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200 Dolphins Await Slaughter In Japan's Taiji Cove
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "CNN reports that more than 200 bottlenose dolphins remain penned in a cove by Japanese fishermen, many of them stressed and bloodied from their attempts to escape before fishermen start to slaughter them for meat. Until now, the fishermen have focused on selecting dolphins to be sold into captivity at marine parks and aquariums in Japan and overseas as twenty-five dolphins, including a rare albino calf, were taken on Saturday 'to a lifetime of imprisonment,' and another 12 on Sunday. 'Many of the 200+ Bottlenose dolphins who are in still the cove are visibly bloody & injured from their attempts to escape the killers,' one update says. Although the hunting of dolphins is widely condemned in the west, Japanese defend the practice as a local custom — and say it is no different to the slaughter of other animals for meat. The Wakayama Prefecture, where Taiji is located condemns the criticism as biased and unfair to the fishermen. 'Taiji dolphin fishermen are just conducting a legal fishing activity in their traditional way in full accordance with regulations and rules under the supervision of both the national and the prefectural governments. Therefore, we believe there are no reasons to criticize the Taiji dolphin fishery.' Meanwhile the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society describes how about 40 to 60 local fishermen work with nets to divide up the pod, whose initial numbers were estimated by the group at more than 250. 'They tighten up the nets to bring each sub-group together then the skiffs push them toward the tarps. Under the tarps in the shallows is where the trainers work with the killers to select the "prettiest" dolphins which will sell and make the best pay day for the hunters,' the group says. The fishermen will 'kill the "undesirable" dolphins (those with nicks and scars) under the tarps to hide from our cameras when that time comes.'"
Dolphins are intelligent, they'll figure a way out of this.
Not a biased piece at all. Never would have thought so with ''slaughter'' in the headline /s
Yes, dolphins are cuter than cows and pigs ... is harvesting one worse than the other?
How many million cows are slaughtered every year? How many pigs? How many chickens?
This sounds like one set of animals has better PR than another.
Really, this isn't the news I would expect for this site.
Don't really give a shit. How is this tech worthy?
It is always easier to criticize another country's slaughter of marine mammals than your own. Bowheads are critically endangered, yet they are still hunted is no fanfare.
if you feel security is important,,, try POT (Personal Open Terminal) leaving no question as to who & how we share our connections etc.... with. never a better time to consider ourselves in relation to creation just like the fishes we are
On average, about 8000 children die every day because they do not have enough to eat.
But that's not news.
Why am I supposed to care about 200 dolphins?
This is the type of life that CONservatives want for all animals.
Of _course_ it's clickbait. Dolphins are cute and friendly.
Now if they were sharks or snakes, nobody would care, and we wouldn't be reading about it, regardless of their ecological importance.
Just another case of dumb, hyper-emotional people getting upset and attention-whoring. Nothing really to see here.
I've never had dolphin meat. Can anyone here enlighten me about the taste of it? Does it taste like other fish?
Millions of cows and pigs live happy happy rainbow lives in the west~~~
Why is this on Slashdot?
Where is the tech angle?
Any suggestions of sites that serve content as Slashdot used to do 10 years ago?
Cows and especially pigs are highly intelligent animals. And they are totally delicious. Let's change our minds about those before we beat up the Japanese too badly, shall we?
What is the outrage? This species of dolphin is not at all endangered. It's perfectly acceptable meat.
This just sounds like one big emotional summary about fishing. Heavily one-sided as well, which doesn't surprise me considering it's Sea Shepard.
Cry me a river.
Tradition is not a defense. Not even partial. If their traditional vocation were rounding up people and carving them up to sell their organs, then their tradition would be one the world would rightly seek to eradicate. This is morally equivalent, and I don't give a crap whether anyone agrees.
...will they be able to certify it as tuna-safe ?
All I have to say about this is these Japs are fucking retards! Daulphins are smarter than most humans out there for one thing. And yes we do kill cows, pigs, chicken, But we dont terrorize them for days on end before doing so. (If some of them do then shame on those fucking morons to)
Why is this on slashdot?
Like others had said, we kill millions of animals every single day in the name of foods, etc. I don't see this as any worse or any better than slaughter houses killing farm animals. Perhaps the only slight difference is these dolphins are in the wild. It is the same as "fishermen" in Canada killing baby seals, "fishermen" in Finland killing whales, etc. What should we do though as a consumer? Vote with your money/pocket! What should we do as a human being? ...
No, this is not clickbait.
