Koko pops

News that one of the most intriguing workplace disputes of our age has reached a settlement. Two women employed as keepers of Koko, the gorilla famous for being supposedly able to communicate by sign language, complained that they had been pressured to comply with a request from Koko to see their breasts. (Apparently, Koko hadn't even offered to buy them a drink first.) It takes the edge off, somewhat, to learn that Koko is in fact a female, but I still think this episode will probably be dredged up if Koko ever becomes a Republican nominee for the Supreme Court.

Another Koko lawsuit (same link) concerns a teacher who had been hired to design a Koko-related curriculum for schools, but who ended up being employed as a janitor. Let me guess: 'Koko teaches numbers', 'Koko teaches global warming', etc. (Maybe Koko, like Tookie Williams, will now redeem herself by dictating children's books about inappropriate workplace behaviour). Any so-called teacher willing to be involved with such a project deserves to work as a janitor.

Somebody somewhere is probably doing psych research into the whole lefty/animal thing. Why do they (lefties, that is) get so excited about supposed links between humans and animals? Koko was quite a star in her day: nowadays she'd be lucky to get a gig on Celebrity Squares. The modern version of this meme is the 'discovery' that humans and chimps share 97 percent of their DNA. So what? Those chimps, lovable though they are, don't seem to be doing a whole lot with that 97 percent.