(IMPORTANT NOTE ADDED IN PROOF! Chimps are apes, not monkeys. Calling a chimp a monkey is a racist slur in both directions, as in "hate crime" and exuberant Federal indictment for same.)
http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/99/07/25/stifgnusa03006.html?1124027 (all on one line) educates us that
Scientists teach chimpanzee to speak English
Researchers have for the first time taught apes how to
speak. Two animals, a pygmy chimp and an orang-utan,
have been able to hold conversations with humans.
The chimp, called Panbanisha, has a vocabulary of 3000
words and talks through a computer that produces a
synthetic voice as she presses symbols on a keyboard.
She now speaks constantly, constructing sentences
ranging from, "Please can I have an iced coffee" to
discussing videos she has watched with the scientists
who look after her at Georgia State University's
language research centre in Atlanta.
Big Don in news:rec.org.mensa asks, "When will the first chimp win a Nobel Prize?"
Let us be rational and real world about this. The pygmy chimp in question, more properly a bonobo, is only about two-years old. Adult chimps are immensely strong, dangerous, and sourly intolerant of researchers mucking about. Putting this in perspective, how much brainpower can one expect from a human in kindergarten (certainly in these diversity-enriched times)? A chimp has three shots at a Nobel Prize:
Post-menopausal Jane Goodall was increasingly axillarily humid about scoring real big - bigger than Robot Al Gore, bigger than Dr. Ruth, bigger than South African Reverend Desmond Tutu blatantly strutting his stuff (and quietly submitting expense chits for reimbursement). I'm talking a complete professional makeover by Hillary Ramrod Clinton's (US Secretary of State Clitler's) private staff, a UN atrocities speech, a US joint session of Congress address, Oprah, even Letterman! Add a belated Nobel Peace Prize for being a Liberal Socialist wanker. Personal tax-exempt foundation, speaking engagements lubricated with bounteous emoluments, and interminable tabloid crap are all peeking over the horizon.
CHRIST THE REDEEMER RETURNS AS A CHIMP! You know the One True Church is going to jump on this, then the televangelists but at double the pace and more. Do you fancy chimps with big hair wearing polyester, or pairs of chimps knocking on your front door Saturday mornings bearing the eternal inerrant truth of a hairy god? (The baptism thingie will not go down well as chimps are pathologically afraid of drowning. Test of faith!) No more human females with silky smooth armpits - it's discriminatory and racist, er, specious - that is to say, speciesist!
Amway and Avon multilevel marketing distributorships for chimps, chimp Congresscritters, female lesbian crippled chimp hire quotas in the workplace... and Rep. (Mass.) Barney Frank a proud member of the North American Man Chimp Love Association (NAMCLA).
Chimp counselors, chimp therapists, chimp social workers. Chimps demanding non-negotiable reparations for 6000 years of chimp oppression, experimentation on chimps, chimp exploitation in zoos and circuses, and especially for Ronald Reagan's Breakfast for Bonzo. There's a whole lot of Darkies whose ancestors' sins include THE CONSUMPTION OF CHIMPS AS FOOD. Make Al Sharpton into chimp haggis and start settling the score.
Let us not neglect the real tragedy. (Heuristic hermeneutics of social deconstruction here!) Usenet arguments will masticate comparisons between apes' and Blacks' IQ scores. Ape rapport is close to the point where valid IQ evaluation could be normalized, correlated to eliminate heteroskedasticity, and administered. (One notes chimps communicate in reasonably grammatical English as opposed to, say, Ebonics.) It will be Jews, Orientals, and East Indians; white kids, brown kids; then chimps, then Darkies in the public schools. No matter how you slice it, it is still the White Man's Burden riding in the back of the bus.
A spokesman for the centre said: "Over time our
opinions of apes could change and one day we may
have to extend them human rights."
Welfare, Medicare, Social Security; Federally subsidized Internet access and Web pages, special software to protect chimp children from monkeyshines; chimp community leaders, rights advocates, pro bono legal representation; law school and medical school affirmative action (UC/Berkeley take note - Boalt Hall social activism to be severely tested). All bottom echelon Federal and State offices to be chimp-staffed - court clerks, DMV employees, meter maids, Welfare offices; chimp interns at the White House.
"Chimp dot com IPO wows Wall Street." La Cosa Chimpa. Chimp hookers, pimps, drug pushers. "Chimp is Beautiful." Chimp OG homeboys, chimp night basketball. The National Chimp Crisis.
"Mom, Dad, meet my new boyfriend!"