Normal, mentally-healthy humans have a lot of empathy - otherwise we're psychopaths. Sure, the amount of empathy varies - mainly as a function of whether the animal in question tends to act human-like. We should embrace this, not cynically write it off - empathy *IS* humanity.
Yes, that also means that anyone who is intelligent and reflective will be uncomfortable with eating meat, concerned how the animal died, and of course what kind of animal it was. This is basically orthogonal to issues of environmental or ecological impact.
How does this matter to a nerd? Will it affect the release of a stable btrfs?
Although the hunting of dolphins is widely condemned in the west, Japanese defend the practice as a local custom ...
You know, back in the 1940s, it was local US custom to intern Japanese Americans. Apparently, we don't do that any more...
... and say it is no different to the slaughter of other animals for meat.
Some would argue that killing dolphins (and whales) is more akin to killing humans [ or at least chimps - or Republicans (kidding, Kidding - geesh) ] than other animals killed for their meat, due to their high intelligence. For example, Dolphins don't build nuclear reactors in earthquake and/or tsunami zones.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Dolphins aren’t as special as you think
Their intelligence, like all intelligence, is a complex matter, but basically, they are not as smart as their reputation suggests; although, stating that they are as smart (dumb) as chickens also overstates things.
This is NOT tech news.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Please never compare slavery and eating meat. As a black male, I find that repulsive and hyperbolic.
Vegetarianism is about the minimization of cruelty and suffering.
Plant life does not factor into it because they can not suffer. They can’t suffer because they have no nervous system with which to think. They also have no physical mechanisms with which to feel pain. And even if they did, they have no thoughts, so the pain would mean nothing. They have no fear, panic, or sadness. They live, but they live without consciousness. So you can not torture a plant or make it suffer.
On the animal spectrum, not all animals are the same since some animals have small brains and simple thoughts and other animals have complex brains and complex thoughts. At the top of the animal spectrum you have humans with the most complex brains and abstract thoughts and intense sensations of fear. Humans have a high capacity to suffer. On the other end of the spectrum you have animals like spiders with comparatively simple nervous systems and simple thoughts. They have a much smaller capacity to suffer. That’s why it would feel more painful to watch someone rip the legs off a spider than watch someone rip the legs off a cat or horse or chimpanzee. So there’s a spectrum of animals ordered by how self-aware they are and how complex their thinking is: spiders, fish, chickens, ravens, octopus, cats, dogs, pigs, cows, horses, dolphins, gorillas, chimpanzees, humans... roughly something like that. Everyone draws a line on the spectrum, whether consciously or unconsciously, what they are comfortable with. Some people are fine eating fish and chicken, but not pigs and cows. Other people are fine eating pigs and cows, but not chimpanzees, who are almost human. Some people are even fine eating chimpanzees and feel no empathy when they shout and panic. Almost everyone at least agrees that it’s not ok to eat humans. But some people even do that. A vegetarian draws the line at it being not ok to eat any animal.
Some people argue that oysters, despite being animals, are vegetarian. They aren’t, by definition of the word vegetarian, but it is true that the argument for plants applies to oysters. Oysters do not have a central nervous system, no consciousness, and no thoughts. So they can not suffer.
Not all vegetarians are vegetarian for the same reasons. Some people have a spiritual belief that all life is sacred and equal, but that’s not my belief and not something that’s supported by any facts I’ve seen. What I outlined above, though, is simple fact and simple reasoning.
Perhaps a better slashdot article would be where to find dolphin recipe's?
There's as good a chance of looking back at vegetarians and vegans as misinformed religious zealots. Slavery is still alive and well in some African countries
Three things:
1. All of your examples included humans, this story isn't about humans. It's about dolphins. (Also, how is this Tech news at all?)
2. Even if our morals do change to include all animals in the category of "no eating", that time is not now. If people look back in horror at this, so what? I'm not them, they're not me.
3. Kind of related to #2: Animals will continue eating other animals (and I would like to point out that none of your examples occur to the general animal populace either, strange disconnect). That's not suddenly going to change even if human's morals do. So does that mean that the other animals are less moral than humans?
Also, meat is just so damn tasty. Who would want to give that up?
200 Fishermen Await Slaughter In Japan's Taiji Cove.
The prettiest one will be sold as escort boys to a lifetime of servitude and slavery in the sex industry. The ugly ones (the majority) will be slaughtered just for fun. Their organs will be sold, their bones turned either in soap or sold as educational skeletons. Critics are told it is a custom and millions of people are killed worldwide in wars and accidents. It's no different.
