The Ewok is also a fictional creature portrayed for the sake of a film by a short human in a suit. What is your point?

elephants and cows recognize their dead. they are more human than chimps.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/articl…

Scientific American actually ran something on this question a while ago.
On the chimps I mean, not

If the point in THIS article is that humans understand death and chimps don't, then I think you're both underestimating chimps and overestimating us.

Remembering our troops...by comparing them to Ewoks.

It always seemed to me that chimps and other higher intelligent animals are in a denial stage like humans can be after death.

Ewoks on the other hand, you could run them through the woodchipper at the end of Fargo and I would giggle.

@4 Wow. Think you do a disservice to our troops for starting an argument in your own mind, then bothering to share it.

Bravo. This is a masterful clusterfuck conflating truths and fictions that leave one with no reasonable or unreasonable response. Charles Mudede's On The Road is a slick mix of Charles Kuralt's and Jack Kerouac's.

Normally I would defend the people of rural America...however, this episode of "What Would You Do?" should make us all take account of just how little some social attitudes have changed.

For those who've never watched the show it's a sort of social Candid Camera. They set up moral dilemmas and then film people's response. Normally it's a person in distress, or someone stealing...they see if people intervene.

In this episode they have a father meeting a daughter (white) and her new black boyfriend (it's near the middle-end part of the show).

http://abc.go.com/watch/what-would-you-d…

Pretty chilling.

Oh yeah, right before that they have a son telling his father for the first time he's gay.

Surprisingly the reactions of the people to the coming out of the gay son, was far far less virulent than the reactions of a black boyfriend. One racist old lady called the boyfriend "that" -- as in an inanimate object!!

Truly horrifying to see.

@9 Yeah, I think Charles has the purple screamer.

wat?

The only good Ewok is a dead Ewok.

I do enjoy a classic Mudede post and this has so much going for it.

What's "dead?"

Chimpanzees and gorillas have a pretty damn good understanding of death. But if you find someone you care for lying motionless and unresponsive, you try and wake them, right? Because there's always that hope that they're only knocked out or sleeping, right?

Crying over the dead is selfish, pity-partying. It takes a certain intelligence to mourn and grieve, because it makes one's mind travel to times that were, or could have been.

Is someone old and demented that can't remember that their spouse is gone less than human? Less human than an ewok but more human than a chimp?

Man naked on the side of the freeway chewing on another motorists face- ewok, chimp or human? Or mudede?

It may simply be that the chimp mother prefers to err on the side of thinking that her baby is just resting. After all, if she abandons a sick/injured baby that could have recovered because she mistook it for dead, she's out a baby. Chimp mothers will abandon their dead babies when they haven't moved in weeks and have gotten all stinky. because that's when you know for sure that it's dead.

Ewoks are human? They're people? Really?

OK. I'll buy that. You make a good point.

But look there was Ewok on sale at Safeway and I still have almost a pound in my fridge. I can't afford to throw that out. I SWEAR I won't buy any more but we have to eat something for dinner tomorrow you know what I'm saying? I have two little Cthulhu spawn to feed.

Chimp, on the other hand...

Chuck,

When you are not posting but conversing with an actual person, and going on like you do, and that person interrupts you to ask, "Dude, what the fuck are you talking about?", what do you tell them?

The keyboard thing makes no sense. It's not computing with me and is ruining my morning.

sigh. I thought this had real promise. But I was wrong

Fucking ewoks. In the original Return of the Jedi script, the primitive inhabitants of Endor were going to be wookies, which would've been so much cooler. Can you imagine the whole tribe of Chewbacca's extended family kicking some Imperial Ass?

But George F. Lucas switched it to the cute 'wuvable' ewoks to appeal to the 7-yr old crowd. And probably to sweeten the deal with Burger King and their ROTJ Collector Edition Glass Cup Set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/paxtonholle…

I'm not sure how they let Jabba slip past the design commitee, though.