Word: becking
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...Charles Beck Dover Air Force Base...
...always Jackie Presser's ambition to be president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, even though he had watched several bosses stumble trying to keep both the Government and the gangsters at bay. Two Teamsters' presidents, Dave Beck and Jimmy Hoffa, went to prison on federal charges of corruption. After his release, Hoffa vanished, presumably rubbed out by the Mob. A third, Roy Williams, resigned the week before last in exchange for remaining free on bail while he appeals his bribery-conspiracy conviction. "That chair isn't a throne," Presser once remarked. "It's an electric...
Animal Behaviorist Benjamin Beck of the University of Illinois at Chicago calls attention to still another human delusion, the species bias. Says he jokingly: "On tests for giraffes, where intelligence might be equated with neck length, humans test out below horses and ostriches...
Despite the difficulties, scientists have been trying to devise ways of evaluating animal intelligence. So far, none of them works perfectly. One theory holds that the bigger the brain size in proportion to the body and the more creased the cerebrum portion, the brighter the animal. But, notes Beck, "the human cerebral cortex occupies no greater a proportion in the human brain than in any other primate...
...tools by animals as a signal of intelligence. Chimpanzees, for example, get at termites by jabbing their nests with twigs. The assassin bug of South America, also a termite fancier, approaches its prey by gluing nest material on its back to serve as camouflage. But, says Beck, the bug's behavior is probably "innate or genetically prewired." Another scientific index is the ability of animals to transmit information through so-called language behavior. Bees, foraging for pollen, return to the hive and perform an intricate figure-eight dance to map the route for other bees. Biologist James Gould...