A hundred years? I've got news for you, Future Boy...
I wonder when the next earthquake, tsunami, typhoon, or other disaster will hit Japan.
let us not forget that one time dolphins were trained to assassinate the president of the united states. and they would have succeeded too, if it werent for the meddling of human interlopers.
see here for a documentary film about these terrorists:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Dolphin
I guess we can't infringe on tradition, especially if there's money involved. Better go tell those plantation owners they can have their slaves back.
In one hundred years we'll look back at the practice of eating meat with the same horror that we look upon slavery now.
Spoken like someone who doesn't know the taste of a truly nice piece of meat.
In one hundred years we'll look back at the practice of eating meat with the same horror that we look upon slavery now.
If not because of the ethics at least because of the greenhouse effects which will still be around.
At least if that vegan restaurant's ads are to be believed. Which I'm kind of skeptical of, though that might just be me wanting to not feel bad about all the cheeseburgers I eat.
In one hundred years we'll look back at the practice of eating meat with the same horror that we look upon slavery now.
In one hundred years, 99.999% of meat will come from vats.
Put LASERS on them and then it should be an article for this site. But otherwise anyone for Lunch?
In one hundred years we'll look back at the practice of eating meat with the same horror that we look upon slavery now.
I highly doubt this. I don't want to start a flame war over sources of protein, etc, but in terms of nutrition, animals are a lifesaver. I don't think there is enough social pressure to make this happen in the same way as slavery.
As far as I understand, the abolition of slavery in the US at least was primarily political rather than humanitarian. http://www.tulane.edu/~latner/Background/BackgroundElection.html. While almost anything can be used for political leverage, meat-eating will be a hard one to pull.
In one hundred years we'll look back at the practice of eating meat with the same horror that we look upon slavery now.
In one hundred years, we'll look back at the practice of eating natural meat with horror. Would you have a problem with lab-grown meat?
Everything is better with chainsaws.
warehoused in workhouses in horrific conditions.
That's today. That's how they made the hardware you're using to read this. Guess you're not interested in paying 2x or 3x for products made by citizens of your own country, paid the prevailing wages and protected by the regulations you demand.
Funny how that reality is as equally far away has some Japanese fishing village, but you don't seem to be aware of it, or you don't care, or both.
Selective outrage.
Dolphins are apex predators. They rip screaming porpoises and penguins into bloody masses and play with the pieces. Pods of dolphins create as much fear among the prayed upon creatures of the ocean as any species that has ever existed. That's the universe you live in. Grow up and deal with it.
That sort of escalated rather quickly.
I can recommend the movie The Cove: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1313104/reference
It's not particularly happy though.
That's highly doubtful. We might grow the meat in labs, but we won't stop eating it. Fucking moron.
Why is it that some people seem to care more about the death of 200 dolphins than the death of 200,000 Syrians?
Dolphin aren't fish. The people who hunt them aren't fishing.
Just sayin'
We eat pigs, so killing of mammals, even smart ones, isn't a 'thing' for most of us. But dolphins may approach humans in intelligence, so maybe we shouldn't.
that the people condemning this will in the evening treat themselves to a steak, from animals that are systematically bred, raised in captivity, and slaughtered for food.
Are we now expected to read political propaganda instead of tech news?
Hugh Dot Pickens needs a timeout.
just means that my and other peoples personal boycott of all japanese products will run longer and we will slowly convert more people into their own boycott as well as joining larger,organised boycotts and protests. they refuse to stop,and like tuna and lots of others will not be happy until only farmed fish exist and anything that was in oceans is extinct. wonder how japs do floating in arctic waters when there ships hull
Should have used a sarcasm tag. I will remember next time.
What are you waiting for?, Administration.
Send the drones or nuke those bastards again. They never learn.
I like to think of whales as see beef and dolphins as sea pork
my mouth is watering just reading about this
I once thought that the pin heads in charge of the Fuckashima Newclear Plant were just unlucky. There appears to a trend here of repressed dumb fecal matter in the land of the raising bum.
I'm salivating all that meat looks delicious
Perhaps Dolphins find it repulsive and hyperbolic in the other direction.
Now what does your gender have to do with anything? Are you implying superiority over the other gender?
stressed dophin *tastes* better, round-eye?
