Watch the exact scene how an owl catches its prey while they are totally ignorant. Watch for pair of lights(owlEyes) to see the onset of owl. https://youtu.be/2Ol4rbYPYQc
This is my least favorite thing about Wikipedia -- it's taken all of the whimsy out of general knowledge resources.
Re:The silence of the owls
by BiteCode_dev on Wednesday April 08, 2020 @05:06AM
(#22811260)
Yeah but then, do you want "whimsy" in sensible articles like political/religious/ethical related ones? Then would one expect wikipedia editors to enforce this policy on top of the work they already do? And using what criteria?
No, Wikipedia is not set up for whimsy. This kind of thing has to come from a single author with a point of view, not from a crowdsourced article with conflicting points of view.
In the same way as any encyclopedia that's not deliberately whimsical (in which case its general utility of obtaining knowledge may be more limited than, those multi-tome things or, well, Wikipedia).
But the best encyclopedia, Brittanica, had flights of whimsy. Sentences like "Bostonians are incorrigible jaywalkers." Wikipedia killed Brittanica, and ultimately is far more valuable to the world, but I miss those sentences in Brittanica.
Re:The silence of the owls
by MaxBarraclough on Wednesday April 08, 2020 @08:10AM
(#22812190)
I'd say Wikipedia is generally less dry than the average technical book.
It's less whimsical than some blog posts, sure, but Wikipedia is meant to be an encyclopaedia (roughly speaking).
I wouldn't say it's taken all the whimsy, but the community attempts to keep an "encyclopedic" tone.
In same cases it's turned into overcorrection from the good old Wikipedia days when, for example, the article about vampires was mostly not about actual vampire bats, or even about folklore vampires, but about a self-proclaimed "lifestyle" of people who supposedly consider themselves "real vampires". I remember those days! It was fun to see the rampant edit wars between serious and fringe editors.
Silent flight enables owls in flight to hear the movements of small rodents, while in turn it keeps the sharp-eared prey in the dark over someone coming for dinner. This tempts one to fancy that mice live in utter ignorance of owls except as invisible agents of disappearances from the family.