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Armed Dolphins Released Into Gulf of Mexico
An anonymous reader writes "The Guardian is reporting on what may be the weirdest Hurricane Katrina story yet. Military trained dolphins may have been released into the wild by the Hurricane's devastation." From the article: "Experts who have studied the U.S. navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest. The U.S. navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing. Dolphins have been trained in attack-and-kill missions since the Cold War. The U.S. Atlantic bottlenose dolphins have apparently been taught to shoot terrorists attacking military vessels. Their coastal compound was breached during the storm, sweeping them out to sea. But those who have studied the controversial use of dolphins in the U.S. defence programme claim it is vital they are caught quickly."
What could be the porpoise of arming these creatures?
Before we starting carping on the ineptitude of our navy, I think we should more carefully exsalmon the situation - they may not be solely at fault. Perhaps Katrina is just a red herring here, and these killer dolphins have been floundering around for months. Maybe some deranged fool let them loose just for the halibut. Whoever is responsible should have their head on a pike.
We just send out the robot sharks to killed the armed dolphins. Then we send out the exploding whales to take out the robot sharks.
All I asked for are some frickin' sharks with frickin' laser beams on their heads!!
So long and thanks for all the toxic darts..
Holy crap flipper just killed my entire family.
On a serious note I say the answer is to just buy a bunch of six packs of beer, drink em and then toss the can rings into the ocean. TV has told me this will kill all manner of marine life. TV is seldom innacurate.
What about the sharks with lasers on their heads? Were they at different facilities?
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
Doesn't the Navy have some sort of tracking system for their dolphins...? I'd assume so at least.
In 1972/2005 a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court/accidentally released into the wild for a crime they didn't commit/by a hurricane.
These men/dolphins promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade/maximum security pool to the Los Angeles/Texas underground.
Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-Team.
Warning - will work for mackerel.
I am a leaf on the wind
In other news today, Dr. Evil has issued a reward for the return of his precious aquatic minions
you forgot... blah blah blah do they run linux?
This sounds like a plot right out of a B sci-fi action movie; the kind where you go, "nah, that can't happen".
Table-ized A.I.
And every military aircraft that flies 'could be' carrying nuclear weapons.
But they arent.
In the communication, Skippy confirmed that he and the other dolphins were indeed armed, declared himself and his compatriots "freedom fighters" for an organization called the "Cetacean Liberation Front" or "CTF", and demanded that all other wrongfully imprisoned cetaceans be released immediately, or the group would initiate hostilities against surfers, SCUBA divers, and windsurfers.
The following is a transcript of this communication:
At this point, the administration still has issued no official statement concerning this situation.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
The article says they could be dangerous "if equipped with special harnesses carrying toxic darts." There is nothing to indicate that there is any evidence that they were armed. Think about it: with a Category 5 hurricane coming their way with days of warning they are going to leave them armed?
Someone is fear mongering.
Flipper! Flipper!
He'll Dart you Faster than lightning
No Dolphin you see
Has more bloodlust than he
Thank the Navy! Navy!
For this stupendous new blunder
stalking there under...
under the sea!
Performing sanity checks on your own beliefs is vital in avoiding poisoned koolaid.
and thanks for all the guns.
Don't Crease the Weasel!
how the heck dolphins knows who is a terrorist? and if they are trained since the cold war, they are trained to kill comunists... now...how the heck dolphins knows who is a communist?
I heard about 6 other dolphins from the area that got free and they found all 6 hanging out as close as they could get to their former pen.
just because your a schizophrenic doesn't mean people arn't really out to get you
Are you trying to tell me that these dolphins are sitting around in their tanks with 'toxic dart' guns attached to them AT ALL TIMES? Do they shoot these darts from their asses? I can believe that maybe there are trained dolphins, and maybe they escaped, but that they can shoot unsuspecting divers with toxic dart guns?
Please. What a craptastic, misleading headline for Slashdot. I don't comment much here on Slashdot but in the name of all that is holy, who posts this crap?
At least it's not a dupe, yet.
There's something about them. They make you institutionalized. At first you hate them. Then you learn to live with them. And before you know it, you find yourself depending on them.
from the article:
"Usually dolphins were controlled via signals transmitted through a neck harness. 'The question is, were these dolphins made secure before Katrina struck?' said Sheridan."