I suggest you read into the work of Dr Cleve Backster
He's a scientist who started out as a CIA polygraph expert, and he decided one day, "what would happen if I took my polygraph and hooked it up to the leaf of this plant?". Well, he was very surprised, because, unlike smooth, unchanging wavelengths, which he thought he would see from the plant, instead he ended up with a shifting dynamic wave, which was more indicative of what you would expect a human being to be like, with the exception that skin, kind of acts as a dampening agent to the electrical current. But the plant has a very active dynamic electrical current.
Well, then he said, "This plant is acting so much like a human being, what if I ran the plant through stress, similar to how you do a human on the lie detector?" The whole purpose of the lie detection is, you want to get this person into the moment, when you say, "Did you fire the shot who killed so and so?" And the person has a shock, and they're not happy, they're not enthusiastic about your question. So, so they end up saying, "no of course I didn't kill him", and then the graph goes crazy!
So he says, "How do I shock a plant"? He tried dipping one of the leaves in his coffee. That didn't work. He tried a variety of little things like that, when he got the idea in his mind, without actually even doing it, but he just got the idea, of going and taking a match, lighting the match, striking it, then holding it to one of the leaves and burning the leaf.
The plant had an enormous reaction, and in fact did not stop until after he had actually gone and done it, burnt the leaf, and then taken the matches out of the room again. Only once the threat was gone, and he was out of the room, did the plant finally calm down.
So yes, plants just like human beings suffer and go through stress. It's not a good argument to use for "cruelty and suffering"
The Japanese consider dolphin meat to be a delicacy and serve it in their high priced restaurants. See if any of those restaurants are used to cater/host sales conferences or other such bashes of Japanese brand names. Then just publicize the info. Headlines like "Tonda Corp or Hoyota Motors hosts its sales kick off conference with dolphin meat serving restaurant" in US Market will have some salutary effect. If big name players stop supporting restaurants serving marine mammal meat the market will be greatly diminished. Hopefully.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E39WWj_RpBc
Japanese defend the practice as a local custom — and say it is no different to the slaughter of other animals for meat
They are right. Killing other animals is equally cruel and barbaric, but for some reason people don't seem to mind it as much. Probably because most people don't normally eat dolphin meat, but they do eat beef, pork, poultry, fish, etc., so killing catlle, pigs, birds and fish is alright...
As a human, it would be murder for me to kill the whalers. But, if I were to give weapons to the dolphins and if they could figure out how to use them... Well, you can't really fault me for what happens, can you?* And of course, the dolphins can't be blamed for acting in self defense.
*I know that would never stand up in court. Law is more about majority opinion than logic.
1 - It's not just about dolphins. It's about human treatment of dolphins.
2 - That's your prerogative. Personally if I lived in the revolutionary war period I'd prefer it if my legacy was on the abolitionist side.
3 - The question of "morality" in other life forms is irrelevant. Morality is a human trait.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
In one hundred years we'll look back at the practice of eating meat with the same horror that we look upon slavery now.
Spoken like someone who doesn't know the taste of a truly nice piece of meat.
I became vegetarian two years ago. I'm 38. Chances are I've eaten more meat in my lifetime than you have.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
In one hundred years we'll look back at the practice of eating meat with the same horror that we look upon slavery now.
In one hundred years, we'll look back at the practice of eating natural meat with horror. Would you have a problem with lab-grown meat?
I would have no problem with lab grown meat as long as it's safe and healthy. As long as a living animal didn't have to suffer and die, that's fine by me.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Nice try, AC, but as you know China is still going through their own industrial revolution. We got the working conditions thing sorted out in the west a long time ago, and we're not going back to Dickensian working conditions despite the best efforts of some people.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Black slaves weren't bred for food, and weren't slaughtered on industrial production lines.
Slavery was an institution that many people thought was sacrosanct and was so entwined into all aspects of society that it was unthinkable that it would ever be abolished. But a more evolved sense of morality prevailed. My comparison is entirely valid.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Over 9 billion chickens and 115 million pigs are slaughtered every year in the US.
Hopefully not from the vats in Mariposa run by Richard Grey; those vats are tainted.
Fire Sazempus NOW and never, ever post another submission from hugh pickens DOT DICKWAD AGAIN!
This shit is getting really old, really fast.
Animals are an inherently inefficient means of getting energy into the human body. Eating meat is also much more prone to health problems, obesity being the most pressing.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
As many other users have mentioned, the line that you draw to decide what you will and will not kill/eat is pretty much arbitrary.
I am in their camp. I don't understand why this is news, or why it was written in such a way as to paint the Japanese Fisherman as evil. Again, as other users have mentioned, we eat pigs, which is considered intelligent as well (albeit not as intelligent as Dolphins).
