(koko’s full name was actually hanabiko, which means “fireworks child”, which is a reference to her birthday: the fourth of july!)
koko is a gorilla who knows a modified form of american sign language (and can understand spoken english as well) and uses it to communicate with her teacher and caregiver, francine “penny” patterson, and in 1984 she asked for a cat for her birthday! she was allowed to choose a kitten from an abandoned litter — she chose a tiny gray manx kitty and named him all ball. he was taken to see her in the evenings, and then later he would visit on his own. she treated him like the other gorillas treated their babies, and tolerated his biting without any aggression. here’s her and her beloved ball:
later all ball escaped from the zoo and got run over by a car, sadly. koko was very sad about it, but later in 1985 she got two new manx kittens, lipstick and smoky! here’s her playing with lipstick:
and here’s her with smoky!
in 2015 for her birthday, koko picked out two more kittens and named them miss black and miss grey!
koko turns 46 today! she also understands object displacement, has passed the mirror test, has relayed personal memories, can talk about language, has used language deceptively, has used false statements humorously, and has invented new signs to talk about things she doesn’t know the sign for (for example she didn’t know the sign for ring, but combined the signs for “finger” and “bracelet” to convey the same meaning)! these are all things that show a more developed degree of understanding than is usually associated with primates that aren’t humans.
Based on the whims of House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) women attempting to enter the speaker’s lobby have been denied entrance based on their shoulder-baring sleeveless shirts and dresses. According to CBS News, multiple female journalists have reported that they’ve been turned away from t...
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is testing new requirements that would oblige travelers to remove books and other paper goods from their carry-on baggage when going through airport security. The new proposal hasn’t gone into effect, though the TSA, which is an agency of the US Department of Homeland Security, has tested it at airports, including in early May, when screeners at a Kansas City airport “forced passengers to remove all paper from bags, down to notepads,” according to Wall Street Journal;The Sacramento Bee reported that the TSA also tested this policy in Sacramento. The TSA is also considering requiring passengers to remove food from their bags, which the agency says disrupts x-ray readings.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is concerned about the proposed book policy. A senior policy analystfor the ACLU, Jay Stanley, recently outlined the issues at stake on the organization’s blog.
“[B]ooks raise very special privacy issues,” Stanley wrote. “There is a long history of special legal protection for the privacy of one’s reading habits in the United States, not only through numerous Supreme Court and other court decisions, but also through state laws that criminalize the violation of public library reading privacy or require a warrant to obtain book sales, rental, or lending records.”
TSA agents already have the authority to search what they want, and anyone who has been subject to extra screenings will know that notebooks and other books are often flipped through by agents, who sometimes even read their pages. That was the experience of artist Kameelah Janan Rashid, who was removed from a plane on her way to Istanbul in 2015. Yet this new policy, as outlined by Stanley, “would lead to more routine and systematic exposure and, inevitably, greater scrutiny of passengers’ reading materials in the course of the screening process.”
Henry Reichman, professor emeritus of history at California State University at East Bay and chair of the American Association of University Professors’ Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, told Inside Higher Ed that the screening change was troubling:
Academics are unsurprisingly big readers, and since we don’t simply read for pleasure, we often read materials with which we disagree or which may be seen by others as offensive. […] For instance, a scholar studying terrorism and its roots may well be reading — and potentially carrying on a plane — books that others might see as endorsing terrorism. In addition, because scholarship is international, I suspect academics are more likely than others to be reading and carrying material in foreign languages, which might arouse some suspicion. … Finally, academics (as well as editors and journalists) may well be carrying pre-publication materials — drafts for peer review or comment, etc. — and these could raise special concerns.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said in an interview with Fox News Sunday last month that the department “might and likely will” expand the new carry-on policy.
In 2009, a student studying Arabic was detained for over four hours, partly in handcuffs, because of the Arabic-language flashcards he was carrying. The 27-year-old student was also questioned about a book he had with him that was critical of US foreign policy — the book was written by a former aide to President Reagan. The student missed his flight and sued the Justice Department. In 2015, the student won a $25,000 settlement for the incident.
UPDATE, June 28, 12:04pm EST:Inside Higher Ed is reporting that the TSA will abandon their project to screen books separately. An agency spokeswoman told the publication that “the test on book screening was appropriate, but was limited. ‘This test protocol was designed so X-ray operators could have a clearer view of carry-on baggage at checkpoints. Like many tests TSA performs at checkpoints around the country, we collected valuable data but, at this time, are no longer testing or instituting these procedures.'”
Kinda seems like a one sided conversation, doesn’t it? I’m tired of “conversations on race” whenever another innocent, unarmed black person is executed by the police. They’re as perfunctory as they are repetitive.
We need justice, not another hollow conversation that doesn’t change anything and does nothing to prevent the next shooting.
which means that when he was choosing his super scary Dark Lord name, he just mashed up the surnames of the most positive figures in his life. poor sod can’t even evil right
literally a ‘what is your star wars name’ meme
2nd two letters of your mother’s last name Last two letters of your father’s last name
I once tried to explain depression to someone as like if one day you gradually started to lose both your sense of taste and your ability to feel full. And you don’t know why, but now everything you eat tastes like mashed potatoes and nothing you eat is satisfying. You keep eating because you must eat to live, but the effort that it takes to prepare food is taxing and there is no pay off. You just know it will taste like mashed potatoes. You just know you will still be hungry. So you stop bothering with seasonings. Then you stop bothering to use ingredients you used to like. Then you start to wonder what the point of eating is because there is no payoff. You still feel hungry and you’re sick of the taste and you don’t know if you will ever enjoy food again and you don’t know why this is happening.
If someone comes up to you in this scenario and says, “Well have you tried spicing your food? Using different ingredients? Eating foods you used to love?” It isn’t necessarily helpful because the reason you stopped doing all that in the first place is that everything…tasted…like mashed…potatoes.
