[Leica] Re: Chimps and gorillas

[mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)]

On 12/11/06 9:40 PM, "Lawrence Zeitlin" <lrzeitlin@optonline.net> typed:

> 
> On Dec 11, 2006, at 7:26 PM, lug-request@leica-users.org wrote:
> 
>> Koko the gorilla (the one who knows American Sign Language) had an
>> Olympus OM.
>> http://www.koko.org/news/Events/event_051018_ASME_Award.html
>> 
>> --Peter
>> 
>> Larry Z. wrote:
>>>  The chimps don't stand a chance. We've got tanks, guns, bombs,
>> communication systems, aircraft, etc. What do the chimps have?
>> Nothing!
>> We split from the chimps a long time ago on the evolutionary tree,
>> there
>> is no point in rejoining them. All of this explains why we have
>> Leicas,
>> and the chimps don't have any cameras!
>> 
> 
> 
> I didn't write it. Larry K did. We better start numbering the Larrys
> and the Jims on the LUG.
> 
> But I have more than a little familiarity with chimps that can
> communicate. My graduate school classmate, Al Gardiner, with his wife
> Trixie, were the first people to teach a chimp sign language. Al
> trained as an Experimental Psychologist. He took job at the Univ. of
> Nevada and married Trixie. She was a sign language teacher for the
> deaf. Gardiner reached the conclusion that the reason chimps could
> not talk was that their throats and larynx could not make speech
> sounds but they had more than enough hand dexterity to communicate in
> sign language. He and Trixie adopted a newborn chimp, Washoe, and
> raised it in the same home as their baby child. They treated both
> alike using speech and signing to talk to the kids. Washoe learned to
> sign at about the same rate as the child learned speech and excelled
> the child in physical skills. When I visited them both "children"
> played together just like normal kids except that the chimp seemed to
> be the alpha male. Indeed, that was why the Gardiners terminated the
> experiment. Their own child was getting an inferiority complex. The
> Gardiners determined that it was not until the human child began to
> use language at the age of two, that its development surged ahead.
> Trixie died about a dozen years ago but Al is still around.
> 
> I don't know if Washoe ever used a camera but Al had a Leica.
> 
> Larry Z
> 

To me phenomenally important research.
To the background music of Richard Strauss Also sprach Zarathustra
    which appealed to a narrow Nietzsche market.

But the research your roommates did appealed globally like few research ever
did before. 


I'd like to see this:
Why Dogs Smile and Chimpanzees Cry (1999)
Starring: Sigourney Weaver Director: Carol L. Fleisher

Really.
I understand you can watch DVDs on your laptop.
And they don't overheat?
:)


Mark Rabiner
New York, NY
40?47'59.79"N   
73?57'32.37"W

http://rabinergroup.com/