Slashdot Mirror
Giant Rabbits To Feed North Korea
iamdrscience writes with news of an East German pensioner who breeds rabbits the size of dogs. Karl Szmolinsky won a prize for breeding Germany's largest rabbit, at 23 lbs., in 2006. News photos reached the North Koreans, who asked through their embassy whether Szmolinsky would be willing to sell them some as foodstocks — each rabbit yields about 15 lb. of meat. A deal was struck and Szmolinsky will be traveling to North Korea in April to help them set up a breeding program. (The photos in the article use the most extreme, contrived camera angles to make the rabbits look even more huge.)
Because dogs eat protein so that would defeat the purpose.
And a beef will rise again, broken machine in his hand. Ten words: snapping bunnies twitching gurgling forget the bombs in your eyes. Roaring with whispers to the tiny bunnies SMASH/SPLAT those fucking bunnies. Send them information in a sensationalist manner, THEY CORRUPT. Heads snapping and misspelling eyes twitching in response to the sound of the words. Red world-like words zooming boiling. Moons in the shallow sky. Roaring with whispers to the tiny bunnies SPLAT/SQUISH those fucking bunnies. Twitching bleeding screaming bring the hammer down. Screaming bunnies bleeding bloody bunnies smeared across the ground. Drool spilling down his chin unto his beard as he screams red words at A blank and pointless sky of mothers. Red words popping and crackling black. Ten words: Snapping bunnies twitching gurgling forget the bombs IN YOUR EYES. Forget the bombs in your eyes. Speak the words to crack open the sky
I'm not a vegetarian myself, but even this raises questions regarding the efficiency of such an operation.
Is it more efficient to feed these rabbits vegetable matter to be converted to protein (which, according to the article, is what the diet of many N. Koreans is deficient in), or would it be better instead to grow protein-rich plants that can be consumed directly by the people?
If the rabbits can consume grasses and other things that humans are unable to digest efficiently, and convert that into protein, then I suppose it would make sense.
"The unicode stuff in the latest version is working fabulously well. My russian mafia friends are ecstatic."
In Soviet North Korea, rabbits eat you!
Seriously though, how absurd is it that anyone thinks this is going to make any difference: it's a Communist dictatorship. The government runs food production and distribution, so of course they don't have enough food. All the rabbits in the world won't change that. It's sad and absurd that the average North Korean is still paying the price for a government that ignores that basic fact, proven so thoroughly and with so many graves in the 20th century.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Why don't the North Koreans just continue to eat dogs?
A dog must eat meat to grow, which means you have to first feed an animal that you feed to the dog. As you can understand this is wastefull since you'll loose energy in the conversion from vegetables to dogfood.
The problem is that any conversion from vegetables to meat is a lossy one, so in the end even the rabbits are a stupid (yet so brilliantly communistic) idea. It would be better to grow crops and feed the north Koreans vegetarian food. (though they might want to rebell if forced to eat just carrots)
If you see a rock violating the law of gravity, then the law is wrong, not the rock!
Did anyone else find this quote amusing, from the original article?
"I'm not increasing production and I'm not taking any more orders after this. They cost a lot to feed," he [German Farmer] said.
They're too expensive to feed for the German farmer to continue. By German rabbit-breeding standards. Now if the North Korean regime already (and allegedly) finds it too expensive to feed it's own people on even the lowest standards, how is diverting those much needed foodstuffs to rabbits going to solve anything?
Usually there's a logic to this. Unfortunately, the same people powering this decision are the same people that had the foresight of building a massive hotel that couldn't be finished (you know what I'm talking about if you're familiar with Pyongyang.)
Incredible what the in-house propaganda machine can get away with
Those were exactly my thoughts reading the comments attached to this article.
Communism is just a precursor of Dictatorship.
This is because Marx had this stupid idea of condoning or even encouraging violence as the way to achieve Communism.
So when you have a "Communist" Revolution ala Marx, guess who ends up becoming leader of the country?
The one who was willing AND able to exert the most violence.
Yeah, that's right, most of the time you get Mr "Silence all Opposition".
Marx's Communism is severely flawed because of this.
You basically have to wait till you get taken over by a Benevolent Dictator, or the Evil Dictator hands power to nondictators, or Mr Dictator has a change of heart.
