding and building friendships. 

So two years ago business honors got the “brilliant idea” to use the cafeteria kitchen. Luckily the Cafeteria has been so generous as to say yes to using it after they close for the night. Which has saved so much time and has made things much easier. 

Now all the students that are working on the project can come together all in one place. Creating a space for them to get to know each other. It is hard to get to know each other sometimes on this campus so working together in service is a way to have a bonding experience. Smart cookies serve that objective too. So besides just making money it is a way to get to know each other and bring some really busy and smart students together for a night of working together on something that is actually kind of fun. 

At Morningside students are nearing midterms and are restless for fall break. Some students will be working over fall break and some will be driving home. Others will relax on campus. No matter what they are planning on doing, most of them have worked busy and tireless schedules during this first quarter. So business honors has created a fundraiser to deliver some love from their parents to soften their load. On October ninth more than 20 business honors students will use the cafeteria kitchen to bake, pack, label, then deliver to each dorm over 1,000 freshly baked cookies to students. 

With an interview with Marilyn Eastman the head of Business honors, she describes where smart cookies came from. She explained that this year 2023 will be the 5th year of doing smart cookies. It came out of the idea of needing a fundraiser for business honors. This is because in order to get club funding and to become a club through student government you have to do fundraisers. The honors group uses the fundraiser for trips and sometimes conferences. This year business honors will take a trip to omaha. 

The goal of business honors or really one of the goals is to help students network with executives in their field. Not just people doing regular jobs but people doing CEO level jobs and big jobs. Marylin says she likes to take her students to a city and go to big companies to give them an experience of what it might be like. Because there are a lot of students here at Morningside that come from smaller towns and have probably not traveled much and have not seen what a big corporate office building looks like in a big city. Marylin says, “I think it is important for students, especially honors students, to aspire to things that maybe they don’t know.” These honors students are already really bright and hard working so they would have the opportunity to go work for a Deloitte or a Linked In or a Union Pacific. So if students don’t ever know what that is like, how do they know that it is what they want to do? Maylin really just aims to give business honors students unique experiences beyond that of what a normal business honors student in college might see. 

In order to have these unique experiences, business honors really wanted to look and find something unique and profitable but not too much work. Marylin came up with the idea of smart cookies after getting a forwarded link from her sister. From Saint Olaf up in Northfield Minnesota the idea blossomed. Marilyn’s niece went there and Marilyn’s sister forwarded her a link where you could order cookies for your students. She brought that idea to the business honors club and they loved the idea. Then that sort of just developed into the Smart Cookies idea. 

The fundraiser is seamless and is done all in one night. Business honors uses the cafeteria kitchen to bake the cookies which is not how it has been done in the past. There has been much revision done in the past years to make smart cookies as fool proof as it is now. When they first started they cooked the cookies in the dorms themselves. So they would bake the cookies in Dimitt and Roadman and such. That was so complicated and so much work. Another thing that made it more complicated is that instead of using the cookie dough that is already balled they used the scoop out cookie dough which made things more time consuming and complicated. Also the groups were separated and missing out on coming together to accomplish the goal while bonding and building friendships. 

So two years ago business honors got the “brilliant idea” to use the cafeteria kitchen. Luckily the Cafeteria has been so generous as to say yes to using it after they close for the night. Which has saved so much time and has made things much easier. Now all the students that are working on the project can come together all in one place. Creating a space for them to get to know each other. It is hard to get to know each other sometimes on this campus so working together in service is a way to have a bonding experience. Smart cookies serve’s that objective too. So besides just making money it is a way to get to know each other and bring some really busy and smart students together for a night of working together on something that is actually kind of fun. 

Now more than ever people are capturing their dissociation experiences on social media #dissocociation has drawn more than 775 million views. There is a public fascination with dissociative identity disorder. Christina Caron, the author of the New York times Article states that, “conversations about mental health continue to migrate into public forums.” The media is full of content with millions of voices speaking on their perspective. But research suggests that much of the content is not providing reliable information. Dr. Frank W. Putnam, a professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and an expert on dissociative disorders explains that dissociation is like you shut down and kind of go away and these episodes become a disorder when you end up in a place without knowing how you got there for example. It is thought that the disorder is largely under diagnosed. It comes from severe childhood trauma at an early age.

The article starts off asking if you have ever zoned out. It starts with a question which are hard things to start with and catch attention but the saying caught my attention enough to read the article and keep reading to the end. There is much talk about the effect of social media in the perception of the diagnosis. The article ties in experts and the interesting thoughts they have on the topic and how the disorder has gained so much attention through social media. The end of the article encourages curious people to speak with an attentive and thoughtful health care provider. We are left with a great quote from Dr. David Rettew, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, “Just about everything in mental health is dimensional. It exists on a spectrum,” he said. “And that doesn’t make our conditions less real, but it does make them more complicated.”