What is going to have every nutrient and vitamin you need to survive? Other mammals, like you. Obviously torturing them for no reason would be inhumane, but a line has to be drawn somewhere. Eat them. But try not to make them suffer without reason. That's my thinking anyway.
Galactic News Network reports that more than 7 billions hairless apes remain quarantined in a solar system by the Virgo Galactic Cluster sustenance maintainers, many of them stressed and bloodied from their attempts to survive with only primitive technology before the great harvest. Until now, the sustenanceers have focused on selecting creatures to be experimented on sexually for educational entertainment as twenty-five earthlings, including rare cattle genitalia, were taken on Pulseday 'to a lifetime of expermentation,' and another 12 on Synchday. 'Many of the 7 billion+ Hairless apes who are still trapped in their gravity well are visibly bloody and distressed from their primitive plight in ignorance of their ultimate demise,' one overseer says. Although the consumption of sentient forms is widely condemned among the Machine-hive systems, Sustananceers defend the practice as an organic imperative and right of the technologically advanced -- and say it is no different to the harvest of lower complexity photosynthesizing life. Harvesters of the Milky Way Suburbs, where Earth is located, condemns the criticism as biased and unfair to the organics who, unlike their circuit bound comrades, crave the visceral slaughter. 'The Earth ape harvest is a continuation of legitimate feeding practice in accordance with the technical dominance hierarchy under the jurisdiction of both Virgonian Super Cluster and its suburbs. Therefore, we believe there are no reasons to criticize the upcoming Thrice Fried Earther Feast.' Meanwhile the Society for Diverse Sentience describes how 40 to 60 suburbian slaughterers use Quantum Politics to divide up the planet, whose initial inhabitants peacefully coexisted. 'They tighten up the budgets to bring each sub-group together then the vote will push them toward the booth. Inside the booth in the shadows is where trainers work with harvesters to select the "tastiest" gray matter which have the most nuanced flavor and crisp texture,' the sustenanceer says. The harvester fleet will 'vaporize the most "undesirable" apes (those with partisan tendencies) within the booths to hide from the others what terror awaits when the time comes.
Your logic is flawed. You say an animal is an animal, and there's no difference between slaughtering a dolphin and a fish.
There's a world of difference in breeding rates. Dolphins don't breed quickly. Gestation takes longer than it does for humans.
These fishermen are idiots. They think they can kill all the dolphins they can catch, and nature will make more.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
I can think of another mammalian species that isn't anywhere close to being endangered. Best thing is, they already have basically every nutrient we would need in them, since they've been eating the exact same diet!
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Why is this on Slashdot? Is this news for nerds?
Red meat, white meat, blue meat, meat-o-fucking-rama. You will eat it. Because not eating meat is a decision. Eating meat is an instinct! Yeah! And I know what it's about. "I don't want to eat the meat because I love the animals. I love the animals." Hey, I love the animals too. I love my doggy. He's so cute. My fluffy little dog.. He's so cute- There's the problem. We only want to save the cute animals, don't we? Yeah. Why don't we just have animal auditions. Line 'em up one by one and interview them individually. "What are you?" "I'm an otter." "And what do you do?" "I swim around on my back and do cute little human things with my hands." "You're free to go." "And what are you?" "I'm a cow." "Get in the fucking truck, ok pal!" "But I'm an animal." "You're a baseball glove! Get on that truck!" "I'm an animal, I have rights!" "Yeah, here's yer fucking cousin, get on the fucking truck, pal!" We kill the cows to make jackets out of them and then we kill each other for the jackets we made out of the cows.
Should be the status of the fishermen. Just before they are tossed in the water to fend for themselves with ( no longer restrained ) dolphins.
Of course, knowing dolphins and how caring they are, they would most likely rescue the bastards.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
We're more likely to eat herbivorous mammals because they are our "prey". Dolphins should no more be considered prey than wolves.
So long and thanks for all the..... GURGLE
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
I'm also 38, and I choose not to eat fellow predatory mammals, which includes dolphins. Everything else tasty is up for grabs.
We don't eat fellow predatory mammals, which includes dolphins. I doesn't include any of the other animals you mentioned.
Ah yes, race-baiting. A common trait among self-serving and self-centered assholes that happen to be part of a minority.
