cunts
Please don't, regardless of how wrong others are or you feel they are.
Also, can you please not post unsubstantive comments to HN generally?
Japanese fleet catches 177 whales in latest hunt
111–120 of 140 posts
Re: Japanese fleet catches 177 whales in latest hunt
#112I hate the Western eco-hypocrisy when it comes to whaling.
Japan (and most of Scandinavia) have been whaling continuously for generations. Dolphin ‘farming’ for hundreds of years without impacting yield or stocks. It’s a huge cultural activity and they protect it.
But over the 1800-1900s the US, UK and Australia overfished whales at industrial scales making populations plummet. Whaling towns in Southern Australia literally ran red with rivers of blood. So in the 1970s and 80s after we’d reaped industrial benefit and destroyed wild stock, we Westerners decided that’s whaling was in fact really bad and decided to ban it - because we f’ed it up for everyone.
There are arguments about cruelty during whale hunting, but the same can be said for all farming, but the hypocrisy that a group of people can come in decimate an animal population and then tell everyone not to participate in their culture just doesn’t sit right.
Re: Japanese fleet catches 177 whales in latest hunt
#113I tried Minke whale when I was in Iceland. Unfortunately for them, they taste very good - Maybe the best meat I've tried. It's like a cross between beef and tuna but with a deep, complex (and very slightly gamey) aftertaste. It was surprisingly cheap too. In spite of this, I'm not sure I would eat it again though; while eating it, I kept getting flashbacks of a video I saw of a whale being harpooned and pulled out of…
You would be saving the lives of millions of krill but sealing the fate of related millions of barnacles and whale lice...
Re: Japanese fleet catches 177 whales in latest hunt
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have been browsing through Wikipedia articles on various types of whales recently, and I was pleasantly surprised how much some whale populations have recovered since most of the world stopped hunting them. The conservation status of humpback whales is LC ("Least concern"), gray whales, too. It's not all good, far from it, but it is nice to know that collectively, we manage to not mess up everything we touch every…
I'm glad that Wikipedia agrees. But yeah, if you can catch 200 whales, there is probably at least a few multiples of that left...
Just to be clear, some whales only recover very slowly. The blue whale is still considered Endangered, or the North Atlantic Right Whale (many more, probably - I am not a whale expert, just an enthusiastic Wikipedia reader). And while they are slowly recovering, we are still changing their habitat (climate change, noise pollution, etc., being run over by large ships is a common cause of death for large whales) in ways that make it harder for them to recover.
But the situation is not totally hopeless, which at least feels like a large improvement from the depressing atmosphere I grew up in.
Re: Japanese fleet catches 177 whales in latest hunt
#115At least we know the ocean is not empty yet...
I have been browsing through Wikipedia articles on various types of whales recently, and I was pleasantly surprised how much some whale populations have recovered since most of the world stopped hunting them. The conservation status of humpback whales is LC ("Least concern"), gray whales, too. It's not all good, far from it, but it is nice to know that collectively, we manage to not mess up everything we touch every…
Only some whales are recovered. Lets not forget that other went extinct "yesterday", and some big whales didn't recover after fourty years of work. Is not so simple.
Re: Japanese fleet catches 177 whales in latest hunt
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would think the anti-whaling group of people would be much larger, since it's an easier position to take. There are very few people who actually eat or otherwise use whales, the rest can freely disapprove of that without sacrificing anything. Whereas being against eating pigs means a substantial change in diet for many people.
> There are very few people who actually eat or otherwise use whales, the rest can freely disapprove of that without sacrificing anything. That's what I'm arguing against; the average person is less hypocritical than we label them. Now whether you think their justification in the difference is valid is another point. Most of these groups tend to be squeaky wheels and I would guess (yes, lots of guessing) that the vas…
http://luna.pos.to/whale/icr_pub_pall_t1_3.html
According to these figures (apparently originally from Gallup: text here http://luna.pos.to/whale/icr_pub_pall.html), only 26.3% of Americans would agree that "non-endangered whales can be killed for human food."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country#Unite...
