COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Friday, January 04, 2008

No Such Thing as Free Monkey Sex

"Do you come here often?"

Monkey business: Male chimps 'pay for sex' by grooming their mates
Last updated at 11:07am on 3rd January 2008 Daily Mail

Male macaque monkeys "pay" for sex with females by grooming them, scientists believe.

In areas where there are fewer females, males are forced to groom their partners for up to twice as long before they are able to have sex, the research found.

Sexual activity among a 50-strong group of long-tailed macaques in Kalimantan Tengah, Indonesia, increased after bouts of male-to-female grooming, according to findings published in Animal Behaviour journal and reported in New Scientist.

On average, females had sex 1.5 times an hour, but it jumped to 3.5 times an hour immediately after the female monkey was groomed by their male partner.

The females were also less likely to look elsewhere for sex after being groomed.

The monkey version of the "world's oldest profession" is also a rare example of market forces acting in nature, with the availability of females affecting the "price" of mating.

Michael Gumert of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, said unlike examples of "reciprocal altruism" - in which one organism provides a service to another in return for getting something back at a later date - the value of sex fluctuated like any other economic commodity.

When there were several females in the area, the male monkeys would only have to do eight minutes of grooming before being able to mate.

But if there were fewer females than males around, a male would have to groom his partner for up to 16 minutes before sex, the research found.

Dr Gumert said: "When the opportunity arises, male macaque monkeys groom females to 'pay' for sex."

The macaques' behaviour is thought to be an example of a "biological market", a theory developed by Ronald Noe of the University of Strasbourg, France, and Peter Hammerstein of Humboldt University, Berlin.

Prof Noe said market forces had a strong influence on behaviour - in both animals and humans.

"There is a very well-known mix of economic and mating markets in the human species itself.

"There are many examples of rich old men getting young attractive ladies," he said.

28 comments:

  1. Hello

    My name is Susan Harwood and I am contacting people who list architecture amongst their interests.

    This is because I have just started a new blog called

    SHOUTING AT THE RADIO.

    It can be found at

    http://shoutingattheradio.blogspot.com/

    and will be touching on matters to do with architecture as well as education and politics.

    I have been looking at your cluster of blogs and would have left this note on your Carbon Emissions blog (tomorrow's blog on SHOUTING AT THE RADIO touches on this) but The Elephant Bar has been updated more recently so I am guessing you are more likely to find this 'comment' if I leave it here.

    If you do take a look at SHOUTING AT THE RADIO and have any comments to make, I will be pleased to hear from you; either on the blog or by email

    shoutingatradio@googlemail.com

    All the best for 2008

    Susan Harwood

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  2. The pressure is building, the truth, or at least the US Government perception of it, wins.

    Israel folding up the Bibi tent and hitting the Peace trail!
    Back to the future!!
    Back to Oslo!!!

    JERUSALEM (AP) � Israel has failed to uphold its promise to halt building in Jewish settlements, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert acknowledged in an interview published Friday in an Israeli newspaper.

    The admission came days before President Bush arrives in the region to prod Israel and the Palestinians toward a final peace deal.
    ...

    "I have announced that the state of Israel will not build new settlements and will not confiscate land for this purpose and I intend to keep the obligation," Olmert told the English-language daily The Jerusalem Post. But he acknowledged Israel that settlement construction continued.

    "There is a certain contradiction in this between what we're actually seeing and what we ourselves promised," Olmert said. "We always complain about the (breached) promises of the other side. Obligations are not only to be demanded of others, but they must also be honored by ourselves. So there is a certain problem here."


    The pressure mounts, when will critical mass be reached?

    Quicker than I thought, the apartheid comments more telling than I imagined.

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  4. Keeps gettin' more real, the pieces falling into place, how much more will Israel cede to the mussulmen, to satisfy King George and the British Crown's irreconcilable demands?

    And for what, the few sheckals and the US supplies of ammo for the big guns. Which the US has a tendency to cut off when the Israeli think they need it most.

    Professor Lewis, on the money.

    Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Jordan's King Abdullah II discussed the division of Israel's capital during a brief visit Olmert held with the monarch Thursday, the London based Al Hayat reported Friday.