This rhetorical device - that it's ok to do x because x is natural - is called an "Appeal to Nature". At base, it argues that because something's natural, it's good. You can use it to justify all sorts of things - rape, murder, sticking your dick into anything that moves - all manner of things. One of the nice things about being human is that we're now in a position to choose whether or not to live by following our natural desires. And in many cases, we've chosen not to - we sanction against rape, murder etc, and many, many cultures, we eschew eating meat. So the argument really isn't whether we should eat meat because it's "natural" to do so, but rather, given we don't really need to, should we eat meat. "we should eat meat because it's 'natural' to" isn't really much of an argument.
Slavery was a tradition too. Fucking Japs. Send another nuke their way. Perhaps after they get some well deserved RADS through their thick yellow skin they'll see the light. 1.2 megatons should do the trick.
Why do some people seem to care more about the death of 200,000 Syrians than the death of 500,000 Iraqis? It's a crap argument - you're saying that because people have picked issue A as being worthy of their support over (or perhaps even as well as) issue B, and Issue B is in your view more important than issue A, that caring about issue A is somehow insupportable.
It's not logical to continue doing this simply because it's what they've always done. It's cruel to the animals and with the amount of mercury in their meat, also dangerous to the people who eat the meat. Also keeping them in what amounts to a bath tub for them for people to watch them is cruel. Out in the wild they travel hundreds of kilometers usually. You deny them that freedom. They are not there for your amusement.
Not so arbitrary. Factors include domestication level (dogs on top) and how sorrow-ful they can make their faces look. Cows chickens and pigs (animated ones excepted) not so much with the goo-goo eyes. Dolphins, with that smile, look like they're agreeing to well, everything. Stinks, but that's how most people think about it.
This is the equivelant of people in the United States hunting and killing wolves. Wolves are intelligent, social and organize in the same ways as dolphins. Wolves, and dolphins, are also both tool users and both have language and use names. I would suggest that the USA, and other countries, look to their own sandboxes and stop the practice of killing wolves.
FYI: I'm a rancher. I have wolves that are coworkers on our farm and I deal with their wild brethren without having to resort to killing. I'm not liberal or a tree hugger so get more creative when replying.
In this line up Pigs are easier to raise, harvest and produce a more desirable product.
Chimps at least are not toxic to eat, they are just rare in most parts of the world and are really hard to breed in captivity...Dolphins, while not rare, are laced with dangerous levels of mercury due to their place in the ocean food chain and they are harder to breed.
sorry pigs, try being cuter...pork is really tasty and i don't even eat meat; even i would admit bacon/ham is pretty great....dolphin not so much.
Some moderators are gonna lose their mod points when this parent comes to meta-modding. You can't mod someone down just because you disagree.
Cattle and pigs are slaughtered with regularity because they are easy to herd & domesticate, and they put on weight rapidly eating things we regard as inedible: grass and even our garbage.
Dogs and horses provide valuable services to their human partners in the form of security and transportation. They are typically more valuable alive.
Even the house cat plays an important role in the eradication of disease-ridden household vermin. Unlike mice, you CAN train a cat to shit in just one place.
Domestication by the hairless apes is not for the weak of heart. It's not the cute nor the smart that get spared. Just the useful.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
It depends on what you base your ethics around. You have options. 1) There is a universal right/wrong dictated by God. 2) What is good for humanity as a whole is right. 3) What is good for me personally is right. 4) What is good for intelligent life is right. 5) What is natural is right. 6) What feels good is right. 7)Nothing is right/wrong
If you don't decide what your ethics are based on then how can you decide what is logical???? If you believe #2 then killing dolphins is ok. If you believe #1 then you should check scripture about your diet. If you believe #4 then you need to create a line somewhere. Maybe dolphins is that line.
it has been demonstrated that ravens have advanced mechanical problem solving ability on part with your average human. This means that some ravens have more mechanical problem solving ability than the lower IQ humans.
Agriculture, specifically intensive farming is of course greater impact then this. That is true. So in that sense why bother with this?
Here's why. Its not good for our well being. If we treat animals with brutality then is it no surprise that our enemy in war shows no mercy?
With farming the whole thing is hidden from us from birth to packet. That doesn't make it OK but it does reduce the damage to us.
But critically it can be argued that WE are semi aquatic marine mammal and these animals are close relatives since we moved out of the sea... Taking in the psychology are they closer to us than apes - our fat distribution matches theirs not an apes. We have the dive reflex.
You can say dolphins are cute but isn't that for a reason? A conversation with a dolphin is easier than a cow. Our ease of compassion is due to them being similar to ourselves.
