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News & ArtsMonday, January 30, 2012
Animals Gingrich and Chimpanzee Politics
Posted by Charles Mudede on Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 8:38 AM
From a recent Scientific American interview with the famous Dutch American primatologist Frans de Waal:
However, the ape Gingrich should take in an interest in is not the chimp but the gorilla. A dominant silverback male maintains and protects a harem of three to six females. A male chimp's situation is multi-partner, which is much too liberal for Gingrich. Gorillas are the Republicans of the jungle.
Johnson: Newt Gingrich, now a Republican candidate for President, passed your book Chimpanzee Politics to one of his aides. He apparently saw it as a treatise on human nature.De Waal: Yes, of course Chimpanzee Politics is not about Social Darwinism or about evolutionary processes. It is really about political processes and I can see how Gingrich got carried away by that. Here in Georgia we have two politicians who are very prominent. One is Newt Gingrich and the other is Jimmy Carter. I visited Carter once and it turned out that he had read my book Peacemaking Among Primates. I always felt afterwards that they should have swapped books. Newt Gingrich should have read Peacemaking Among Primates and Jimmy Carter should have read Chimpanzee Politics. They both would have gotten more out of it.
1
yeah, except chimpanzees are known to eat meat and engage in warfare with other chimp groups, while gorillas are vegetarian peaceniks. Plus Gingrich was fucking Callista when he was still married, so he had a multi-partner situation himself.
4
I expect more from Scientific American.
Compound sentences demand commas with their conjunctions, people.
Compound sentences demand commas with their conjunctions, people.
5
Good Morning Charles,
I know you took a dig at Gingrich but I don't quite get what you said. Both stiuations are multi-partnered. And while Gingrich may be an ape does that make Carter a chimp?
De Waal has to undertstand that many books are like statistics and are subject to interpretations by their readers. He should be grateful that Gingrich recommends De Waal's book.
I know you took a dig at Gingrich but I don't quite get what you said. Both stiuations are multi-partnered. And while Gingrich may be an ape does that make Carter a chimp?
De Waal has to undertstand that many books are like statistics and are subject to interpretations by their readers. He should be grateful that Gingrich recommends De Waal's book.
7
Gingrich has a special interest in exotic animals. It's one of the few things that can be said in his favor. But he pretty much likes them in zoos where he can see them up close; like most conservatives, he does not support policies that improve their ability to survive in the wild.
9
An interesting note on the Newt:
Back in 1995, it was Newt Gingrich's Contract On America congress which passed that Private Securities Litigation Reform Act which made it much more difficult to sue companies for securities' fraud.
Jump forward to 2002, and S&P (Standard & Poor rating agency) refuses to rate mortgage securities in Georgia and New Jersey (and later threatens several more states for the OCC), because those two states had passed anti-predatory lending laws, and thusly dries up their housing credit.
Subsequently, their state legislatures gutted the bills, and S&P resumed rating their bonds.
Note what has been going on with S&P rating sovereign debt over in Europe and here in America! Beginning to note a pattern, one hopes.......?
And who owns the S&P? The very same majority shareholders who own JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, BankofAmerica (and McGraw-Hill, their owner of record).
Surprise....surprise....!!!
Back in 1995, it was Newt Gingrich's Contract On America congress which passed that Private Securities Litigation Reform Act which made it much more difficult to sue companies for securities' fraud.
Jump forward to 2002, and S&P (Standard & Poor rating agency) refuses to rate mortgage securities in Georgia and New Jersey (and later threatens several more states for the OCC), because those two states had passed anti-predatory lending laws, and thusly dries up their housing credit.
Subsequently, their state legislatures gutted the bills, and S&P resumed rating their bonds.
Note what has been going on with S&P rating sovereign debt over in Europe and here in America! Beginning to note a pattern, one hopes.......?
And who owns the S&P? The very same majority shareholders who own JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, BankofAmerica (and McGraw-Hill, their owner of record).
Surprise....surprise....!!!
10
I don't imagine the male gorilla has an easy time defending his harem. He surely has to watch his back. Maybe that's why his back is marked.
12
I'm pretty sure that Chimpanzee Politics is the only (assigned) book I read as an undergraduate from cover to cover.
To be fair, I was a chem major. But seriously...it's an excellent book.
To be fair, I was a chem major. But seriously...it's an excellent book.
13
@12 - What? You didn't like Carey's Fifth Edition Organic Chemistry textbook? I couldn't put that thing down! I re-read Chapter Fourteen: Organometallic Compounds at least monthly!
14
I was always a fan of Gorillas in the Mist.
@13: "Organic Chemistry" by Solomons & Fryhle, 9th edition, on my shelf right in front of me. Pulled it off the shelf a day or two back for a little light reading on macromolecule chemistry.
@13: "Organic Chemistry" by Solomons & Fryhle, 9th edition, on my shelf right in front of me. Pulled it off the shelf a day or two back for a little light reading on macromolecule chemistry.
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