Baboons at the Hedgerow
Sitting on the beach Sunday morning, reading Alexandra Wolfe and Gawker Hottie Warren St. John's examination of why people feel compelled to advertise on their bumpers and tote bags where they vacation, we happened upon what we think is our favorite Times paragraph of the summer:
Robert Sapolsky, a professor of neuroscience at Stanford University who has studied primate behavior, said bumper sticker one-upmanship is similar to behavior he has witnessed in baboons. Baboons spend only about three hours of the day foraging for food; the remaining 21 hours of free time, he said, are a kind of behavioral vacuum — not unlike three days in the Hamptons — which baboons pass by annoying and harassing one another to no particular end, creating what scientists call psychosocial stress.
Savor that for just a second: "bumper sticker one-upmanship is similar to behavior he has witnessed in baboons." So that asshole in the enormous Range Rover with a "Montauk: The End" bumper sticker who's been alternately riding your tailgate, cutting you off, and zipping up the shoulder all the way since the Queens border? He's just been labeled a monkey by a Stanford professor. Which is both delightful and makes sense, given that, were you to cut him off, he'd clearly throw his own shit at you.
Granted, he's still going to a house four times the size of yours.
But he's a monkey!