    Quoting Jordanian sources, the prime minister and the king discussed at length issues relating to a final status settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. Apart from the potentiality of ceding parts of Jerusalem, the two also addressed the issue of Palestinian refugees.

    Reportedly, during the meeting which was aimed at coordinating positions ahead of a visit by US President George W. Bush slated for next week, Abdullah II told Olmert that the latter had to stand up to commitments he made in the past, and begin making public statements regarding the division of Jerusalem.

    Israel Radio reported earlier that official statements from Jordan said that the monarch wanted to avoid unilateral actions and that Olmert clarified that Israel was not intending to build new settlements.

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  5. Report from radio listening today--Hannity--Hillary has the goods on Obama, drug related, and is expected to use them now.

    Lars Larsen--Giuliani's top cop gets indicted--total possible penalty, 100+ years--the word in New York is Giuliani is 'mobbed up'.

    Give yourself a little post holiday gift-- "Hillary, the Movie" is coming out. Has been termed political by FEC so can't be advertised, unlike M. Moore's crap. Dick Morris says it's right on target--everything they've pulled all these years.

    Having disposed of racism in America, now if we could only find a clean candidate--is there one in America?

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  6. "No Such Thing as Free Monkey Sex"--there's always some lonely scientist soul, rejected in love, wants to put the nix on the idea of true love. Or free love, as the case may be.

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  7. Assignment: Compare and Contrast in 500 words Brittany Spears and Crystal Gayle.

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  8. LOL! Look what the librarian just turned in:

    http://quicksilverscreen.com/watch?video=20081


    dRat, I'm counting on you for a transcript!

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  9. Get it a fromat that I do not have to download.

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  10. That's ok. I probably already read it in your previous posts.

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  11. Calif Update:

    Herrera: Save Evidence
    S.F. city attorney asks survivors of the Christmas tiger mauling to preserve cell phone logs and photos.
    ---
    "Don't tell them what we did," paramedics heard 23-year-old Kulbir Dhaliwal tell his younger brother, Paul, 19.

    Sources also say that the younger brother was intoxicated at the time of the incident, having used marijuana and consumed enough booze to have a blood-alcohol level above the .08 limit for adult drivers. The older brother had also been drinking and using marijuana around the time a 350-pound Siberian tiger escaped and killed Carlos Sousa Jr.
    ---
    A witness told The Chronicle this week that she spotted the young men teasing the lions in the big-cat grotto shortly before the attack.
    (other accounts give her description of the "teasing" the young lads inflicted on the lion, needless to say, "teasing" is a PC redefinition of her statement)

    ---
    SAN FRANCISCO — Norman Hsu, the shamed political powerbroker and Democratic donor, was sentenced Friday to a three-year prison term by a California judge in connection with a 1992 plea in a fraud case in which investors lost millions of dollars in an elaborate Ponzi scheme.

    The judge, Stephen Hall, of San Mateo County Superior Court, issued the sentence after denying two motions from Mr. Hsu’s lawyers, who had asked the court to drop the 16-year-old fraud case and withdraw Mr. Hsu’s no-contest plea.

    ------------
    The most extreme conditions were about 200 miles to the east of San Francisco, in the Sierra Nevada, where the National Weather Service warned of blizzard and whiteout conditions and gusts of 160 miles per hour. Just hours into the storm, a 163-m.p.h. gust was reported on one mountaintop near Lake Tahoe.

    Power was sporadic in some mountain towns along Interstate 80 from Sacramento to Reno, Nev. Only the hardiest of trucks and tire-chained cars were crawling along that stretch Friday.

    Forecasters said trying to travel through the storm would be foolhardy.

    “It’s an exceptional storm,” said Rhett Milne, a Reno meteorologist with the Weather Service. “If you do get stranded, it’s a life-threatening situation.”

    The Weather Service said some upper elevations could get up to 10 feet of snow by the time the twin storms blow through at weekend’s close, and some ski resorts, visibility eliminated by blowing snow, had already shut their high-mountain lifts.

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  12. Then there's no need.

    Just tryin' to be of service.

