Friday afternoon linkblogging!

* 28% of Republicans claim to believe Barack Obama was not born in the United States, and another 30% "aren't sure." Results for the South are even worse. So it's official: our national discourse is completely broken.

* Entertainment Weekly asks: Was 1984 the greatest year in movies ever? I've always been partial to 1999: Rushmore, The Matrix, Being John Malkovich, Fight Club, Magnolia...

* Vanity Fair has your sketchbook history of the drug war.

* Steampunk monkey nation.

* Jericho may be returning once again as a TV movie to wrap up loose plot points. My recollection of the finale was that there weren't very many loose plot points left, but your memory may vary.

* Chris Hedges: "The Rise of Gonzo Porn Is the Latest Sign of America's Cultural Apocalypse."

* And Scientific American explores the quiet end of the Neanderthals.

A second round of late night shouldn't-have-taken-that-nap links.

* Why GM failed; link roundup from Kottke.

* A.O. Scott vlogs the awesomeness of Rushmore. Via TRA. It's vlogtastic.

* Mrs. Santorum is a very lucky woman.

* The headline reads, "Secret US Nuke Site List Accidentally Published Online by US Gov." Whoops!

* Handicapping the 2012 Republican field at Open Left.

* The median number of tweets by a Twitter user is one. This and other Twitter bubble factoids via MetaFilter.

* J.D. Salinger sues to block the publication of the unauthorized Catcher in the Rye sequel. I feel torn here between my liberal attitude towards copyright and my sense that said sequel can only be an abomination.

* “It’s remarkable, what we’re unable to do as a country": Wire creator David Simon on BBC Radio 4, via Edge of the American West.

* Monkey astronauts.

Best news I've heard all day: Wild monkey loose in Japanese subway eludes police.

Bad news for culturemonkeys: Around half of the world's primate species are at risk of extinction. Even the recent surprise discovery of a kind of hidden Gorilla City of more than 125,000 western lowland gorillas—more than primatologists believed were alive—can make me feel better about this.

Apes, legal personhood and the plight of Nim Chimpsky.

Eberhart Theuer: A legal person would be something like a company or a certain society that in itself, or a fund that has certain rights without being a natural person.

Anita Barraud: This is similar to the US in common law notion of a juristic person that can apply to corporations and organisations that they're artificial persons created by the law.

Eberhart Theuer: Exactly.

Paula Stibbe: It's not talking about the rights for non-human animals to go and vote or be able to go to university, that would clearly be inappropriate and ridiculous. This is about recognising that non-human animals share with us sentience, which means that they have the ability to suffer, and that they have interests which can be damaged.

In sci-fi-philosophic terms, this is the distinction between sapience and sentience; while apes likely cannot "think" in the human sense, they and other animals can certainly feel pain, and that capacity is something we are morally obliged to respect.

I say likely because I am by nature extremely wary of the anthropomorphistic tendency to project human emotions and consciousness into animal behavior that is actually instinctual or learned—in general I'm impressed with Daniel Dennett's theory in Kinds of Minds that our dogs appear to "love" us precisely because we've selected for just that impression over millenia of canine domestication. But as an anecdotal matter I must admit this is really evocative:

Paula Stibbe: I've learned what he likes to do most, what food he likes to eat most, though that would include some games. He likes to use charcoal with paper sometimes to draw, or chalk.

Anita Barraud: What does he draw?

Paula Stibbe: They are kind of abstract angular kind of works and he takes the paper and the chalk and he leans against the wall, he bites his bottom lip and concentrates really hard on what he's doing. He won't let himself be distracted while he's drawing.

(cross-posted at culturemonkey)

Well, I'm showing up late today. Sorry about that.

* Scientists have taught monkeys how to control robotic arms with their thoughts. We are so screwed. Via Alex Greenberg, Matt Yglesias, and MetaFilter.

* 24: Season Two: The Musical. From the people who brought you Silence of the Lambs: The Musical. The first song at least made me laugh.

* National Geographic on "the real crystal skulls."

* Scott McClellan has his come to Jesus moment. More at The Nation. MetaFilter debates whether we should care.

* Via Tim, MoveOn is giving away free anti-McCain bumper stickers He's also got a telling link on a redacted CIA document on interrogation techniques that's been nearly entirely blacked out.

The top ten archeological discoveries in 2007, including one that will undoubtedly be of crucial importance for culturemonkey in the new year: chimpanzee use of tools is several thousand years old and may predate the human species entirely. Also via MetaFilter.

(Don't forget, culturemonkey returns with a new mission statement and a new blogger on Jan. 2...)

Wherever there's monkey news, culturemonkey is there. Senior simian analyst Ryan Vu reports in from the front line of the monkey revolt.

Few games will change the way you live like Monkey in the Pants. Via Jacob.