Is this to imply that these dolphins aren't relying on their friendly master's familiar scent or unique vocal pattern?? Their friendly master might not be friendly at all, and just a computer operated by a human, and any human at that!
I must find these dolphins.
"Conn, sonar! We have an unidentified contact, bearing three-five-niner, range unknown!"
"What the hell? That sounds really weird... I never heard anything that quiet, but yet surely, there's something th---"
"DARTS IN THE WATER! Incoming darts!"
Next day:
An American Sub Sunk During Routine Exercises
The DoD still hasn't released any detailes about the incident, although they have confirmed that a Seawolf class submarine took a hit from an unknown weapon during a routince training exercise in the northern part of the Atlantic. It is speculated that the submarine was wrongly identified as a terrorist vessel by a squadron of the Dolphin Anti-Terrorist Task force. The Departament of Defense refused to comment.
This is a sig. It is appended to the end of comments I post.
Huh. How'd they do that?
I hope they didn't do it in the same way the Russian army taught dogs to drop satchel charges under German tanks. You see, they used Russian tanks to train them. So when they got into battle with the Germans, what did the dogs do when given live, armed satchel charges? Delivered them right under Russian tanks, of course. That plan was rather quickly abandoned.
The US Army hasn't faired much better; they armed bats with incendiary devices- the plan was that, release from a plane over Japan, they'd find refuged in building overhangs and whanot. They were kept calm by refridgeration. So during one of the trial runs (incidentally, the first trial run with live ammo), some genius decides they need a picture of the bats. It's pitch dark, so the photographer uses a flash. Which not only wakes up the bats, but startles them as well...
...and as they say, "hilarity ensued."
Please help metamoderate.
I was watching a show on this the other day. Apparently the dolphins are trained as if it is a game. When they kill for real they are traumatized by it and become useless to the navy at that point. Unfortunately they have no better means of dealing with underwater demolitions teams than tricking fun-loving creatures into becoming murderers.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
General Lance Lord, we need you!
General "Ohhh, so now you like our dolphin jamming satellites!"
HOW did this get marked informative, when at best, you are funny (though not really). Just out of curiosity, would you know who that A.C. is that it running around and knocking one editor and trying to replace him with you?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Well, if the Navy Dolphins have been released, there can be only one solution... There is ony one team that can bring them back.
...
We must release the Navy Seals
(Sorry, had to be said)
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
This is the most brilliant thing you've ever seen here?
Resisting my immediate Pythonesque urge to say "No, it isn't." and start an argument (the long course), I thought about that.
I guess that might make Slashdot the antithesis of the US Air Force then. Their slogan is "aim high". Slashdots might be "aim low and keep sinking" (as far as particularly sharp witticisms go).
Obviously, this post just proves the point. My IronyDetector(TM) is in overload mode.
Anyway, I don't seal what the big flapper is about this cod-forsakenly-bad humour. This isn't the funniest bit since Noah's shark. And we keep hoping it dolphin ish up soon. Further posts could make folks crabby. You'd have to be a strange manta want more. It's an eel impulse, I tell you. Perch the thought!
(Okay, that was a poor copy of the original few, who used up most of the good seafood...)
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
So basically, some marine biologist read "Ender's Game," and wrote a really good budget proposal....
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
First the plauge carrying mice disappear, and now dolphins with dart guns might have gotten loose. Maybe we are the third smartest species and they're just building up their arsenal....
What does this button do...
...the dolphins are trained to kill insturgeons.
(sorry!)
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
Is it april 1st already?
There have been stories about the marine mammal program before, and regular fights with animal rights groups. It is no longer classified though, so anyone can go find out plenty of information at the project's official website. You can also check out their FAQ. It pretty clearly states that dolphins and sea lions are only used for marking and tagging, and that they are not used offensively since they can't really distinguish friendly forces and foes. It seems some people still refuse to give up on speculation however.
Anyway, I seriously doubt that dolphins are being used with poison darts, since the Navy seems to prefer using sea lions now (They don't need storage pools, work better in tight areas like harbors and piers, and tolerate more varying temperatures). And even if there *were* poison dart weilding dolphins, why on earth would they be left armed while at a training facility during a storm?
