Nobody seems willing to enforce international treaties. People have tried for years to make this happen, but it doesn't. At this point, vigilanteeism is all we have. Given that it is as non-violent as it can be, I think this is necessary.I don't really even get why I'm supposed to care. The whales they go after aren't even endangered. There are something like 100k Minke whales out there, and the Japanese take a few hundred a year.
Either scientists are unduly alarmist about the state of the biosphere, or it is time to undertake drastic action. Which is it?I'm not aware of any scientists who say the hunting of a few hundred Minke whales is going to destroy the environment.
Nobody here is saying he's good PR. We're saying he's good at stopping Japanese whaling.Yeah but like I said, it's not clear why people should care at all. and furthermore, he doesn't actually seem to be very good at it. I think he's more interested in making money off reality TV rights or whatever.
There aren't enough fish or whales in the sea for every human on earth.That doesn't mean that people should take zero fish/whales out of the sea.
Just my luck: they're out of the whale ovary. I get me a big, juicy, red-meat whale steak. I get some whale heart too. And, of course, the sea pineapple, which comes with a little dipping bowl of su, rice-wine vinegar. I'm living. And what more fitting an end than whale ice cream, made with green-tea powder and whale morsels? Mmm, no?Apparently whale meat sushi is so good it's criminal, too.
Sea pineapple, good. Whale heart, bad. The ice cream, I don't remember.
I want to know what kind of whale I've eaten. Eva-san talks to the boss.
"Minke. A sort of small baleen."
I want to know what kind of whale makes for the best grub. Eva-san talks to the boss. He makes a forlorn gesture to a poster on the wall that pictures all the species of whales in the sea, and, forlornly, he expounds awhile.
The great blue whale, the largest animal that has ever lived, is by far the best, he says. But, as it's considered one of the world's most endangered species, it has been unobtainable for more than 35 years. I feel for the guy.
called out Watson as a liar for fabricating an encounter with a Oglala Lakota elder at Wounded Knee who supposedly naturalized Watson as an Oglala with an honorary name. The elder referenced in the fabricated encounter was with Churchill's father.Didn't ward Churchill fabricate his Native ancestry? From Wikipedia:
In a statement dated May 9, 2005, and posted on its website, the United Keetoowah Band initially said, "The United Keetoowah Band would like to make it clear that Mr. Churchill IS NOT a member of the Keetoowah Band and was only given an honorary 'associate membership' in the early 1990s because he could not prove any Cherokee ancestry." The tribe said that all of Churchill's "past, present and future claims or assertions of Keetoowah 'enrollment,' written or spoken, including but not limited to; biographies, curriculum vitae, lectures, applications for employment, or any other reference not listed herein, are deemed fraudulent by the United Keetoowah Band."[24]He claims to be something like 1/16th Cherokee, and at other times 1/8th muscogee/creek on his father's side. But the Lakota Indians were originally around the great lakes, while the creek were around the Mississippi. So I mean not only are his Indian credentials fabricated, his made up Indian ancestors were from a totally different region as the one he claimed was his father in that anecdote! Hilarious.
What I'm having a harder time understanding is where the obviously deep passion against Watson is coming from - so deep that it's bleeding into what looks like actual support for whaling because Watson happens to be a jerk.Because he's being such a dick that it makes people empathize with the whalers. Especially the whiny, petulant "wah, they sprayed us with water while all we were trying to do was disable their boat!"
There are only 1000 blue whales left. I don't care what tropes they use or how shamless they are or how offensive they get. At this point they have my go ahead to attach RPGs to those jet skis.None of which are being killed by the Japanese. You understand that, right?
I tend to think you've left the moral high ground far behind when you've taken to adopting the tactics and behaviors of anti-abortion protesters.Well, it depends on what they're protesting. Certainly violent anti-slavery protesters are venerated by history. The question though is whether what the Japanese are doing actually threatens the whale species they hunt, or if Sea Shepard is only doing it out of a "Any killing of whales is morally wrong" type of stance.
The japanese whaling industry gives two shits about the population status of the whales they hunt. As evidenced above by taking several endangered and vulnerable species. They take more minke because there are more minke, but I don't doubt for a second that they'd hunt them to near extinction if they could.Well, what difference does it make what they want? What matters is what they do, and for now it doesn't appear like they are taking whales in numbers that could damage the populations. In terms of the endangered counts, they took 100 out of 80,000 Sei whales, and 2 out of 100,000 fin whales. Since Sei whales live to about 65 years, it's likely that about 1,230 die naturally every year.
But I guess my point is the "well we eat pigs!" argument doesn't really work as a defense of eating every other animal regardless of intelligence; you can certainly can draw a line* that puts chimps off limits but permits pigs.I don't know if scientists have a strict hierarchy of animal intelligence. And it would be pretty hard to test the intelligence of a whale. It's pretty dangerous to eat great apes due to disease compatibility, it's suspected that's how AIDS got into the human population. They're also mostly endangered.
That reaction you feel when the tactics or personalities of an advocate group turns you off to a cause you would normally support -- I believe we call that "not thinking".Well, it's also likely that someone might "not think" about an issue at all until they actually look into it. I mean, I didn't know that much about the issue until I looked some of this stuff up, and what I found out seems to indicate it's not a big deal. There may have been a big risk to whales decades ago, but if there is a risk now it doesn't seem to be from the Japanese (or the icelandic, who also hunt whales, apparently)
The real interesting part about whale brains is not only are they big, they have a big cerebral cortex - just like ours. They also have a kind of neuron that has only been found in humans, whales, apes and elephants - all animals considered to be intelligent.Spindle Neurons. They could simply be an adaptation to having a large brain, not necessarily a smart brain.
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posted by KokuRyu at 2:42 PM on February 13 [2 favorites]