Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is sad this morning. He is, in fact, doubly sad.

First, his beloved Green Bay Packers just colapsed yesterday night on the Frozen Tundra of Lambeau Field. By the middle of the third quarter (around the time Smallholder called your Maximum Leader to discuss the game) your Maximum Leader was beginning to think that the Packers were beginning to unravel. By the middle of the fourth quarter your Maximum Leader was beginning to believe that the Giants were going to win. He had already started to think to himself that “there is always next year.”

Then the game went to overtime. When the Packers won the toss and elected to receive your Maximum Leader was elated. He foresaw another glorious victory akin to the one on the Monday night game earlier this year. (You remember the one when Farve threw the 60+ yard pass to win the game on the first play of OT vs Denver.) His hopes were raised…

Then Farve threw the interception.

Then the Giants kicked that damned field goal.

It was very sad.

But at least there is next year…

Secondly, Suzanne Pleshette, of Newhart fame, died yesterday at age 70. She died, apparently, of complications resulting from lung cancer. While your Maximum Leader is in his late 30s (near 40) he does fondly remember the Newhart show from re-runs. What does it say about a young kid that he liked Bob Newhart over the other comedies on TV? Anyhoo… Your Maximum Leader liked Newhart and Pleshette. May she rest in peace.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader wonders if you have wondered where he has been this week? Off doing villainous stuff? Sitting on his arse doing nothing? The victim of a zombie attack?

Well, it is none of those things. Your Maximum Leader has a pinched nerve in, of all places, his elbow. He’s been advised to keep his typing to a minimum for a while and let it recover some. Thus, he’s not been posting.

He has been reading blogs (and watching lots and lots of hockey on TV - surprisingly). From Phoenix we have a little candidate calculator. It is fun and interesting tool to pick a candidate (or now-non-candidate) to root for - if you happen to be undecided. According to this quiz your Maximum Leader should have supported Sam Brownback for President. Other candidates who were good matches were: Fred Thompson and Tom Tancredo.

Humm… Your Maximum Leader has said he liked Thompson - which he does. He has never thought (ever) of supporting Sam Brownback (even if he was still in the race). Your Maximum Leader stands by his assertion earlier that Thompson is toasted in this election. He will admit that if Thompson pulls off an upset in South Carolina, or even finishes second in SC, then Thompson will perservere for a while - perhaps through March. But he doesn’t see Thompson catching on. In a way your Maximum Leader hopes he is wrong. But that is unlikely.

You know who else is toasted in this election? Rudy. Your Maximum Leader thinks you can already stick a fork in him - so done is he. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t see, with the news cycle being what it is, how Rudy can win in Florida and then pick up momentum on Super Tuesday and wrap up the nomination. It is just too implausible.

Your Maximum Leader thinks that this race is really going to boil down to McCain and Romney.

Carry on.

The worst part of the zombie apocalypse was the fatigue.

It wasn’t hard to pot the hooting inhuman undead as they limped bloodshod up the farm lane.

But they came at irregular intervals, mandating constant vigilance. How could a man sleep?

Plus, the cow still needed milking.

He shouldered his rifle and climbed down from the barn cupola-come-sniper’s nest.

It was odd that Bonnie didn’t issue her welcoming moo.

Entering the stall, he saw why.

Dismembered bovine. Empty skull. Intestine-festooned manger.

It came from behind: Baaaaaas surging past bitter cuds and froth-corrupted lips.

Zombie sheep.

Shit.

Brendon Travers was proved right after all. His neighbors joked him mercilessly about the “bomb shelter” he built. Now who was laughing?

Brendon settled into his 10×20 concrete bunker (which was buried 5 feet underground). The only door was secured. The air filters were working. His generator was good for weeks.

The worldwide zombie apocalypse wouldn’t claim him.

He decided to treat himself to his favorite snack, microwave popcorn. He had boxes of it piled around. He got a pack and went to cook it. But he couldn’t.

He’d forgotten to put the microwave in the shelter.

