Adam Lindsay

Our baboons have been issued with Anti Soial Baboon Orders after discovering a technique to open car roofboxes and have been making the most of the extra "playthings" they can find inside them.

To demonstrate this behaviour staff at the park sent through a car with a roof box that they had filled themselves the result of which can be seen in the picture.

Visitors to the park are advised not to go through the baboon section but take the car friendly route if their car is fitted with a roofbox

Originally found via http://failblog.org, but since it hit so close to home, I had to look closer.

I get daily "deal" emails from a local trade supplier. 80% are irrelevant, 10% are tempting, and 10% are things like this. There's a market for this?

Quickbed TM with Built-In 4D Pump & MP3 Plug-In

Requires 4 x D batteries (not included)

An inflatable bed with audio in. Awesome.

We live today in a world where most of the really important developments in everything from math and physics and astronomy to public policy and psychology and classical music are so extremely abstract and technically complex and context-dependent that it’s next to impossible for the ordinary citizen to feel that they (the developments) have much relevance to her actual life.… It might be that one of the really significant problems of today’s culture involves finding ways for educated people to talk meaningfully with one another across the divides of radical specialization. That sounds a bit gooey, but I think there’s some truth to it. And it’s not just the polymer chemist talking to the semiotician, but people with special expertise acquiring the ability to talk meaningfully to us, meaning ordinary schmoes. Practical examples: Think of the thrill of finding a smart, competent IT technician who can also explain what she’s doing in such a way that you feel like you understand what went wrong with your computer and how you might even fix the problem yourself if it comes up again. Or an oncologist who can communicate clearly and humanly with you and your wife about what the available treatments for her stage-two neoplasm are, and about how the different treatments actually work, and exactly what the plusses and minuses of each one are. If you’re like me, you practically drop and hug the ankles of technical specialists like this, when you find them. As of now, of course, they’re rare. What they have is a particular kind of genius that’s not really part of their specific area of expertise as such areas are usually defined and taught. There’s not really even a good univocal word for this kind of genius—which might be significant. Maybe there should be a word; maybe being able to communicate with people outside one’s area of expertise should be taught, and talked about, and considered as a requirement for genuine expertise.…