Always Be Beeping

Sorry, Dad. I couldn't think of a nice way to say "America Stinks!"

This was prompted by me and my boyfriend discussing handedness and being able to tell apart left and right. And me, being ambidextrous, was baffled by how do people with an obligate dominant hand mix up which side is the one with their Writing Hand and which one isn't?? And my boyfriend pointed out that I go "turn left - no I mean right" so much when giving directions that I have lost my navigator privileges.

I argued that mixing up the words isn't the same thing as mixing up the directions. Like if your mom accidentally called you the dog's name doesn't mean that she literally can't tell you apart from the dog. And he looked at me like this

helping elderly people: one dollar

Chimps are much admired for their tool use and for their problem-solving relationship with things as they find them...the orang is, let us say, not so replete with enterprise. Give an orangutan the hexagonal peg and the several shapes of hole, and then hide behind the two-way mirror and watch how he engages with the problem.

And watch and watch and watch--because he does not engage with the problem. He uses the peg to scratch his back, has a look-see at his right wrist, makes a half-hearted and soon abandoned attempt to use his fur as a macramé project, stares dreamily out the window if there is one and at nothing in particular if not, and the sun begins to set. (The sun will also set if you are observing a chimp, but the chimp is more amusing, so you are less likely to mark the moment in your notes. An orang observer has plenty of time to be a student of the vanities of sunset.)

You watch, and the orang dreams...when casually and as if thinking of something else, the orang slips the hexagonal peg into the hexagonal hole. And continues staring off dreamily."