Shit.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has been thinking about a post about the primaries and what is going on in the US Presidential race. All in all it is quite interesting, and fluid. The most amazing aspect of it is just how myopic the media is being in covering the races. Your Maximum Leader hasn’t heard any of the reporters or talking heads trying to take a look at the proverbial big picture. Perhaps it is worth taking a look at the forest…

The day after (or more accuarately the night of) the Iowa caucuses it seemed as though Barack Obama was now annoited on the Democratic side and Mike Huckabee was going to march at the head of a Christian army to take the Republican nomination (and presumably then work on America herself) back for Christ. Mitt Romney was toasted. Rudy Guiliani was not even a blip on the radar.

Now the day after New Hampshire the stories have changed. McCain is solidering on and the “front runner” on the Republican side. Hillary is back in the driver seat on the Democratic side. What will happen in Nevada? What will happen in Michigan? What about South Carolina?

Gadzooks! What does anyone know about anything?

Well… Your Maximum Leader thinks that the compressed primary season is going to have to be seriously rethought by both parties. He imagines that Hillary and Barack will keep going hammer and tongs at each other well past February. And as it stands, he can’t imagine a single Republican “locking up” the nomination before the Republican Convention.

Yes, you read that right. Republicans might not have a nominiee until their Convention. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t consider himself a “typical Republican.” He strongly tends to vote Republican. His conservative disposition and outlook causes him to gravitate towards Republicans. But on the balance he doesn’t believe he is a straight “party man.” This said, in one way he might be more like Republicans than one might think. He isn’t excited about any of the Republican candidates. He was (and frankly still is) ideologically inclinded to like Fred Thompson. But Thompson really doesn’t seem to want the job enough to campaign for it. (Excursus: Fred is running for president 200 years too late. Circa 1808 his refusal to seek the office would have been seen as a strength. Sad how we have gone in a century or two.) Your Maximum Leader has officially given up on Fred Thompson.

If not Fred who? Well… Your Maximum Leader thinks the following:
1) Rudy is a self-centered arsehole and bad judge of people. He would likely be something remarkably close to a third term of George W. Bush.
2) Mike Huckabee is a pleasant fellow who might be nice to have as your pastor. He strikes me as a man who, outside of social/religious issues, is really lost when it comes to planning to govern in all the arenas outside of his narrow baliwick.
3) Mitt Romney looks presidential, is damned smart, and ambitious. But your Maximum Leader looks at him and thinks, “What would have happened if Robert McNamara had been President? Would the nation be better off?” Mitt Romney really strikes your Maximum Leader as a Robert McNamara type. The incredibly smart and self-confident businessman who believes that with enough data and the right minds in the right room any problem can be solved. For Robert McNamara at the Pentagon it didn’t turn out too good. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t believe that it would be better for Mitt Romney.
4) Ron Paul is wacky.
5) John McCain is a Senator of long standing. Being a Senator of long standing is a bad thing. You are on the record for so many different issues. You have to explain procedural votes on issues as political issues. (That worked out well for John Kerry if we all remember.) He has a bad temper. He has been on the wrong side of many issues for many Republicans (the issue he is on the wrong side of for your Maximum Leader is campaign finance reform). And he is old.

Of these your Maximum Leader chooses… None of the above. If put up against a wall and his family threatened and forced to choose one, he would likely choose McCain. But, lucky for your Maximum Leader he doesn’t have to choose. So for now he isn’t choosing a Republican.

On the Democratic side it is so much more interesting. Indeed, from almost any perspective the Democratic race is more exciting. You have the ambitous woman, the breath of fresh air, and the Breck girl. (Excurus: It upsets your Maximum Leader that John Edwards has become the Breck Girl of American politics. In your Maximum Leader’s mind the Breck girl of American politics will be Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX). Although the humour of the put-down of John Edwards does give your Maximum Leader some pleasure; you could have chosen another shampoo. How about Pert?)

Your Maximum Leader can’t add anything to what countless others have already written about Hillary. Let it suffice to say that to your Maximum Leader Hillary Clinton is just a Democratic Richard Nixon. By that he means that Clinton is Nixon without the years of anti-communism, without Henry Kissinger, without the wingtips on the beach, without the love of baseball and boxing, and without Pat and Checkers. She is Nixon with the conniving, with the enemies list, with the plumbers, with the fear and loathing of all things out of her control, and with the burning desire to prove herself worthy of everything in life. Of course, she has a vagina and Nixon didn’t. They both also have saggy jowls.

