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So what's the proper etiquette on a first date gift here? Flowers or bananas?
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http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=2434192005
Stalin's half-man, half-ape super-warriors
CHRIS STEPHEN AND ALLAN HALL
THE Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered the creation of Planet of the Apes-style warriors by crossing humans with apes, according to recently uncovered secret documents.
Moscow archives show that in the mid-1920s Russia's top animal breeding scientist, Ilya Ivanov, was ordered to turn his skills from horse and animal work to the quest for a super-warrior.
According to Moscow newspapers, Stalin told the scientist: "I want a new invincible human being, insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat."
In 1926 the Politburo in Moscow passed the request to the Academy of Science with the order to build a "living war machine". The order came at a time when the Soviet Union was embarked on a crusade to turn the world upside down, with social engineering seen as a partner to industrialisation: new cities, architecture, and a new egalitarian society were being created.
The Soviet authorities were struggling to rebuild the Red Army after bruising wars.
And there was intense pressure to find a new labour force, particularly one that would not complain, with Russia about to embark on its first Five-Year Plan for fast-track industrialisation.
Mr Ivanov was highly regarded. He had established his reputation under the Tsar when in 1901 he established the world's first centre for the artificial insemination of racehorses.
Mr Ivanov's ideas were music to the ears of Soviet planners and in 1926 he was dispatched to West Africa with $200,000 to conduct his first experiment in impregnating chimpanzees.
Meanwhile, a centre for the experiments was set up in Georgia - Stalin's birthplace - for the apes to be raised.
Mr Ivanov's experiments, unsurprisingly from what we now know, were a total failure. He returned to the Soviet Union, only to see experiments in Georgia to use monkey sperm in human volunteers similarly fail.
A final attempt to persuade a Cuban heiress to lend some of her monkeys for further experiments reached American ears, with the New York Times reporting on the story, and she dropped the idea amid the uproar.
Mr Ivanov was now in disgrace. His were not the only experiments going wrong: the plan to collectivise farms ended in the 1932 famine in which at least four million died.
For his expensive failure, he was sentenced to five years' jail, which was later commuted to five years' exile in the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan in 1931. A year later he died, reportedly after falling sick while standing on a freezing railway platform.
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Just goes to show: you shouldn't be monkeying around with nature's design...
I can't believe I beat Preacherman to the PUNch there...
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only to see experiments in Georgia to use monkey sperm in human volunteers similarly fail.
Volunteers?
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You know, I think a certain SWAT team might be interested in that research:
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=168509&highlight=SWAT+monkey
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god, schmod, i want my monkeyman!
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god, schmod, i want my monkeyman!
Aw man, you beat me to it.
(obligatory Simpson's quotes are fun)
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only to see experiments in Georgia to use monkey sperm in human volunteers similarly fail.
Volunteers?
Hey, ugly women need love too!
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Reminds me of a joke:
A private genetics agency wants to try to cross a gorilla with a human. Because they want a volunteer, they submit a classified ad that says: Wanted! A human Male to impregnate a female gorilla. $5000!!
Weeks pass, but no one answers the ad. the scientists are getting worried, when, one day, a redneck knocks on the door. "Is this where y'all are knockin' up a monkey?" The scientists urge him inside. The redneck says, "Well, I never hearda such a thing, but I'd like to give it a try". The scientists are ecstatic, but the redneck says, "But I got three conditions. First, I don't want my family to ever find out". The scientists quickly agree that it will be entirely confidential. "Second, the children have to be baptized". The scientists look at each other for a moment, and concede that it certainly won't affect the experiment, and they agree to that, too.
"And finally", the redneck says, "I'm gonna have to pay the $5000 in installments."
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only to see experiments in Georgia to use monkey sperm in human volunteers similarly fail.
Hey...Jimmy Carter became president, so the experiments couldn't have failed altogether...
greg
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Damn you Antibubba! Another keyboard bites the dust.....
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Tolkien's Uruk-Hai come to mind.
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Silly communists. I guess they didn't know that apes and humans have different numbers of chromosome pairs and cannot interbreed, or even evolve from one or the other either for that matter.