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September 29, 2003
Jack Black is on the Atkins diet...
And it shows.
Posted by sam at 10:05 PM | Comments (0)
Talk of the chimp town
The New Yorker Talk of the Town this week discusses the objection to Dick Grasso's $180m compensation package. The really interesting part, though, is the author's conclusion that monkeys - not to mention people - "seem to believe that there should be a clear connection between work and pay."
I'll just add that if there's one thing I've learned so far in school it's that economists are deeply disturbed people (no offense John).
It so happened that, on the very day Grasso resigned, the primatologists Sarah F. Brosnan and Frans B. M. de Waal released a study showing that female brown capuchin monkeys seem to have a sense of fairness, too.
Pairs of capuchins had been trained to give Brosnan pebbles in exchange for slices of cucumber. This idyllic monkey market economy was disrupted, though, when the scientists changed the pay scale, rewarding one monkey with a delicious grape and the other with the same measly old cucumber. Exposed to this injustice, the capuchins who were given cucumbers often refused to eat; forty per cent of the time, they stopped trading entirely.
Things got worse when one monkey in each pair was given a grape for doing nothing at all. The other monkeys often responded by tossing away their pebbles; eighty per cent of the time, they stopped trading. The capuchins were willing to forfeit cheap food simply to express their displeasure at their partners’ unearned riches.
Posted by sam at 09:46 PM | Comments (0)
WSJ.com reports on (only available
WSJ.com reports on (only available to subscribers) a German author's thesis that "the U.S. government staged the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington to justify wars in Afghanistan and Iraq." The author admits that the theory is tentative, basing most of it on doubt that al Queda was responsible for the attacks ("That's something that is simply 99% false").
The author, Andreas von Bulow, is a former German cabinet minister now "from one of the country's most prestigious publishing houses and who lectures at well-known public institutions." Reaction seems to be mixed:
In conversations with a dozen visitors, one woman said she found Mr. Bulow's theories bunk, while others said they found them plausible.
"I can't believe all of it," said Daniel Feifal, a 24-year-old architecture student. "That would destroy my belief in humanity. But that they knew about the attacks and let them happen because it could further their foreign-policy aims, yes, I'm prepared to believe that."
Posted by sam at 03:13 PM | Comments (0)
Maybe snakes
This is our new house pet. It lives on the front porch, just feet away from the front door. I think it's getting bigger every day and I pray that's not because of pregnancy. If there's anything I dislike more than spiders I can't think of it right now.
Posted by sam at 01:08 PM | Comments (3)