If Hillary Clinton wasn’t a woman your Maximum Leader isn’t sure she’d have made it this far in politics. That is to say that if Hillary Clinton were Harry Clinton she would just be a Democratic party hack. She had the good fortune to be married to one of the greatest politicians ever produced by this great republic. She parleyed that connection to her advantage. Good for her says your Maximum Leader. He doesn’t begrudge her anything she’s accomplished. But he doesn’t think that by virtue of her being a woman she should be president. Indeed, as he just said, to him Hillary Clinton is Richard Nixon - only without all the traits that made Nixon a worthwhile person and president.

John Edwards… Heh… Your Maximum Leader can’t help but smile whenever you mention the name of John Edwards. The man is so remarkably fake. He is an angry everyman who lives in a mansion with his millions in the bank. He is a blue collar worker in tailored suits with a $400 haircut. He is one of the toiling masses with polished teeth and soft fleshy hands that would recoil at the grit of dirt. He comes out of the long tradition of the angry privledged that, as best your Maximum Leader can tell, has heretofore only produced bloody revolutionaries (in other nations) and broken burned-out old men (in our own nation).

The most interesting Democrats, in your Maximum Leader’s opinion are Bill Richardson and Barack Obama. Richardson is just too obscure in the field to amount to anything except a fine VP choice. That is too bad because his combination of experiences in politics would in most other years propel him to a front-runner status. Does anyone remember how George H.W. Bush many experiences in government (legislative, executive, diplomatic) was parleyed in 1988 as a great strength? Bill Richardson could be the George H.W. Bush on paper. He doesn’t excite the masses (but men of his calibre rarely do). While your Maximum Leader doesn’t agree with Governor Richardson on a whole host of policy matters, he does think that Americans could do much worse than electing him their President.

That leaves Barack Obama.

Your Maximum Leader waivers in his thoughts on Obama. His thoughts actually can be summarized in two names. Abraham Lincoln and Jimmy Carter. Now before we all go jumping to conclusions about the sanity of your Maximum Leader, give him a moment. Obama, like Lincoln, is a fairly junior guy without much experience as he is running for President. (Excursus; they are both from Illinois too.) Obama, like Lincoln - in a very broad sense, has the ability to make Americans think about the angels of their better natures. Obama, unlike Lincoln actually, projects (and for all your Maximum Leader knows actually is filled with) a sense of hope and optimism. Obama has a lot of potential.

Unfortunately, in 1976 James Earl Carter had lots of potential.

(Excursus: Did you know that there was a day when your Maximum Leader actually thought that Jimmy Carter was a pretty good ex-President? As best your Maximum Leader could tell, that day was March 17, 1984. Around that time your Maximum Leader read that Jimmy Carter was spending his time building houses with Habitat for Humanity and teaching Sunday school. Your Maximum Leader thought that those were two worthwhile activities for an ex-President. Of course, shortly afterwards your Maximum Leader matured mentally and resolved that the best ex-President EVAR! (as well as one of the best Presidents EVAR!) was James K. Polk.)

Does your Maximum Leader actually have to detail why Jimmy Carter wasn’t a good President? He didn’t think so. Unfortunately, Jimmy Carter had more experience (at least more experience governing) than does Barack Obama.

Your Maximum Leader doesn’t know what to think of Barack Obama. Unfortunately, the only way to know which way he’ll turn out is to elect him. And your Maximum Leader isn’t ready to do that…

(Update: Your Maximum Leader reads on the news wires that Bill Richardson is dropping out of the race. Pity. But understandable.)

So back to the primaries… They were, afterall, where your Maximum Leader began this screed…

This compressed primary schedule, combined with the general discontent among voters with all their choices, is actually prolonging the time it will take to pick a candidate. It is entirely possible that a fragmented primary electorate coupled with a schizophrenic reporting mentality (Today the frontrunner is:________!) will result in two (or three) candidates in each party duking it out all across the nation for far longer than anyone thought. It is not outside the realm of possibility that one (probably the Republican) or both of the party conventions could really have to do some work! Great Jeezey Chreezy! The thought of that makes your Maximum Leader shudder.

As it stands now, your Maximum Leader isn’t sure that anything will be decided by “Super Tuesday” on February 5th. If that is the case (and at many levels your Maximum Leader hopes it is) we are in for a more exciting election year than we had ever thought.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t do much in the way of photos on this site. Not much at all. That is in part because once that photo is out on the interwebs you never know what is going to come of it. Your Maximum Leader refuses to post photos of his children on the internet for this reason (indeed, he doesn’t even email photos often).