Thomas Ritchie is a storyteller at heart. As a child, like many of us, he idolized his grandfather and wanted to be a farmer but ended up far from it. When college came around he studied mass communication at Mount Marty in Yankton South Dakota. He then worked in journalism for 25 years and worked in news rooms. He worked a very interesting job for these years and he spoke of some of his most interesting news stories he had to write about. One was a visit to a nursing home where he needed to interview a centenarian. When Richie asked the man what the secret to his longevity was, the man answered, “smoking cigars and having lots of sex.” He has even been in the same room with most presidential candidates during his time as a journalist.

Now Ritchie works in corporate marketing, not the sexiest sounding job out there. To describe his role he said he is a “strategic digital marketing generalist.” His day to day is a hybrid style where he has the ability to work a few days in the office and a few days at home. When he first started his job and asked about working a few days from home they thought he was crazy. Now post pandemic Ritchie got what he hoped for as people worked from home for one and a half years and businesses got the picture of what it would look like for their employees to be hybrid. 

Ritchies corporation is the Great West Casualty Company which is a trucking insurance company. His role in the company as a strategic digital marketing generalist is to create things to drive people to their website or call to buy their insurance. He says that it’s a “big climb to get people to the website.” This is where his skills in storytelling come in. He must compel others through writing to use the insurance they are selling. 

Journalism is just not the same anymore there is not as much opportunity in it as there is in marketing. This is why Ritchie finds himself where he is now as a journalist turned marker. Currently Ritchie would choose marketing over journalism because journalism not the same anymore. Journalism is now consumed by the media and there are a million biased voices speaking. Media is more opinion based now. Media used to be more for communication now there is so much more wavering away from just the facts and observations. Because of this Ritchie said that “Media consumption is very splintered.”

After Ritchies many years of experience in the workforce and given his perspective, he gives us these inspiring words of parting advice. He says to learn to be really good at one thing first then develop skills around that. Also take risks, learn how to use social media well and finally, be confident in what you do. 

To begin the report there are words to the shareholders about what Target is doing now and what Target aimes to do in the future. With strategies, teamwork and discipline there is continuous growth in many business markets. The report also recognizes that all of the recent growth has not been steady in that the years of the pandemic, 2020 and 2021 there was a massive spike in growth rates. The team was able to deal with this because the fundamentals of the team were set. This shows the importance of vigorous investment the team. In 2022 with the unnatural year and the large shifts in the way people buy, still Target grew by more than $3 billion. Now Target is $30 billion larger than it was in 2019.

Next there is talk about the trust and loyalty customers have in Target. “A significant part of this growth has been driven by traffic. Last year’s traffic gain of 2.1% marked the sixth straight year of growth in this
key metric.” It shows that as needs of customers changes Target is still the place to go to have their needs met. also target is flexible in what they products they provide and this focus consistently brings growth.

Then there is more about the growth Target has seen and that the trajectory for Target’s future is bright. In the report it states, “We expect these advances in efficiency to result in $2 to $3 billion in savings in the years ahead.” The team will be focusing on the fundamentals to make this happen.

More of what works is support of the team as a whole as they are the heart. Investment in expansion plans as well as digital expansion. Delivering a steady flow of interests, and delivering affordable joy. Target is going through an unpredictable landscape and many challenges are to be faced but they are optimistic as a team and what they represent.

I walked into the Krone Center on a busy Monday afternoon in hopes to interview a few people who could spare a moment. Firstly I interviewed Skyler, someone who works through the Krone Center for Morningside University. She was very talkative with me which was very helpful. I asked her what she was doing and she told me that she was looking through the library archives at yearbook photos from 2003 so that she could promote the alumni milestone tent. She was sad that she couldn’t find anything relevant.

In the middle of the conversation Skyler exclaimed that she had just found a terrifying photo of Montee the Mustang. The look on her face was very amusing to say the least. Skyler had a Stanley cup with the Morningside logo on it so I snapped a photo. She was gifted it by Garrett a student that won it by doing a panel. Skyler at last said she liked her job though she was having a hard time finding anything. Skyler did say that “this is very convenient that the library has all the yearbooks archived online,” otherwise she would have many books to look through and might not like her job so much.

Next I slipped into Stacy Hays office and I asked her what her biggest accomplishment of the day was and she said “still staying positive after having her whole day blocked,” she even had her lunch while meeting with a student. She had cold cauliflower soup which she said wasn’t actually bad cold because it was one of those soups that can be cold and still good. It was a homemade soup and she had pumpkin seeds and homemade croutons to garnish. She gave me her favorite quote I needed for the scavenger hunt which was, “you must be the change you want to see in the world.” I asked her why it was her favorite and she said, “for me I find motivation in it, you must lead by example if you want others to change.” she left me with a her quote. She was happy to help me in my hunt.