Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Who Shocked the Monkey?

Yes indeed, it's Tuesday, and I'm happy to report that monkeys — yes, monkeys! — are finally getting their due. This from AP via Drudge:
MESA, Ariz. - The Mesa Police Department is looking to add some primal instinct to its SWAT team. And to do that, it's looking to a monkey.

"Everybody laughs about it until they really start thinking about it," said Mesa Officer Sean Truelove, who builds and operates tactical robots for the suburban Phoenix SWAT team. "It would change the way we do business."

Truelove is spearheading the department's request to purchase and train a capuchin monkey, considered the second smartest primate to the chimpanzee. The department is seeking about $100,000 in federal grant money to put the idea to use in Mesa SWAT operations.
[...]
Weighing only 3 to 8 pounds with tiny humanlike hands and puzzle-solving skills, Truelove said it could unlock doors, search buildings and find suicide victims on command. Dressed in a Kevlar vest, video camera and two-way radio, the small monkey would be able to get into places no officer or robot could go.
I'm liking this a lot! As you know, I've gone on record saying that Michael Jackson's chimp, Bubbles, could blow the lid off the California trial. Koko the gorilla is checking out breasts; Peter Jackson is remaking King Kong...believe me, primate fever has tipped.

My question is whether, in addition to the itsy-bitsy Kevlar vest, are we talking a North American Arms mini-revolver, or do we need to speak to Kel-Tec to put together a good semiauto, maybe the same size as the Kel-tec .32 but in, say, 5.7 X 28? That would be One Bad Monkey!

Meanwhile, for those of you worrying about what the future holds in weaponry, here's a long analysis of the weapons used on the hit television series Battlestar Galactica. Apparently, in the far distant future, space marines will use all the leftover MP-5s discarded by 21st Century police special teamms in their rush to M-4 5.56 carbines. Of course, over on Stargate SG-1 they're hosing them down with FNH P90s. I always kind of liked Outland, the Sean Connery B-movie version of High Noon in space, where James Bond cranked up a sawed-off pump shotgun. If I was going to do a space movie, I'd only use SASS-authorized pre-1900 weaponry. Be kinda cool, wouldn't it?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

O.K.
I guess this will be the environmentally friendly alternative to the flashbang grenade. They teach the little monkey to crap in its hand and throw it at people like the ones in the zoo do. Then they send him in, he throws his crap all over the bad guys and screeches. The bad guys are temporarily rused by this and his screech is the team's entry signal?

Anonymous said...

The Firefly series, available on DVD, beat you to that idea.

Michael Bane said...

I knew I shoulda watched FIREFLY, since Joss Whedon is clearly one of the Chosen!

Anonymous said...

Yes!! Firefly, a Sci Fi series for folks with more than double digit IQ's.

Badly mishandled by Fox...but they have just completed filming a movie that will be out next year titled Serenity.

My favorite episode is the gunfight at the Whorehouse where the good guy with a wheelgun confronts the BG with some supermodern laser thingy, and the BG's batteries go dead!!!