Baker and Popović are now studying the top players in the hopes of teaching computers the humans' tricks.
(Did I mention how ticked off monkeys get if they find out they're getting cucumbers while somebody in the next cage has a grape?) The real human trick is to get past the quid pro quo and try to focus on the common good.
Letterman, born in Indiana but implanted in New York, was edgier and zanier, inventor of such routines as the Stupid Pet Trick and the Stupid Human Trick (sample: a girl who played violin on a pogo stick).
The whole human trick of culture depends on this very fine balance of innovation and imitation.
From showcasing the spoils of empire to smoothing our current trade relations, zoos have continued the age-old human trick of resolving the social order through the abjection of an animal.
Joe Wolfcale, a reporter for The West County Times who covered Mitchell in college, became so fond of Mitchell he tried to land him on the stupid human tricks portion of the David Letterman show by sending in videotapes.
They seem to enjoy most the traditional thrills: human tricks and animal acts.
Cable networks other than the fancy subscription services like HBO and Showtime used to be the realm of stupid human tricks and commercials for six-minute abs, but networks have shot by them in the race to the bottom.
Those wacky challenges, what David Letterman might call "Stupid Human Tricks," remain the heart of a show that is a beloved but perpetually struggling German institution.
The film starts out with sort of a Harmony Korine homage, in which unsupervised slouches drop acid, forage for magic mushrooms, wrestle each other to the ground and perform stupid human tricks that are unfit for print.
