Slashdot Mirror

Becasue a species must watch out for themselves first.

I'd personally kill every Dolphin myself if it would save a human life.

Thats mighty white of you, though genetic diversity is valuable too. I wonder if you would do anything to help dolphins if they saved any human lives ?

Dolphins are also compassionate towards humans. There are many records throughout history of dolphins saving a drowning human. Dolphins have never killed a human being, at most giving warning bites and even then only about once a decade the past few decades. They will attack sharks however, rather brutally, so in no way can a dolphin be considered peaceful.

Dolphin Saves Boy's Life
http://www.eurocbc.org/page158.html

Greek Mythology regarding dolphins
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin_(mythology)

Dolphins save swimmers from shark attack
http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2004/11/24/ dolphin_newzealand041124.html

Google search for dolphin saved
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q= dolphin+saved&btnG=Search

These incidents happen world wide in numerous locations every year and have happened at the same rate throughout history.

I think that we should return the favor and treat dolphins with the same compassion that they treat us.

• Dolphins save swimmer from shark 1996-07-26
• Dolphins save man from shark attack 2002-07-23
• Dolphins save swimmers from shark attack 2004-11-24

"I was personally involved in an investigation over the death of a dozen beak whales off of the Canary islands...Guess who got blamed for these whales beaching themselves? In the end, it was determined the whales beached themselves trying to get away from the shipping traffic, not the Sonar."

Are you talking about this?

FTA:
"Last year 14 beaked whales were stranded during an international naval exercise off the Canary Islands. They appeared on beaches four hours after the sonars were turned on."

I don't know about "definitive proof" but lets look at our options. Maybe the sonars in some way affected the beachings, or there happened to be a flotilla of shipping traffic due to the heavy volume of canary purchases at ebay.
It's also mentioned in this article. The Nature article they both refer to is entitled "Gas-bubble lesions in stranded cetaceans" if you can get your hands on it. They are, however, cautious to reach any blatant conclusions without sufficient evidence. Also here's some background information on acoustic sensitivities of marine life from NRDC. Sorry, but these "government haters" are trying to save marine life from being trampled by our preparations for armageddon.

This seems like a poorly thought-out comment to me. Basically, you are claiming that all environmentalists are terrorists and/or insane? I guess the same would then apply to all Christians, given some of the less than intelligent things a small fractions of their number have done in the past.

The CNN article doesn't really have much detail. Some trivial googling yielded the following links:

http://www.nrdc.org/wildlife/marine/nlfa.asp
http://www.eurocbc.org/sonar_lfas_implicated_in_wh ale_deaths_30oct2002page1253.html

which have more useful information. I think the bigger problem is that the US Navy want to deploy a large scale, permanent sonar system to monitor the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Such a system would flood both areas of sea with very high volume sonar:

http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file =/headlines01/0618-03.htm

Anyway, there is a lot of additional information around about this. Personally, I think the problem of finding submarines should be solvable in a more elegant way than flooding 2 oceans with sonar.

Cheers,

Rhys Hill

I remember back in the day, when there was a boycott on tuna. Now, it was my understanding that boycotts actually do something to indicate that consumers want a change in the moral practices of a business.

Now, considering what we know of boycotts, it would lead me to believe that saying "fsck you, RIAA!" and downloading music illegally is exactly the wrong thing to do if we want to bring down the RIAA, or get them to change their ways, e.g. price fixing, promoting crap music, etc. If the RIAA promotes crap music, why are you downloading it illegally and listening to it? Quit supporting the RIAA by doing without the music that is backed by the RIAA. Quit going to RIAA-backed concerts, quit buying RIAA-backed CDs, and quit downloading RIAA-backed music! Just like people did without their tuna in the '80s, you can suck it up and do without your Metallica. It is not unreasonable to expect the masses to get pissed and start demonstrating a little activism.

I remember back in the day, when there was a boycott on tuna. Now, it was my understanding that boycotts actually do something to indicate that consumers want a change in the moral practices of a business.

Now, considering what we know of boycotts, it would lead me to believe that saying "fsck you, RIAA!" and downloading music illegally is exactly the wrong thing to do if we want to bring down the RIAA, or get them to change their ways, e.g. price fixing, promoting crap music, etc. If the RIAA promotes crap music, why are you downloading it illegally and listening to it? Quit supporting the RIAA by doing without the music that is backed by the RIAA. Quit going to RIAA-backed concerts, quit buying RIAA-backed CDs, and quit downloading RIAA-backed music! Just like people did without their tuna in the '80s, you can suck it up and do without your Metallica.

I remember trying to put plastic containers in a field to use as markers for trees (long story) and after about 2 years had to be replaced as they had decomposed

1) Some plastics are designed to decompose.

2) Most plastics that aren't designed to decompose... don't. Instead they undergo weathering by the elements and 'vanish' as they are ground down by sun, wind, rain, and snow into plastic dust which then remains in the environment for hundreds/thousands of years. This is a worldwide problem.

This flies against all the enviromentalists saying they will stay here forever

It flies against nothing. Just because something is too small for you to see does not mean that it is 'gone'. Weathering does not equal decomposition. Choice quote from the BBC article: "...this study suggests that practically everything really is made of plastic these days - even the oceans."