Hundreds of Tuna Fishermen have been killed from unknown toxins..
Now THATS dolphin safe tuna.
The road between democracy and tyranny is paved with secrecy in the name of security.
Somebody heard them say
"So long and thanks for all the fish"
I welcome our new dolphin overloards, until we get hungry and eat them or they strangle themselves on 6pack can fasteners.
All Hail King Snorky
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
Reminds me of "The Incredible Mr. Limpet" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058230/)
Really though, this could be interesting...
I don't know, but they can't be worse than the people they hire to work at airports currently. I mean, dolphins are supposed to be intelligent.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
and I was taught that the unloaded guns are the most dangerous ones.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
The US Navy refers to its dolphin units as "Marine Mammal Systems", and documents the purpose of each unit. Individual units are trained for mine hunting, force protection, and object recovery.
Assuming that these dolphins are not part of a separate program, presumably the loose mammals are part of Marine Mammal System Mark VI. Note that the Navy Marine Mammal Program FAQ includes the following item:
Does the Navy train its dolphins for offensive warfare, including attacks on ships and human swimmers or divers?
No. The Navy does not now train, nor has it ever trained, its marine mammals to harm or injure humans in any fashion or to carry weapons to destroy ships. A popular movie in 1973 ("The Day of the Dolphin") and a number of charges and claims by animal rights organizations have resulted in theories and sometimes actual beliefs that Navy dolphins are assigned attack missions. This is absolutely false. Since dolphins cannot discern the difference between enemy and friendly vessels, or enemy and friendly divers and swimmers, it would not be wise to give that kind of decision authority to an animal. The animals are trained to detect, locate, and mark all mines or all swimmers in an area of interest or concern, and are not trained to distinguish between what we would refer to as good or bad. That decision is always left to humans.
I find trace references to the fact that the former anti-swimmer system (the Shallow Water Intruder Detection System) was supplanted by something new involving dolphins. In the old system, a sea lion would swim up to an unknown frogman with an open-jawed clamp attached to a line attached to its nose, ram into the frogman, and then signal the handler -- the frogman would essentially become "handcuffed" to the line, easy to reel in.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
And discover the following:
Does the Navy train its dolphins for offensive warfare, including attacks on ships and human swimmers or divers?
No. The Navy does not now train, nor has it ever trained, its marine mammals to harm or injure humans in any fashion or to carry weapons to destroy ships. A popular movie in 1973 ("The Day of the Dolphin") and a number of charges and claims by animal rights organizations have resulted in theories and sometimes actual beliefs that Navy dolphins are assigned attack missions. This is absolutely false. Since dolphins cannot discern the difference between enemy and friendly vessels, or enemy and friendly divers and swimmers, it would not be wise to give that kind of decision authority to an animal. The animals are trained to detect, locate, and mark all mines or all swimmers in an area of interest or concern, and are not trained to distinguish between what we would refer to as good or bad. That decision is always left to humans.
Does the Navy ask the dolphins and sea lions to do dangerous things?
The dolphins locate and mark the location of sea mines which are designed to be set off by large ships, not aquatic animals. In the swimmer detection program, dolphins and sea lions move so quickly and with such accuracy that human swimmers in dark or murky waters are located and marked before they know what has happened. Once the marking has been completed, the animals are removed from the area before mines are disarmed or swimmers are apprehended by trained security forces. Marine mammals are actually in more danger from sharks, and wild marine mammals are put in much more danger by people who feed them (which is why it is illegal).
Why have there been so many rumors about the NMMP over the years?
Several decades of classification of the program's true missions of mine-hunting and swimmer defense, led to media speculation and animal activist charges of dolphins used as offensive weapons, speculation and charges that could not be countered with facts due to that classification. Additionally, fantasy is often times more interesting than reality. With declassification of the missions of the program in the early 1990s, the Navy has repeatedly and openly discussed those missions, but rumors are not easily forgotten, and there are those who continue to actively promote them.
In response to charges that the program abused the animals, the presidentially appointed Marine Mammal Commission investigated the program in 1988 and 1990. The Commission reported that the allegations were not only false, but that the Navy's care of its marine mammals was "exemplary."
