The Hundredth Monkey Effect

This is a brief essay Jimmy wrote in high school on the 100th Monkey Effect.

Wow! Did you know that monkeys, placed far apart and separated by a sea, somehow communicate? According to the research, or the urban myth, (okay, this is something my Mom's New Age friends believe in for some reason) when enough monkeys on one shore perform a new trick, then monkeys on another shore will do the same trick! The trick, in this case, is washing sweet potatoes. Thus the monkey can communicate by washing sweet potatoes! A monkey on one island off the coast of Japan knows when a lot of monkeys on another island off the coast of Japan are washing sweet potatoes!

That is to say, the research explains conclusively that the monkeys are connected telepathically! At least when there are a hundred of them. Or is it the sweet potatoes?

In this way scientists have proved, once and for all, that men are not like monkeys and never were. Clearly a man in one country will never know when a man (or 100 men) in another country is washing his sweet potatoes.