The whaling lie

Well, the Japanese whaling fleet has left port to go slaughter some whales. This is bad policy for several reasons.

  • Killing endangered animals is always a bad idea, and the Japanese don’t even do it humanely. This is bloody slaughter for the sake of bloody slaughter, and it’s going to harm large species that are easily tipped over the brink into extinction.

  • It’s basically done as a subsidy for the whalers. This is not really a profitable business. I get irritated by the local farmers who are raising corn for ethanol, an exercise in inefficiency and waste that gets them government money…but getting money for killing large rare animals is more vividly worse.

  • The biggest reason I despise Japanese whaling is a bit selfish and narrow, I have to confess. It’s because of this:

    Japan kills more than 1000 whales a year in the Antarctic and also the Pacific Ocean using a loophole in an international moratorium that allows catching whales for research.

    That is such a lie. It demeans science. Japan is not throwing money into their whaling fleet as a research tool; I know what marine biological research looks like, and it rarely involves harpoons, flensing knives, and a cannery. Give university marine mammalogists the money to equip boats to pursue whales, and they won’t look like this:

    i-84ee34f6b14dbdb3ef3a5181f9f0e9ae-whalingboat.jpg

    Note the big “RESEARCH” stenciled across the hull. It’s a lie. It ought to say “BUTCHERY”. The research done by whalers is miniscule, and could be better done without the associated killing.

Keep an eye on Polk County, Florida

It may be our next trouble spot. They have a creationist majority on the school board, and they’re saying stuff like this:

Despite the Pennsylvania case, some school board members want both intelligent design and evolution taught in Polk schools. They say they have received numerous e-mails and phone calls in support of intelligent design.

“My tendency would be to have both sides shared with students since neither side can be proven,” Tim Harris said.

Tim Harris, you’re a moron. You need to recognize this fact soon, so that your self-confident ignorance doesn’t lead your school district into a catastrophic law suit that will make you a poster boy for the taxation and education problems that will ensue. Look at Alan Bonsell. That could be you.

“Those who are unaware of history are doomed to repeat it” is really true here. I say this as a friend and fan of public schools—thinking that you are serving a pious community by trying to sneak religion into your schools is a formula for disaster.

Sensible residents of Polk County: I have a suggestion. You should get together and buy each board member a copy of Humes’ Monkey Girl, and tell them to read it…and that they’ll be tested on it. If your school board members are functional illiterates, make them watch the PBS documentary on Judgment Day. The clear message of the trial is how the hubris of certain school board members led the whole district into folly and financial ruin. Another message is that the people they think are their friends, the fellows of the Discovery Institute, will abandon them at the first hint of trouble, and that those who stay you might wish had left, since in the case of the Dover trial it was Behe and Minnich who helped kill the case.

And to people everywhere: if you can, run for your local school board. These small groups of people have tremendous influence on American education, and yet you will find the most remarkably stupid people seated on them, people who campaign on a platform of destroying public education. You will receive no glory and no fame and the power you exercise will not be appreciated by the students it benefits, but we need hundreds of thousands of smart people to take those seats and steer education in a rational direction. If you don’t, there are a million Tim Harrises waiting in line to run it into the ground.

Our local newspaper embarrassment

My fellow Minnesotans know what I mean when I groan over our local conservative columnist at the Star Tribune, Katherine Kersten. Her latest column is a tirade against the horrible culture of victimhood in our universities, citing a recent incident in which a student newspaper editor decided to decorate the office with a handmade noose to motivate his black co-workers. Kersten thinks this is just awful. Not the insensitivity of the editor, of course — being ignorant of history is par for the course for Republicans, as is race-baiting. No, she’s appalled that he was fired.

The column is a hoot. She even obliviously quotes the guy making a “but my best friend is black!” excuse.

Is “megachurch” a synonym for “sex scandal”?

It sure seems that way. Yet another tawdry series of escapades by Christianists:

The 80-year-old leader of a suburban Atlanta megachurch is at the center of a sex scandal of biblical dimensions: He slept with his brother’s wife and fathered a child by her.

The story has some cheering news, though.

At its peak in the early 1990s, it claimed about 10,000 members and 24 pastors and was a media powerhouse. By soliciting tithes of 10 percent from each member’s income, the church was able to build a Bible college, two schools, a worldwide TV ministry and a $12 million sanctuary the size of a fortress.

Today, though, membership is down to about 1,500, the church has 18 pastors, most of them volunteers, and the Bible college and TV ministry have shuttered — a downturn blamed largely on complaints about the alleged sexual transgressions of the elder Paulks.

Ah, I love to see a church imploding.

Beaten to the vulva

Scooped! I’ve long adored vulvas, having written a few things on how to develop a vulva and how to evolve a vulva, so I’m a little peeved that this upstart at scienceblogs, Greg Laden, has written up a recent story on nematode vulva evolution before me. Aaargh, all vulvas must be mine! I’ve just got too much other work stacked in front of me.

I may have to revisit this story later, though. I made a quick skim of the paper and don’t see quite how they arrived at their conclusion, that vulva evolution is dominated by selective events rather than chance. I can’t say they’re wrong, but I’m going to have to read it more carefully before I can agree with it.

Late to the party, but it’s still good

He’s a little late, but Afarensis finally saw Judgement Day. Verdict: he likes it! I knew he would. He also points out the key factor that demolished the creationist case:

This, in a nutshell, is why ID lost at Dover. The contrast between the experiments embodied in that stack of papers and books vs the lack of any interest in performing experimental checks on their own ideas on the part of ID advocates spelled their doom.

I think there were several factors that played a role: the obvious dishonesty of Bonsell and Buckingham, and the analysis that showed Of Pandas and People to be a descendant text of creationist literature were pretty darned important. But yes, the Discovery Institute’s clear avoidance of actually doing any science was damning.

This failing will be repaired in time for the next trial by the recent hiring of eminent scientist Michael Medved.

Help me out here, fellow academics

My library doesn’t subscribe to this journal, but maybe yours does. Can anyone send me a pdf of this paper?

Mather JA, Anderson RC 2007) Ethics and invertebrates: a cephalopod perspective. Dis Aquat Organ. 75(2):119-29.

This paper first explores 3 philosophical bases for attitudes to invertebrates, Contractarian/Kantian, Utilitarian, and Rights-based, and what they lead us to conclude about how we use and care for these animals. We next discuss the problems of evaluating pain and suffering in invertebrates, pointing out that physiological responses to stress are widely similar across the animal kingdom and that most animals show behavioral responses to potentially painful stimuli. Since cephalopods are often used as a test group for consideration of pain, distress and proper conditions for captivity and handling, we evaluate their behavioral and cognitive capacities. Given these capacities, we then discuss practical issues: minimization of their pain and suffering during harvesting for food; ensuring that captive cephalopods are properly cared for, stimulated and allowed to live as full a life as possible; and, lastly, working for their conservation.

I suspect the reasons for my interest would be obvious.

Thanks, all, it is now in my hands.