This is what happens when you've lost yourself to the cult worship of a personality. All the nasty reviews of Britney's trainwreck of a performance at the 2007 MTV VMA awards is too much for this Britney fanboy (or fangirl?).
Alex the African Gray Parrot, a subject for study at Brandeis University, has died at the age of 31, seemingly of natural causes.
This particularly intelligent gray parrot has been trained when presented with several objects to identify, distinguish and speak the object's color, shape, and material. He can also correctly tell which object is bigger or smaller than the other. Moreover he's been able to count items up to 6, and what's even more remarkable, may have some notions of the concept of zero.
As an aside, I love hearing stories about animals that display signs of the capability for reasoning. I like to think that mankind's role on this planet is like that of a caretaker, more like a gentle big brother and less like a domineering overlord. My thinking is that some people may feel justified in treating them as mere objects for consumption or exploitation, if all creatures were dumb or unthinking brutes. However, if some species show some evidence of logical reason, I would hope that we humans may feel more of a kinship towards them, and perhaps in the future we may become better guardians of their fate (and ours). Wouldn't that be nice?
Back to Alex. It is true, that being called a birdbrain has never been a compliment on one's intellect. However the person who came up with that epithet presumably has never met Alex the parrot.
Link: NYTimes
This has been out for a while but I came across this commercial only recently.
At first I thought this guy was a total jerk and felt very little sympathy towards his situation if at all. However the ad reveals his true identity in the last 10 seconds, and at that time I instantly and completely understood his character. It's a brilliant ad.
2 minutes is a long running time for an advert, but I don't think you could have sufficiently told the story and built up the emotional volume in less time.
What has this got to do with Cadbury's milk chocolate?
I don't really care. All I need to know is that there's a gorilla hitting the drum solo from one of my all-time favorite songs.
Really good CG, I must say.
Still not gonna get me to buy Cadbury's chocolate bar though. I don't like milk chocolate.
