Object lesson, the Four Monkeys

[red750]

You start with a cage containing four monkeys and inside the cage you hang a banana on a string, and then you place a set of stairs under the banana.  Before long a monkey will go to the stairs and climb toward the banana.

 

You then spray ALL the monkeys with cold water.  After a while, another
monkey makes an attempt.  As soon as he touches the stairs, you spray ALL the monkeys with cold water.

 

Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

 

Now, put away the cold water.  Remove one monkey from the cage and replace
it with a new monkey. 

 

The new monkey sees the banana and attempts to climb the stairs.  To his shock, ALL of the other monkeys beat the crap out of him.  After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs he will be assaulted.

 

Next, remove another of the original four monkeys, replacing it with a new
monkey.  The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked.  The previous
newcomer takes part in the punishment - with enthusiasm - because he is now part of the "team."

 

Then, replace a third original monkey with a new monkey, followed by the
fourth.  Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked.

Now, the monkeys that are beating him up have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs.

 

Neither do they know why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey. Having replaced all of the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys will have ever been sprayed with cold water.

 

Nevertheless, not one of the monkeys will try to climb the stairway for the Banana.

Why, you ask?  Because in their minds, that is the way it has always been !

 

This is how today's House of Reps and the Senate operates, and this is why from time
to time, ALL of the monkeys need to be replaced at the same time.

[old man emu]

Another way of expressing that idea is Bonhoeffer's Theory of Stupidity.

 

[nomadpete]

Well that was a surprise. I was expecting a funny.

Thanks OME. Good one.

Now, if only we can develop a vaccine against stupidity.

[old man emu]

Just now, nomadpete said:

I was expecting a funny.

I do get seriarse sometimes.

[Yenn]

Does that mean you use silken toilet paper?

[old man emu]

19 hours ago, Yenn said:

Does that mean you use silken toilet paper?

No, I get mucked about that sheila on my iPhone - Siri

[nomadpete]

Y'know, the really great thing about Siri (& other brands of her)........

She's the only nagging female voice I can silence with a gentle touch of my finger.

[spacesailor]

Depends Were you put That finger !.

Could result in a slap !,

AND

Weeks of silence, You goose.

LoL

spacesailor

[Marty_d]

Spacey, you're a breath of fresh air.

[old man emu]

Spacey can't spell, but I'd hate to have a spell without his contributions.

[facthunter]

Don't flatter him . It only encourages him,  He gets more out of that Hummelbird than most who FLEW them.  Nev

[willedoo]

8 hours ago, nomadpete said:

Y'know, the really great thing about Siri (& other brands of her)........

She's the only nagging female voice I can silence with a gentle touch of my finger.

Remember Bitching Betty. Don't know if it's operational yet but I read some time back that the new version will get louder and more aggressive if you ignore her warnings. A lot of married men would be familiar with that in real life.

 

Rita, Russia's Bitching Betty is an interesting lady. Very soft voiced and ladylike. The problem there is that the language has words with a lot of syllables and often many more words than English to say the same thing. So by the time you listen to everything Rita has to say, you've probably already gone splat. Some Yanks call her Nagging Nadia but in her country she's Rita. Comes from the device designation RI-65. RI is an acronym for two words translating roughly as voice informer.

 

In Russian the names of the alphabet letters are the phonetic pronunciation of them. For example, we call 'A' ay as it's name. Russians call A 'ahh' or 'are' as in the long A pronunciation, B is buh or ber, D is duh, M is mer etc.. The letter 'I' is pronounced eye in English, ee in Russian. R is pronounced same as English. So RI is pronounced Ree. They tacked TA on the end to make it Rita and that's how she got her name.

 

The Ruskis pronounce their acronyms as a word, not separate letters. In the West, we tend to speak our acronym designations as separate letters. So a Sukhoi aircraft like the Su-27 we will speak the S and u as separate letters. You hear people pronounce it as Ess You -27 which is not right. It's Su pronounced one word as in 'sue'. In a designation, lower case means it's the second letter of one word (as in the u in Su, ..Sukhoi). If the designation acronym represents two words, they are all capitals (as in Rita's case, RI-65). That's why the middle letter in MiG is lower case. It's the second letter of Mikoyan and the G is for the co-designer Gurevich. By adding Mikoyan's 'i' they can pronounce it 'meeg' instead of 'mer-ger', much nicer.

 

Apologies for thread drift; it's been a slow day.

[spacesailor]

It was lnteresting! .

spacesailor

[facthunter]

Quite a few lingos use Leetle and heem. Simpson says duh.  Nev