Really its best to observe the ratio of canines vs masticating teeth under your nose - eat meat appropriately - sometimes, not all the time.
A blog I run for the wealth
And people are perplexed when I tell them I'm a misanthrope.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Unlike domestic cows, and chickens, the dolphins suffer a long, and painful, death. According to what I saw on that movie "The Cove" (2009).
Also, according an episode of "Whale Wars" some harpooned whales took as long as 20 minutes to die.
Cows, and chickens, never know what the hit them, whereas trapped dolphins are confused, and terrified, and die horribly.
They may not have written history, but they certainly pass skills on from generation to generation.
They could hunt people if they wanted. But other than the occasional long imprisoned orca that goes mad and drowns a captor, they much prefer to make friends.
I really loath to say this - but as a Human Being I need to say that the dolphins are more civilized than the human beings who stay in Japan !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
http://deepseanews.com/2013/02... Nuff said, karma's a bitch.
All those "open government," "freedom of speech," "we're against violence," "privacy" cries that the /. readers had...
You would think that we would be able to discuss this without trying to coward into idiotic jokes in utter denial.
And to see that all those cowardly comments are the top rated ones. Bah.
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People are governed by the types of governments that they deserve.
"So you can not torture a plant or make it suffer."
My plants only suffer, try as I may...
Following a 1) principle based on 2) an objective measurement (such as intelligence) is the antithesis of arbitrary.
Murder is a subset of unlawful killing. Any killing that is lawful cannot be murder.
They're Yummy !
I don't eat my fellow predatory mammals, which includes dolphins and doesn't include cattle.
We should have nuked those racist scum to carbon when we had a chance. Likewise with the Krauts.
People are outraged by this.
But wait a second, how is this any different from what the British are trying to do with Badgers at the moment?
Or any different from slaughtering cows or sheep for "food?"
Or are cow "less intelligent" than dolphins?
The speed of sound is much greater underwater, and processing all that information requires much more brain devoted to it than our own sense of hearing.
Why the fuck would any brain care what the transit time for a sound was? Information still arrives at the same rate it was sent at. FFS...
Then send a letter to the Japanese Embasy/Consulate in your locale to voice your objection, your reaction (to Boycott Japanese goods) and what is necessary (legal protection of intelligent and endaged species like Whales and Dolphins) to resume buying Japanese products..
http://www.uk.emb-japan.go.jp/
Slashdot, now a wholly owned subsidiary of greenpeace.org.
The very least they could of done is photoshop in some friggin lasers. Is that really too much to ask?
sigs are hazardous to your health
Since I guess most of you can't read Japanese and thus your knowledge on what Japanese think on this matter is rather limited, I think I might try to give a brief overview.
First, most of the younger generations (myself included) have never eaten dolphin/whale meat, and wouldn't care if it gets prohibited. People ate whale meat for some time after the WWII because it was cheap (whale meat used to be served in school meals), but most elders say it tasted horrible and they hated it.
So, most of the Japanese wouldn't give the shit if dolphin/whale hunting gets banned. Then why don't we stop those dolphin-hunting fishermen? Because to most of us this looks like a cultural invasion. (It seems to me this is really the case about dolphins, because they are not endangered species unlike whales.)
Some even say racism is behind all this. Sea Shephard, which is very (in)famous in Japan, is not really helping here.
One of my friends says "I'd love to see how they would react if one day India became a world power and told them not to eat beef because cows are sacred." Well I must say I'm rather interested, too.
Dolphins and chimps are quite intelligent, I will give you that. But I would place parrots (look up the New Zealand Kea on youtube), corvids (crows, ravens, etc), octopuses, whales, and elephants before pigs.
I'm surprised that the AMAZING capuchin monkey is ignored (FAR smarter than chimp, in my experience, just not used in research as often as they should).
Personally, in South America I've seen them solving problems (like learning themselves COMING FROM THE WILD several yards far from the office, to operate a coffee machine and getting a cup of coffe in an office where the manager allowed them in, or entering a place and looking for magazines, imitating the human behavior) WITHOUT HUMAN TRAINING.
Behavior like this, but without formal training to do so (like happened with the chimps when doing tricks), just by watching and learning.
