James R. Rummel

I am a self defense instructor who lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Kind of Like the “Girls Gone Wild” Videos, Except Really Wild

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Last year I wrote this post, where I expressed doubt that the people who claim to have taught apes sign language are legit. The main reason why I smelled a rat was due to the reluctance of the researchers to allow outside observers who could sign interact with the apes.

Now there’s this news story. It seems that Francine Patterson, the head of the Gorilla Foundation, told three female employees at different times to bare their breasts. She claimed that Koko, the most famous of the signing gorillas, was requesting it.

Two of the employees were fired and filed suit against the Foundation. The third employee actually figured that stripping for the ape was the only way to keep her job, so she flashed some chest. Now she’s signed on as co-suer.

You know, that’s the first time I’ve ever heard of where something like this worked. (If the suit has merit and isn’t some bizarre attempt at free money, that is.) Usually saying that it’s your dog who wants to get a gander at the goods results in a slapped face. There’s going to be a run on exotic animal pet stores as frat boys buy up the country’s monkey population.

The second thing that occurs to me is that it was Ms. Patterson who was telling the three women what Koko wanted. None of them could understand ASL and tell what the ape was trying to say, even though they were entrusted to work in the closest proximity to the star attraction.

Makes me wonder.

I wonder why, if it’s Koko and not Ms. Patterson with the breast fetish, why they don’t just get her an Internet connection and a credit card number. Seems it would be cheaper than a lawsuit.

Incredible!

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Here’s a webpage that claims to have color photos from WWI. It looks reasonably legit from what I can see, but I can’t say for sure.

Click on over and have a look.

UPDATE
Reader Paul Stinchfield has sent me two links where WWI color photos may be found. They are this one and this one.

If you’re interested in looking over a huge online archive of French photographic pioneers, then I suggest that you click this link and start browsing. Lots of stuff there.

(Hat tip to Spoons, and he got from Vodkapundit.)

Linking to Another Blog

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Just in case you’re not familiar with her work, Megan McArdle writes under the nom de blog as Jane Galt. Her work can be found at Asymmetrical Information.

Megan recently posted a few items that I think would be of interest to our readers. The first is entitled “Why can’t mothers find part time work?”, and it’s pretty insightful. Megan points out that there’s plenty of part time jobs out there, they’re just not top-flight careers that pull in $100K or more a year. The reason why employers don’t seem willing to help working mothers stay on the high powered career path is due to good reasons.

Megan follows this up with “More on the tenure track”, something that should be of interest to Ginny.

Megan ends with an untitled post where she makes the observation that academia is pretty much shooting itself in the foot by making such a big deal out of Larry Summers’s remarks.

Hunter S. Thompson is Dead

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Many people compared the recent elections to the anti-war movement in the 1960’s, and with good reason. The raw emotion that the Left displayed in 2004 pretty much mimicked what they went through in 1968.

America was going through some wild times back then, and the people who were at the forefront of most of the social changes tried to grab on to too much too fast. The so-called “counter culture” threw itself behind anything that would horrify conservatives. Some of these causes such as women’s lib, the environment and equal rights were long overdue for a hearing in US consciousness. Others such as rampant sexuality, avoidance of responsibility and drug use probably shouldn’t have been as fervently embraced.

One of the people who perfectly encapsulated the mind set of the time was Hunter S. Thompson, who committed suicide yesterday.

Read more

Watchdog

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By now, everyone who is interested has heard the tale of CNN news chief Eason Jordan. Jordan makes wild and unsubstantiated claims, big media ignore the story, and the blogs won’t shut up about it. Eventually Eason resigns in disgrace.

Bloggers like to say that they’ll replace MSM some day. Not gonna happen. We don’t have the resources to gather data, interview people, and get the stories out in a coherent way.

But Eason and Rathergate has shown what we’re good for. Keeping them honest, shining a thousand tiny lights at outrageously biased behavior and unsubstantiated claims until everyone notices.

So it’s important that we realize that we’re like a swarm of unpaid editors and ombudsmen, not the reporters who know how to get the goods. Unless we happen to be very lucky we’re not going to break the big story. Instead we’re going to make sure that uncomfortable truths aren’t buried in favor of some agenda.

Big media claim that we’re getting in the way. They say that we’re just a bunch of partisan hacks who wouldn’t know good journalism if it came up and bit us on the nose. The unrelenting harping of the blogs, they say, is making it harder for them to do their jobs.

Well, we might make it harder for MSM to do their job, but we’re also forcing them to do it right.

UPDATE
Ginny, one of my fellow Chicago Boyz, makes a wonderful observation in the comments below, comparing bloggers to old-style ham radio operators. She even manages to work in a reference to Libertarians. Well worth your time.