So… It was with great interest that he read this peice on the Washington Post. The piece describes how big corporations are lifting photos from the internet to use in their advertising. Here are some excerpts:

Under the banner of “intellectual property,” record labels warn you not to bootleg their songs. Hollywood studios warn you not to download their movies. Intellectual property has lately seemed the concern of corporations trying to protect the artist from the grabby public.

But in an increasingly user-generated world where the public is the artist, sometimes it’s the big boys who get grabby. And the questions that arise are about ownership, but they are also about fairness, and changing culture, and ultimately, the search for authenticity.

[…]

Photographers (even amateur ones) automatically own the rights to their own work (even online). That means others can’t use a photo without permission.

But sometimes, through “fair use,” it actually is okay to use a photo without permission. Fair use can include scholarship or parody, and is determined by a number of criteria.

Further: sometimes, individuals… can decide to give away just part of their control. For example, permitting use of a photograph as long as the source is credited.

[…]

Says Lawrence Lessig, the Stanford legal scholar who created Creative Commons, when asked about the issue of corporations borrowing photos: “There’s really no excuse for [these companies] except that they think it’s not important to protect the rights of the amateur.”

[…]

What’s noteworthy…, Lessig says, “is that bloggers, a community typically associated with piracy, are rallying in support of copyright.”

He says average individuals are increasingly thinking of themselves as artists, whose work has value — or at least deserves respect. Lessig predicts that as the average Joes have their own material appropriated, it will eventually result in better behavior from both individuals and corporations.

Very interesting stuff. Your Maximum Leader knows that he’s used some photos without attribution. He does know better (and does try to provide attribution - in the form of a link mostly). Appropriation of web images by big corporations without trying to get permission is wrong, in your Maximum Leader’s mind at least.

Be careful with your images people….

Carry on.

Damn.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader must thank Tommy for these little bits of brainless content.

First bit:

Second bit:

The Recipe For A Maximum Leader

3 parts Power 2 parts Slyness 1 part Villainy Splash of Intellect Limit yourself to one serving. This cocktail is strong!

Speaking of brainless….

Or should we say… speaking of brains… From our friend Buckethead over at the Ministry of Minor Perfidy…

You can clicky the image to embiggen.

Don’t gnaw on too many bones out there…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is relaxing today and trying to get in the mood to celebrate the anniversary of the birth of Elvis A. Presley. As is his custom, dinner tonight will be meatloaf, whipped potatoes, boiled (perhaps steamed) carrots, and milk. The family might have share a peanut butter and ‘nanner sandwich as an appetizer. Dinner will be followed by a chocolate cake with white frosting decorated with the words “Happy Birthday to the King.”

And the iPod will be blasting Elvis music the whole time.

Great fun… Great fun…

Carry on.

Huckabee victory
Evangelical power
Beware New Hampshire

Moneybags Romney
Outspends seventeen to one
Not good investment

AWOL John McCain
Chosen by thirteen percent
Will he rock Concord?

Somnolent Thompson
Fails to excite Iowans
Law and Order bore

Ron Paul – ten percent!
Libertarian triumph
Stoners celebrate

Hillary derailed
Who’s inevitable now?
Obama, momma!

Demagogue Edwards
Own success puts the lie to
Two Americas

Richardson, Biden
Dodd are dead on arrival
The Veepstakes begin

Via Volokh:

The last post of a milblogger.

The last two paragraphs choked me up.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader reports, with a very heavy heart, that George MacDonald Fraser has slipped this mortal coil. Fraser died after a battle with cancer at his home on the Isle of Man on January 2. As many readers will no doubt know, Fraser is the author of the dozen or so novels about the life of Sir Harry Flashman. Those works are among your Maximum Leader’s favorite works of fiction.

The Washington Post has a fine obitiuary for Fraser. Here are the first few paragraphs of that piece:

George MacDonald Fraser, whose tales about an unscrupulous Victorian scoundrel, Sir Harry Flashman, chronicled the misadventures of one of the most memorable characters of modern British fiction, died Jan. 2 of cancer at his home on the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea. He was 82.