According to this page, vegetarianism is at an all-time high in the US at 3.4%.
Assuming every single vegetarian takes the anti-whaling stance that still leaves you with the other 73% looking inconsistent.
Re: Japanese fleet catches 177 whales in latest hunt
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sympathetic to your view. I'd also add that human beings are moral agents while asking, for instance, if it's moral for a lion to kill a gazelle is incoherent. But the usual objection here is that surely we don't believe it's OK to harm infants or the mentally handicapped and none of the answers you can give there are great.
As I said, for children, there is the potential for life for consciousness, and for neurodivergent people, the "consciousness" at a higher level is paramount. Of course, how you define a higher level is a question, I admit. Once you draw the line, there should be a level of equality in that group, like a "more cognizant being" doesn't get more value than a "less cognizant being", for example, a child doesn't have mor…
There are people who are not in a persistent vegetative state, though, who suffer severe mental handicaps and are nonverbal. It makes this question look a little less pat than I would like it to.
Re: Japanese fleet catches 177 whales in latest hunt
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There are very few people who actually eat or otherwise use whales, the rest can freely disapprove of that without sacrificing anything. That's what I'm arguing against; the average person is less hypocritical than we label them. Now whether you think their justification in the difference is valid is another point. Most of these groups tend to be squeaky wheels and I would guess (yes, lots of guessing) that the vas…
http://luna.pos.to/whale/icr_pub_pall_t1_3.html According to these figures (apparently originally from Gallup: text here http://luna.pos.to/whale/icr_pub_pall.html ), only 26.3% of Americans would agree that "non-endangered whales can be killed for human food." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country#Unite... According to this page, vegetarianism is at an all-time high in the US at 3.4%. Assuming every…
I just have a hard time, especially after last election, taking these polls at face value. Not only is 1000 people difficult to base wide sweeping opinion on, I think a lot of people are answering about whether they would be in favor of it for themselves rather than believe it should be outlawed or are actually fervently against it like anti-whaling groups are.
Re: Japanese fleet catches 177 whales in latest hunt
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have been browsing through Wikipedia articles on various types of whales recently, and I was pleasantly surprised how much some whale populations have recovered since most of the world stopped hunting them. The conservation status of humpback whales is LC ("Least concern"), gray whales, too. It's not all good, far from it, but it is nice to know that collectively, we manage to not mess up everything we touch every…
Only some whales are recovered. Lets not forget that other went extinct "yesterday", and some big whales didn't recover after fourty years of work. Is not so simple.
Unfortunately, you are right. I did not mean to imply that everything is fine for the whales.
Some species recover much more quickly than others, and in the mean time, we continue to mess up their environment, be it by overfishing, global warming, noise pollution (or just plain old pollution) or ships running over whales like cars run over rabbits.
All I meant to say was that at least some species have recovered rather impressively under these conditions. Which is far from perfect. But imagine mankind had just continued hunting whales on the scale that was common sixty or seventy years ago - there probably would not be enough whales around today for Japan to kill 177 of them.
Re: Japanese fleet catches 177 whales in latest hunt
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
http://luna.pos.to/whale/icr_pub_pall_t1_3.html According to these figures (apparently originally from Gallup: text here http://luna.pos.to/whale/icr_pub_pall.html ), only 26.3% of Americans would agree that "non-endangered whales can be killed for human food." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country#Unite... According to this page, vegetarianism is at an all-time high in the US at 3.4%. Assuming every…
I just have a hard time, especially after last election, taking these polls at face value. Not only is 1000 people difficult to base wide sweeping opinion on, I think a lot of people are answering about whether they would be in favor of it for themselves rather than believe it should be outlawed or are actually fervently against it like anti-whaling groups are.
The last election pollsters messed up, but not by a factor of 70%.