    Always have sympathy for the critically ill, which any Israeli would have to be.

    Bein' caught between Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

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  13. Google "Temple Mount"
    Lots of outrage in those links.
    Most asking why?

    This fellow has an answer, but mat doesn't like it.

    Ella Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress stated: "Now that the Nazi secret plan has been confirmed, the central question is whether it has been carried out."

    Need we wonder? Considering German hegemony throughout Europe is practically a done deal (with the Vatican's blessing), aren't Herbert W. Armstrong's warnings about the final revival of the "Holy Roman Empire" being fulfilled before our very eyes? Only the deaf, dumb and blind could deny that the Germans have thoroughly carried out their plans!

    But what is the German-Catholic kingdom without the crown of Jerusalem? "Woe to Ariel, Ariel, the city where David dwelt!" (Isaiah 29:1). The Vatican covets Mount Zion and the Temple Mount and Europe won't quit until it occupies the eternal capital of Israel! Both the Arabs and the Jews had better beware any European moves into the Middle East.

    David Ben-Ariel, a Christian-Zionist writer and author of "Beyond Babylon: Europe's Rise and Fall", shares a special focus on the Middle East, reflected in hard-hitting articles that help others improve their understanding of that troubled region.


    Fun and games in these theories.

    But then again, the UNIFIL force is now mostly European, 13,000 of 'em, in Lebanon.

    That fellows write entire books and give lectures on this stuff, simply amazing.

    That the Nazi were limited to Germany, now many would disagree, about that.

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  14. The Pakis gave the Sauds, the done deal, F-16 loadable, amigo.

    Sold the plans to the Irans.

    You're a step or two behind the nuclear curve. Wonder why the Pakistani would not let the US interview the Doc? Despite $10 Billion in payoffs?

    Who are the Wahabbists, those who funded that Paki project?
    Was not US, and it was not domesticly funded, those Pakistani were poor, couldn't even fund a guerilla war against the Russians in Afghanistan, let alone build nuclear reactors and 100 warheads without finacial assistance. They had no oil revenues to speak of.

    Where did the exiled leaders find refuge, England and Saudi Arabia.
    Piece after piece fits the puzzle.

    That's a pretty easy sight to see, if not blinded by the light of lost hope.

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  15. How could there be a world wide mussulman conspiracy, but have the nukes locked away, secure in Pakistan.

    You're either in denial about the warhead proliferation, or there is no real Islamic threat.
    Cannot have both, realisticly.

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  16. Who matched the US contributions, to the Pakistani, dollar for dollar, for that Afghan War?

    Twas the Sauds, $1 Billion per year, towards the end. We left the area when the Russians did.

    The Sauds, they stayed on.
    Supporting Pakistan.

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  17. The future leader of Pakistan, young Mr Bhutto, off to Oxford.

    Mr Sharif, was living in exile, in Saudi Arabia, I do believe.

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  18. "How could there be a world wide mussulman conspiracy,.."

    Well, it reads to me like the US and the Europeans are complicit in all of this. And if I can see this, I'm sure others can as well.

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  19. Cosmic Whirlpool

    Some of those monkeys look pretty good compared to Brittany Spears.

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  20. If the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s 100 Club dinner is any bell weather – Barack Obama will handily win here. When Obama, the dinner’s last speaker, took the stage the crowd surged forward chanting “O-bam-a” and “Fired Up, Ready to Go!” So many people pressed toward the stage that an announcer asked people to “please take their seats for safety concerns.”

    By comparison Hillary was twice booed. The first time was when she said she has always and will continue to work for "change for you. The audience, particularly from Obama supporters (they were waving Obama signs) let out a noise that sounded like a thousand people collectively groaning. The second time came a few minutes later when Clinton said: "The there are two big questions for voters in New Hampshire. One is: who will be ready to lead from day one? The second," and here Clinton was forced to pause as boos from the crowd mixed with cheers from her own supporters. "Is who can we nominate who will go the distance against the Republicans?”

    The dinner held in the Hampshire Dome in Milford is the largest political dinner in New Hampshire history, Republican or Democrat. More than 3,000 people attended.

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