Please check videos like these: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
"We only want to save the cute animals, don't we" Dennis Leary
First, intelligence is not even a primary selector in evolution (look at the successes of ants, cockroaches, viruses, etc on Earth)
Second, We humans value "intelligence" because we fancy ourselves the "smartest" - but even here, our bias shows because we value the narrow forms of intelligence (which WE display) over the forms that are displayed by, for example, migratory birds or porpoises (both of which can naturally do smart things we cannot)
Third, other creatures would likely choose other attributes for determining who is "superior". Cheetahs are certainly much faster, Cats (of all sorts) have better night vision, some tortoises would rate longevity, etc. There is no fixed universal standard by which all species agree to be judged, or which is codified in some objective design document for the universe.
We humans are the ones discussing this, and we have arbitrarily decided that (our) form of intelligence matters. Nobody is opposing a dolphin slaughter based on their amazing sonar processing abilities, but rather because we've seen episodes of "flipper", or have seen trained dolphins doing tricks in one of those hated aquatic parks, or have heard tales of dolphins saving people, etc which caused us to percieve some aspects of human-like intelligence in these creatures....more-so than other creatures like cows or chickens. I assert that ALL of our decisions about what creatures can be killed-and-eaten is tied to our anthropomophised perceptions of them. Kitties and doggies, while lacking physical similarites, live with our families and we recognize certain human-like behaviours and emotions so we percieve some human-ness. Horses are close to our cats and dogs on that scale, but not at the same level so more people are likely to eat them. Chickens, turkeys, cows and fish are the big losers. The dolphins and whales were down that scale with "dumb fish" for ages and all societies killed and ate them, but over time as people percieved them as "smart" they moved up toward the level of the family pets. The Japanese who are killing these dolphins clearly do not see them this way, and therefore see nothing wrong with their actions (which are the same actions thier ancestors took for many generations) so they are probably as dumbfounded as a farmer would be when a "cityslicker" was shocked by a pig being slaughtered. In both cases the person doing the slaughter may try to hide it for political reasons, and NOT because he thinks it's "wrong".
All the things you cite about dolphins are actually human-projections onto dolphin actions. We see dolphins make sounds and we see them behave in certain ways and because we are humans who communicate with eachother using language we look for that same thing and assign "words" or "names" to their sounds. We do not ACTUALLY know what they are "saying" at all. Bees and ants pass eachother information, as do wolves and birds. If a dolphin makes a particular sound everytime it converys some info to another particular dolphin, there is no proof that this sound is that dolphin's "name". It could simply be that the one dolphin learned that the other seems to like that sound (like some people like a particular bit of a particular pop music hit) and so it uses that sound to get the other one's attention. In other words, the exact same behaviour can be explained without either dolphin having even a basic a concept for individual "names". Until we can have a full-blown conversation with a dolphin and discuss abstract things like philosophy enough to be sure we are truly communicating (rather than just interacting with a more-complex form of parrot) we will not be able to say HOW intelligent and how sentient they are.
incidentally, if you have lived on a farm, you know that even many farm animals display an apparent ability to "think", as opposed to just reacting to sensation, so the idea you expressed that it's possible dolphins may be "actually sentient beings" is a bit odd.... in a broad classical sense they already are seen this way (as are cows and pigs, etc). I think you mean a more-narrow form of the word "sentient" implying higher reasoning abilities leading to things like perception of rights and responsibilities. If this is so, then I again assert that we will not know this until we can have those true, complex discussions covering abstract things with them.
.. And now is also a great time to harvest Japanese for meat.
There are in plentiful supply.
They're naturally irradiated so bacterial contamination is nonexistant
They taste great baked, fried, boiled, or roasted
And they're small so they're easier for your children to chew
Enjoy a bowl while you watch WWE Raw
Your policies suck, seriously. In the past ten years, you have killed endangered species under the guise of "whale research," NUKED the Pacific Rim's oceans, air, and land, something people here in the Pacific Northwest should be very nervous about, and now we find out you are killing intelligent species because it is "tradition." Isn't time you rethink everything?
Agrisea Tsunami - Epyc Servers... https://agrisea.net/products
Instead of wasting time slaughtering dolphins, Japanese should stop slacking and get to the real work - slaughtering the Sea Shepherd members and funders. Any Dutchmen here? You can do your part and write to your MP and PM to voice your disagreement with your country's sheltering of Paul Watson.
Troll 2.0 Fear my asocial networking!
It is actually not the meat they are after. Dolphin meat is laden with contaminants and used for pet food mostly.
The actual cash cow are baby dolphins for dolphinaria.
-- 29A the number of the Beast
I hate to say this but if Slashdot editors had been slaughtered in WW2, the world would be a better place.
South Park said it best: Dolphin and Whale