After working for years as a journalist, Mr. Fraser published his first novel about Flashman in 1969, passing it off as the newly discovered memoirs of a 19th-century coward, Lothario and soldier of misfortune. Flashman appeared in a dozen novels over the years, inadvertently landing at the center of almost every major military campaign of the Victorian age, from the Boxer Rebellion in China to the Indian Mutiny, the Charge of the Light Brigade, the siege of Khartoum, the Mexican Revolution and the Battle of Little Big Horn.

In Mr. Fraser’s words, Flashman “can only display the courage of a cornered rat” as he tries to escape his many predicaments. Flashman demonstrates little more than craven self-interest, yet he invariably emerges as the antihero of his comic escapades, undeservedly winning top medals for bravery and bedding countless women along the way.

When the first novel in the series appeared, “Flashman: From the Flashman Papers, 1839-1842,” Mr. Fraser claimed to have edited manuscripts he had found at a household sale.

Several critics were initially taken in by the ruse and believed that the stories were drawn from a lost cache of authentic memoirs. But the character of Harry Paget Flashman originally appeared as a bully in “Tom Brown’s Schooldays,” a popular Victorian boys’ book that Mr. Fraser read as a child. The story flagged whenever Flashman left the stage, Mr. Fraser noted, so he made the irrepressible rogue the central figure of his novels.

“Anything is thinkable if it preserves [Flashman] with a whole skin,” critic Christopher Hitchens wrote in The Washington Post in 1986. “The very qualities which got him expelled from Tom Brown’s Rugby School — deceit, cruelty and funk — fit him admirably as a man to take credit for the sacrifices of others.”

The Times of London has, as they almost always do, a better obituary. From the Times:

[Fraser] had hit on a deceptively simple idea that proved to be a bestselling formula at the end of the Swinging Sixties. The public still wanted to sit down with a good rip-roaring yarn — but did not want heroes. So why not make the central character a cad? A cad the reading public already knew about — Harry Flashman, the bounder of Tom Brown’s Schooldays?

What happened to Flashman after the good Doctor Arnold expelled him from Rugby? Fraser decided that he must have gone into the Army. Bully, liar and coward he may still have been, but the Victorian military authorities did not mind. Or perhaps they were simply too stupid to notice, as he whored and cheated his way around the British Empire. The resulting stories became one of the great tongue-in-cheek achievements of popular fiction.

The standing joke between Fraser and his readers was that these were genuine memoirs: they had been discovered, “wrapped in oilskin” and stuffed into a tea chest, during a house sale at Ashby, Leicestershire, in 1965. They described how, after a long, eventful life, loved by the ladies and lauded by the Establishment — Flashman was a brigadier-general, a VC, a Knight of the Bath, a Chevalier of the Legion d’Honneur and, amusingly, holder of the San Serafino Order of Purity and Truth — the old scoundrel mused in old age about how he had got away with it: “The ideal time to be a hero,” he wrote, “is when the battle is over and the other fellows are dead, God rest ’em, and you take the credit.”

It was all rollicking nonsense; but it had a sterling quality that went to the heart of many sophisticated readers who like to relax with a rubbishy book provided it is well written rubbish. Fraser was a thoroughly professional literary craftsman.

The books could be enjoyed at different levels. They sold in airport bookshops and they found their way into the hands of solemn Americans who could not understand why they were unable to find General Flashman in the reference books. Letters came from people who claimed to be related to Flashman as a result of one of his irregular liaisons. One serving British officer claimed that his grandfather lent Flashman $50 and a horse during the American Civil War — and never saw either again.

Your Maximum Leader has not yet read two Flashman books that he owns (thanks to Christmas) - Flashman on the March (the most recent) and Flashman and the Angel of the Lord. He will now move both of these books up in his queue.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maixmum Leader is feeling funky today. Mrs Villain is feeling more funky today. Why? Hokie losing to the Jayhawks last night.

That sucked. It was a competitive game (overall). But really the Hokies beat themselves. Kansas scored most of their point off three turnovers. It was very disappointing.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is tired right now. He isn’t sure if it is his busy schedule, or the huge glasses of “fixed up” egg nog he’s been drinking…

Anyhoo…

Your Maximum Leader is preparing to sit down and watch the Hokies of Virginia Tech take on the Jayhawks of Kansas. He is rooting (along with his lovely wife - Mrs Villain - herself a Hokie) for the Hokies to really stick it to the Jayhawks. During the commericals he will likely switch over to Fox News and see what is going on in Iowa.