> move to countries like the US.
Should be: "move to countries like what the US used to be".
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Dictatorship is a precursor to communism.
Move specifically, the "dictatorship of the proletariat". It is in the official Marxist road to Communism, a temporary state of dictatorship that should lead to the promised land.
Just about all self-declared Marxist regimes claimed to be the "dictatorship of the proletariat" state, being bright enough not to claim to the people that the current state of affairs was he best they could hope for. The one exception I know of was Albania, which at some point claimed to have reached "true Communism".
It has been rough to get there, but those intellectuals that still dream of Communism have mostly reached the conclusion that any kind of dictatorship of temporarily suspension civil rights are *not* acceptable steps on the way. It just took a few (well, rather more than a few) million lives to get to that insight.
Hopefully it will take less than that for the neo-Conservative to see that torture and other suspension of civil rights are not acceptable means to reach their goals, neither abroad or at home. Unless, of course, that is their goals.
In Australia the rabbits are even bigger - I think they call them 'roos'...
This reminds me of what happened in Australia when the brought rabbits there in the first place. Granted, I guess there already are native rabbits in North Korea, but it's a very risky business to bring in foreign species into an ecosystem.
The first episode of the documentary Strange Days on Planet Earth illustrates that quite clearly.
>Seriously though, how absurd is it that anyone thinks this is going to make any difference
In Roman Britain Rabbits were an important food supplement. A large number could be easily be fed and cared for by the Children while the parents did more arduous agricultural tasks such as attempting to grow crops or maintain larger animals.
Pretty bad that in 2006 we have come to this though, especially when the US and EU ploughing food back into the soil and African countries would dearly love to be able to have foreign food markets.
My little Linux and tech blog
All the rabbits in the world won't change that.
Maybe not but it certainly might help. Rabbits can survive on grass and crude silage, can be grown in relatively small areas and reproduce reliably. Faster than goats, the most widely eaten animal on the planet.
Similar husbandry programs with cavia porcellus, guinea pigs to you, have helped many families lift themselves out of poverty in Peru and other areas in South America.
Rabbits would be better suited to the colder climate of North Korea. The fur would provide a secondary revenue source. It may not sound like much but when you're dirt poor having meat to eat and furs to trade is big deal.
How is this not a good thing? Why would you want to see the North Korean people starve just because their government is the asshat of the world? That's almost as silly as people hating all Americans because Bush is a douche bag. It's not like they elected that idiot in North Korea and there's growing evidence we didn't elect our idiot, either.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Dude, here's a nickel, buy a clue. Sure, large bureaucracies cause inefficiencies but that is so far from the primary reason for North Korea's current situation it's absurd, in fact offensive, to make the comparison. You are seriously lacking in a sense of perspective.
Go for it, son, define "large" for me. Give me some numbers. We have plenty of bureaucracies that are as large or far larger than the entire North Korean government, General Motors, for example, and while they may be inefficient, they do not leave millions of their own starving to death or subject to a high likelihood of torture or death. Equating the two is beyond wrong, it's flat out irresponsible.
Those of us living in reality point, rather, to lack of accountability, lack of transparency, inefficient cross-communications, y'know, the stuff that us actual experts in industrial organization are always willing to explain to those clued enough to pay attention.
You go out there and talk to some genuine experts in the reasons for North Korea's current state. Read up on, say, rule of law. See what energetically capitalist outlets like the Wall Street Journal have to say about the causes of North Korea's problems.Then come back and we'll have this chat again.
Oh, and if you're so hyped on decentralization, tell me, what in the real world have you done to bring that about? Personally, I've been working at that for over twenty years, just testified this past week on government procedures to New York's city council. This wasn't so bad since I've been dealing with the senior relevant councilman since, oh, about two months since he was elected, back in '01.
So, how about you. What have you accomplished?
Data is the lever, rigor the fulcrum, brains the force that drives it all.
slopes go both ways, we went up a slope, now were going back down one. Returning to the good old days is the problem.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
If I remember correctly it was an executive order that create Japanese internment camps. Not legislation, not a federal court, but an order sent out on the sole authority of the President. At least Guantanamo Bay has congressional support.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns