In case you missed part 1 click here. Otherwise here’s part two with a couple hot topic examples in this week’s news demonstrating how people really must hate animals, and my take on the whole ordeal.
Also in response to the diametrically opposed zoo / marine world organizations vs. we shouldn’t keep animals in captivity crowd I propose this question: how can we design a solution that respects an animals right to live humanely but affords us the scientific and social benefits of having animals in captivity? I’m obviously not doing anything so send me your ideas. Why post about this stuff if I’m not going to work on a solution. I’m a lover not a fighter; plus for me to go on some Greenpeace ship and battle orca kidnappers….ugh, they probably don’t even have beer on there.
Without further ado, a couple more news stories for you:
Taiji Dolphin Kill
For whatever reason most of the people on Twitter I follow are hard-core animal lovers. For the record, I don’t know how Twitter actually works. So I don’t know if the Taiji Dolphin Kill in Japan is as big a deal as they make it out, but at least 50% of the tweets I read are about dolphin killing (the other 50% call for the downfall of Sea World). Once again a documentary helped prompt this public awareness, apparently one called ‘The Cove’ which a friend of mine recommended I see, but I HAVE NOT seen yet. I really need to get away from my computer folks.
Anyway, as far as I can tell a bunch of Japanese fishermen round up wild dolphins and slaughter most of them (click here for a full gory description); presumably stealing a few babies or whatnot to send of to marine entertainment organizations. They’ve probably been doing this for a thousand years, but in today’s saturated society, we get to see it first hand…everyday.
My take: Hey, I get it, tribal / cultural traditions are hard to break, and by all means we should preserve as many as we can. But only to a point. In this day and age, especially in a country as modern as Japan, this is a bit inhuman. We’re better than this. I have no problem with hunting. I have no problem with eating animals. Humans became humans because we ate animals; we have the pointy teeth to prove it. In fact I don’t understand vegans who come off as ‘holier-than-thou‘ and tell me not to eat tasty critters (and vegans do come off that way, I’m pretty sure on porpoise….er, purpose too).
I think in an educated, kind and humane society we have the wherewithal to know wrong from right. If these guys were in kayaks offing dolphins one at a time (or however they did it in primitive days), man to dolphin, then you know what I’m probably fine with that; if they do it within scientifically established limits and protocol. By the way, I’m not a scientist so or sociologist so maybe this is all ka-blooey nonsense but I’m giving my unbiased, common sense, outside opinion as a person and quite frankly as a designer.
So here’s the deal, Japanese people stop rounding up dolphins and slaughtering 22,000 of them a year. They are not domesticated animals. In fact they’re probably smarter than most of us reading (writing, ouch) this blog. It’s just wrong. We’re better than that.
Australia Murdering Sharks Out Of Fear
Seven people have been killed by sharks in Wester Australia over the course of the last three years!!!!!!!!! In response the highly advanced Australian government has taken to culling, indiscriminately, sharks off of its coasts. Many of these sharks are endangered, and protected by the same government that is now killing them.
My take: I don’t know if it’s the hot weather, or the inverted Summer / Winter thing but this story is beyond my comprehension. So….seven…seven people die over three years and the best thing you can think to do is go out and kill as many sharks as you can find.
That would be fine.
If it were 1975.
And we were in a movie.
I can’t even start to explain to you why this is moronic. The fact that it’s the Australia that’s doing it is the icing on the cake. C’mon guys, isn’t this type of thing reserved for America, the land where we do something dumb like this and then have to pay for it by listening to loathing liberals say how far behind we are compared to places like Europe, Japan….and Australia!?
This reeks of preschool fear mongering and knee jerk reactions. If you want to nip human death in the bud, sharks would be about #2,765 on my personal list of culprits to go after. You know what, if you don’t want to get eaten by a shark, here’s an idea: stay out of the water. If you go in the water, guess what, sharks live in the water. You might get eaten. Get over it.
It’d be like every time I go into Cleveland I shoot as many people as I see because people kill people all the time there.
If you want to impress me start pulling texting drivers out of their cars and club them to death in the middle of intersections. You may avoid 20 more Australian deaths, in addition to the 7 you saved by killing all the sharks you could find. BTW, doesn’t that number of 20 seem low? I couldn’t find a real statistic. In the U.S. it’s like 3,000 texting related deaths, apparently.
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Alright peeps, that’s it for today’s anti-animal rants. If any of this is of interest and you’d like to know more, then get out there, read and talk to people. As always, share your comments below. And if you have ideas for real common sense solutions to these problems, let’s talk about those too!
nine apple trees 