Then again, he might (during commercials) switch over to watch some other program. Afterall… He will be hearing about what went on in Iowa all day tomorrow. He’s afraid he might get burned out if he doesn’t pace himself.

Your Maximum Leader has been reading that Hillary might place third in Iowa (behind Obama and Edwards). Your Maximum Leader isn’t sure how that can be. He supposes that it must be some weird situation that exists only in Iowa. Some situation that deals with how people get to caucuses and how they actually decide to agree on a candidate at the caucus. Regardless, your Maximum Leader still will stick with his earlier predictions - Obama, Clinton, Edwards, and Richardson (on the Democratic side).

Your Maximum Leader still hasn’t decided whom to cast his lot with. Sadly, no one is too thrilling in his opinion. Of course, by the time Virginia gets around to voting, the race should be sewn up by one candidate on either side. That is the point at which Michael Bloomberg of New York will declare himself as an independent candidate for president. Then it will get a little more interesting. But only a little…

Anyhoo…

Your Maximum Leader will be spending most of his evening watching the Hokies…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader isn’t sure what to think of this week. Today certainly felt like a Monday, although it was definately a Wednesday. The abbreviated week is nice, but it does seem to upset (on some level) the regular flow of time…

So… Iowa caucuses tomorrow… Predictions? Anyone? Here you go… On the Democratic side: Obama wins narrowly over Hillary Clinton. Edwards a distant third. Richardson fourth. Other Dems decide to call it quits after results. Four way race going into New Hampshire. On the Republican side: Romney narrowly edges out Huckabee. McCain polls third. Thompson fourth. Rudy fifth. The five (and Ron Paul) remain in contention in New Hampshire. Republican field will not clear out until February.

Your know… Your Maximum Leader has a “thing.” Actually, he has many “things” but this one relates to Egg Nog. He doesn’t think that one should drink Egg Nog after the Feast of the Epiphany. He doesn’t know why this is, but it is. He has a fresh half gallon of Egg Nog he bought right after Christmas. Alas, his Egg Nog consumption was low over the New Years holiday. He now is going to have to go through lots of Egg Nog in a few days.

Your Maximum Leader’s lovely wife, Mrs Villain, buys skim or fat-free milk when she does the grocery shopping. Your Maximum Leader mostly buys 1% (or sometimes whole - or what passes for whole in stores now - when he buys whole milk he pretends he just grabbed the gallon from “the wrong shelf” when asked why he bought whole milk). Now he will urge Mrs Villain to buy 1% milk at the store… For the sake of your Maximum Leader’s prostate.

Your Maximum Leader believes that all-you-can-eat buffets are - essentially - wagers. Bets if you will. The restaurant is betting that they can prepare more food than you can eat (and make a profit) for the price they charge. In most cases, given the quality of buffet food, it is a bet the restaurants win. Then again there are people like Ricky Labit. Ricky apparently doesn’t like losing bets with all-you-can-eat buffets.

And finally… In a sign that “science” has in fact reached to new lows… Apparently a bunch of intrepid researchers have determined that male macaques “pay” for sex with female macaques. Yes… female macaques are, apparently, all whores who wontonly exchange intercourse for… wait for it… grooming. According to the piece:

Michael Gumert of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore made the discovery in a 20-month investigation into 50 long-tailed macaques in Kalimantan Tengah, Indonesia, New Scientist reports on Saturday.

On average, females had sex 1.5 times per hour.

But this rate jumped to 3.5 times per hour immediately after the female had been groomed by a male — and her partner of choice was likely to be the hunky monkey that did the grooming.

Market forces also acted on the value of the transaction.

If there were several females in the area, the cost of buying sex would drop dramatically — a male could “buy” a female for just eight minutes of nit-picking.

But if there were no females around, he would have to groom for up to 16 minutes before sex was offered.

The work supports the theory that biological market forces can explain social behaviour, the British weekly says.

Your Maximum Leader isn’t sure that the males are “paying” for sex in the sense of prostitution - as seems to be implied in the article. The males are more “exchanging” sex for the primate equivilent of spa treatments. (Try paying Trixie down on the corner in spa treatments and see how far that gets you…)

Carry on.