Free Republic

Peter Tork, a member of the massively popular ’60s band the Monkees, has died. The Washington Post reports that Anne Thorkelson, Tork’s sister, has confirmed news of Tork’s death, though she declined to say how he died. Tork was 77. Tork, born Peter Thorkelson, was born in Washington, DC, and he grew up largely in Connecticut. After college, he moved to New York and joined the thriving Greenwich Village folk scene. Tork auditioned for The Monkees, a sitcom about a band of four up-and-coming musicians, after his friend Stephen Stills suggested him for the job. Tork, the oldest member of...

Keith Chen's Monkey Research Adam Smith, the founder of classical economics, was certain that humankind's knack for monetary exchange belonged to humankind alone. ''Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog,'' he wrote. ''Nobody ever saw one animal by its gestures and natural cries signify to another, this is mine, that yours; I am willing to give this for that.'' But in a clean and spacious laboratory at Yale-New Haven Hospital, seven capuchin monkeys have been taught to use money, and a comparison of capuchin behavior and human behavior...