Then, of course, we'd realize this guy was a kook, and that Slashdot is recycling stories that Art Bell wouldn't cover. Certainly makes you think twice about the journalistic integrity of the Guardian, though.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Hey, they treat the dolphins as bad as they treat people!
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
Hmm... somebody is having trouble keeping their various cute and lovable kid's show characters separate...
For the record
Don't mean to troll, I'm just sayin'
Shouldn't poison dart tipped dolphins be under Hardware Hacking with the other case mods?
Dolphins are mammals, not fish. If you're going to monkey around with species-related puns, at least stick to the same class of vertebrates. This has been the giant elephant in the room throughout this thread.
You know what they say; an armed society is a polite society. Have you heard of a single dolphin-on-dolphin crime using a toxic dartgun that occurred when both dolphin were armed?
I didn't think so.
...is whether the Navy fed them or let them hunt for food. If they fed them every day, their likelihood of surviving in the Gulf diminishes rapidly. If, on the other hand, they were taught to hunt for food, they could potentially pose a hazard. We don't have to worry too much about fishermen getting poked, as all of the water around there is now contaminated and shouldn't be used for fishing anyway.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
For once in his life he could have been useful.
-G
The last few weeks have been hellish. My house in New Orleans flooded out, my TV was stolen by looters, my food and water by the mayor's thugs, and now there's a bunch of dolphins in my living room making me type for them. If there are any search geniuses out there, please help me find the current whereabouts of Flipper, as the lasers on their heads are starting to get unnerving. They promised to fry me if I can't find their god ... er ... Flipper.
Please help.
"If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern"
You're referring to fascism , "the merger of state and corporate power" (according to Mussolini, its first biggest booster).
"Corporate" doesn't mean what you think it means in this context.
Wikipedia gives a good history of corporatism.
"Under Fascism in Italy, business owners, employees, trades-people, professionals, and other economic classes were organized into 22 guilds, or associations, known as "corporations" according to their industries, and these groups were given representation in a legislative body known as the Camera dei Fasci e delle Corporazioni."
So you see, "the merger of state and corporate power" doesn't just mean businesses. Today such a system might include corporations such as the AFL/CIO and other labor unions. Yes, they are corporations, too.
And business never "owned" government under Fascism. Fascism is primarily about putting the state above the individual, indeed above everything, include businesses.
Doctrine of Fascism
"The corporate State considers that private enterprise in the sphere of production is the most effective and usefu [sic] [typo-should be: useful] instrument in the interest of the nation. In view of the fact that private organisation of production is a function of national concern, the organiser of the enterprise is responsible to the State for the direction given to production.
State intervention in economic production arises only when private initiative is lacking or insufficient, or when the political interests of the State are involved. This intervention may take the form of control, assistance or direct management. (pp. 135-136) "
Benito Mussolini, 1935, Fascism: Doctrine and Institutions, Rome: 'Ardita' Publishers.
Perhaps the Dolphins were just defending their fish supply from the other dolphins who were trying to loot it.
Randy.Flood@RHCE2B.COM
It's real simple, when these critters run out of darts, they'll return for more; That's when they'll get recaptured. Of course, if any of these things wonder into a "Liquor and Ammo" store in the "Big Easy"; Well, I'd hate to think what would happen if these critters got drunk AND reloaded all at the same time. Just how intelligent are these killers?
I for one, welcome our new Dolphin Overloards. Squee squee, masters.
Just remember that the list was made by someone who wanted to prove that America was fascist, and set out to find points of commonality, however tenuous. As evidenced by conspiracy theories, you can draw connections between anything if you try hard enough.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
This is the first time I've heard anyone make fascism look attractive.
Maybe I need to break out of my idiot savant mode and study some political science.
It's not surprising that fascism might look attractive. Dictators don't just come to power with zero support. There have to be enough people to believe in and be attracted to the philosophy. It has to look good for people to accept it. Hitler and Mussolini had plenty of popular support.
What's interesting is how time and again this idea of placing society always before the individual ends with dictatorship. We have our intuitions about how the state can be used to create a utopian society, and these intuitions turn out to be mostly wrong in practice.
How exactly are the darts fired? Do the dolphins pull the trigger with their fins?
and i gotta say it: where are the sharks with laser beams attached to their heads?