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As if hunting and eating them was not enough, those wacky Japanese have decided to also humiliate whales by making them wear Santa Hats. Now this definitely IS anthrophomorphism.

Hunting ships are already on their way to the icy reaches of the Southern Ocean, where this year’s catch of 1,000 will include humpbacks for the first time in 40 years.

The hunting expedition also plans to kill 50 fin whales, the world’s second largest animal after blue whales, as 850 smaller minke whales.

Wildlife officials say the display of the white belugas wearing Santa hats is both sad and ironic against the background of the Antarctic hunts, due to start in the region after Christmas.

"While whales are being used for entertainment in Japan, the Japanese fleet is subjecting whales to a cruel death in the Southern Ocean," said Mr Darren Kindleysides, a Sydney-based campaigner for the International Fund for Wildlife.

"Sadly, the aquarium owners seem to be showing as little respect for whales as their Government."

An Australian whale-watching official, Mr Peter Lynch, said the aquarium display was disrespectful to the whales, adding: "The real irony lies in the fact that the general population in Japan have no idea what’s going on in Antarctica."

However, the Australian government will be casting a different eye over the activities of the Japanese whalers in Antarctica - it plans to send a former P&O cruise ship, now converted into an armed vessel, to the region to monitor the hunting.

Following high-level talks, the vessel, Oceanic Viking, which has a reinforced hull to cut through ice, will be leased to the government to track the Japanese whaling ships and keep a check on their activities.

The crew is trained for polar conditions and they will use ’super-telephoto’ lenses to record the whale slaughter.

In addition, the ship will have two .50-calibre machine guns manned by a customs boarding party should a clash of any kind with the Japanese vessels occur.

Australia’s new Labour Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has accused the former John Howard government of doing nothing to save the endangered whales, adding that nobody took seriously Japan’s claim that it was conducting scientific research. full story…

"Scientific Research" my blowhole!

 OK really I can’t say making the whales wear santa hats is particularly cruel (certainly not worse than wrenching them from their home and forcing them to live in a tiny cage and stop communicating with each other because they’ll go deaf from the sounds bouncing around the container) . In fact I’m sure the whales are having a good laugh at the dork standing next to them.

But really, this is just another stupid example of how people use and abuse other animals for their amusement. It’s just a "thing", not a living being with feelings and sensitivity or anything. It’s just a little play thing. AAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!

And the Japanese have got to be the worst at it with all that cutsey hello kitty, pokemon, raping little girls manga crap. Their culture is just fucking weird in that way. (And yes I know plenty of Japanese. I’m married to one in fact.) They live in a fucking dream world in certain ways. They’re still taught that America was the aggressor in world war 2, they know nothing about the rape of Nan King (but that’s a different post.)

On the positive side, you can buy beer and porno magazines in vending machines in Japan. And they have the best and most high-tech toilets in the world. You’ve not taken a proper shit until you’ve shit on a Japanese toilet and had it clean your asshole with water and then blow dry it.  No wiping! No Muss! No Fuss! But honestly I don’t have the patience to wait for the air dryer. It takes too long, just like a hand dryer. Plus I don’t want to get a chapped anus! Do they make ass-chap-stick?

(FREE TIP: Make sure you don’t press the "ladies wash" button by mistake or you’ll get your nuts and/or vagina showered instead of your bunghole. That is of course unless your nuts and/or vagina need cleansing then by all means press that button.)

Where the hell was I? Oh yeah cruelty to animals…My wife said they used to eat whale meat at school lunch. Isn’t that nifty. Really we westerners can’t bitch too much about whale killing. I mean, how many billions of chickens, cows, and pigs do we kill and eat? (By "we" I mean you carnivores out there.)

Man I really don’t even know what to say. The absurdity boggles the mind. OK, how about some more humiliating photos then?

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This is awesome!

In a rapid fire test of mental addition, monkeys performed almost as well as college students, showing they’re no slouches when it comes to number crunching.

The macaques got their sums right 76 percent of the time, while the students got the correct answer 94 percent of the time in a series of increasingly challenging maths tests.    more….
 

First off, I don’t know if this is good news for monkeys or bad news for college students. I guess it give new meaning to the phrase "a monkey could do your job." And secondly, I enjoy saying the word "macaque." Macaque, macaque, macaque, macaque. If you don’t shut up I’m gonna smack you upside the macaque. That has a nice ring to it.

Seriously though, I hope this is one more piece of ammunition to help people realize that it’s not OK to abuse, perform cruel tests on, kill, eat, or destroy the homes of our non-homo-sapien relatives because  "they’re just animals." This is not anthrophomorphism, but rather a recognition that humans aren’t the only creatures on earth to feel pain, have emotions, and in fact be intelligent. (George Bush excluded.)

Besides that…monkeys don’t join fraternities/sororities, look down on other "lesser primates", drink too much beer, have unprotected sex, and produce more vapid idiots like themselves. Unlike some of the apes I’ve seen at college.

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This is some amazing stuff. A fascinating work of science. If they would teach science this way in school (emphasizing  fun, practical, and/or offbeat applications) then more kids would pay attention in school.

Why pregnant women don’t tip over
There seems to be more keeping pregnant women upright than fear of toppling over and squishing their unborn child. Researchers from Harvard University and the University of Texas at Austin examined 19 pregnant women and discovered a number of reinforcements in their backs that men lack, including a lumbar (lower back) curve that spans three instead of two vertebrae and spinal joints that are 14 percent larger and positioned differently. These enhancements allow expectant mothers to lean back by as much as 28 degrees more than normal to offset the added heft of a baby bump—up to 30 pounds on average, or the weight of two bowling balls—without destroying their backs, the investigators report in Nature. They also present evidence for similar differences between the sexes in Australopithecines (early relatives of humans), suggesting that women long ago evolved such scaffolding to compensate for walking upright while supporting their swelling wombs. (Nature)

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=news-bytes-why-pregnant-women-dont-tip
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v450/n7172/full/nature06342.html

Damn evolution is freaking amazing…

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Today I received the following chain email…

Like a lot of folks in this state, I have a job. I work, they pay me. I pay my taxes and the government distributes my taxes as it sees fit. In order to get that paycheck, I am required to pass a random urine test with which I have no problem. What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my taxes to people who don’t have to pass a urine test. Shouldn’t one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare check because I have to pass one to earn it for them? Please understand, I have no problem with helping people get back on their feet. I do, on the other hand, have a problem with helping someone sitting on their "you know what," doing drugs, while I work. . .. . Can you imagine how much money the state would save if people had to pass a urine test to get a public assistance check? Pass this along if you agree or simply delete if you don’t. Hope you all will pass it along, though . .. Something has to change in this country — and soon!

I usually delete these types of chain letters before reading them. They’re usually some sappy story about how much jesus loves me, our brave troops, or some touching thing that someone learned from watching a child. You know, crap along those lines.

I read this one and dismissed it. Then I went back and read it again and thought it was an interesting concept–"Piss Tests for Dollars". (Wasn’t that a Clint Eastwood movie? No wait, I think that was "A Fistful of Piss Tests for Dollars.")

Generally I think the idea of piss tests goes a little far in the violation of privacy direction, but I guess if it’s good for the goose it’s good for the gander. Surely if you’re gonna trample on people’s privacy so they can make money, it makes sense to trample on them if you’re going to give them money. If you’re going to transfer the wealth it  seems to me that it should be equal on both sides of the equation.

I’m only partially joking. I really think it’s a good idea even though it probably puts me in the same ranks a Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.

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