In the late Sixties and early Seventies several experiments were begun to test whether or not a non-human primate could construct a sentence. Several species were involved in these various experiments including the chimpanzees
Washoe and
Nim, a gorilla named
Koko, and later in the Eighties work began with a bonobo named
Kanzi. While great progress was made in teaching these primates a vocabulary, it would be difficult to see any of these experiments as a success. And all of these projects raised important questions about the
ethics of such experiments.
[more inside]
posted by Toekneesan
on Aug 20, 2011 -
39 comments
Not Sarah Palin's Friends. Slate's script kiddies snag Sarah Palin's Facebook comments stream before its edited by Team Palin. Not a hack, per se, because it was publicly available on Facebook for minutes at a time, but interesting.
The deletions amount to a real-time look at how much effort and care Palin puts into protecting her public image. It's not just the number of posts that are screened out that gives some indication of how seriously Palin's team is monitoring things.
posted by Cool Papa Bell
on Aug 3, 2010 -
79 comments
Prominent blogger
Andrew Sullivan develops an unhealthy obsession over the (lack of) details surrounding the birth of Sarah Palin's youngest child.
Sullivan really, really won't let it go. Persistent rumors lead the editor of the Alaska Daily News to, "finally decide, after watching this go on unabated for months, to let a reporter try to do a story about the 'conspiracy theory that would not die' and, possibly, report the facts of Trig's birth thoroughly enough to kill the nonsense once and for all." Palin releases
press release slamming the paper. Editor of paper
publishes email from Palin's office along with his response.
Palin complains about "bored, anonymous, pathetic bloggers who lie," says episode is, "more indication of continued problems in the world of journalism." She also
thinks Katie Couric is bad at journalism, not the center of everybody's universe, and is exploiting Palin. Mike Huckabee disagrees, says Couric was
"extraordinarily gentle" with Palin. Political pundits and journalists are left scratching their heads - is she crazy?
Or a crazy genius? 2012 is just
around the corner.
posted by billysumday
on Jan 13, 2009 -
188 comments
Legislative panel concludes that Palin abused the power of her office. A Republican-dominated Alaska State Legislative panel voted unanimously this evening to release to the public the results of the investigation into Governor Sarah Palin's dismissal of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan.
(Full report PDF here) Among four key points released in the report,
the most significant "concludes that Palin violated the state's executive branch ethics act, which says that 'each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust.'"
posted by XQUZYPHYR
on Oct 10, 2008 -
477 comments
Fox,
the BBC and
CNN have all revealed that Republican US presidential candidate John McCain has picked Alaskan Governor
Sarah Palin as his running mate on his 72nd birthday on the eve of the start of
Republican National Convention. Despite being wildly popular in Alaska, Palin has recently been involved in
an investigation over whether she dismissed a public safety commissioner because he refused to dismiss her former brother-in-law.
posted by HaloMan
on Aug 29, 2008 -
5555 comments
This video costs $150,000
What’s wrong with this video?
Well, it only cost $15
$150,000 could make a difference to over 1,000,000 people
In this age of media companies and the RIAA suing everyone and their computer illiterate grandmothers, it’s nice to see an musician take a critical look at what it is that they do, if it’s really necessary, and ask if there was a better way to spend their money. And, quite frankly, it doesn’t surprise me in the least that it was
Sarah McLachlan. (QT video)
posted by NotMyselfRightNow
on Sep 27, 2004 -
97 comments
