jeb - I like that:'experienced senses'.
Perth is not heavily populated, unlike some of the places I have lived in. Queueing (sp?) is almost a novelty. It is not uncommon to walk on a deserted beach and to be able to smell the salt from the sea...and realise that you are doing so without any More...

Billy:
Naw, its the tripple strength boiled coffee and the rarefied air. Or it could be an ability to reconcile the reality with expectations (maturity). A really good question, though suseptable to smartalecky answers. On rare occasions, it is possible to have an extraordinary experience More...

On the other hand, remember the words of Dave Barry:

''Nature is anything you'd kill if it got into the house.''

Jeb - not too smartalecky - this was quite restrained from you!
an 'epiphanous' moment for me was when I was skiing on my own in a truly 'magical' part of the run, it could have been from a scene from Narnia, but the silence was deafening.Felt like i was the only person on the planet at that moment. (It happened to be in your beautiful country too.)

Yep - got that right Ian, anything with 6+ legs. I have a lizard in the house somewhere but i know he is doing more housework than I am - he can live.

...i don't mean my ex, he wouldn't be living here anyway - just thought I'd clarify that point.

Critters in the house don't get me too riled up. Afterall, everybody has to be someplace. (At least that's what the guy said when his girlfriend's husband opened her closet door and asked him what he was doing there). They are generally easy to shoosh out. The ones that I will not abide are More...

jeb - I can't even squish a coc*roach as they are so revolting. I have been in a near-car accident when i flipped down my sun-visor and one dropped onto my lap...thank god there was no one behind me to run up my rear-end and to see the mad woman jump out of a car ...and keep jumping...and tearing More...

Would have loved to have seen that! Shades of Arlo Guthrie. 'I was jumping up and down yelling Kill....Kill.... and he was jumping up and down yelling Kill....Kill.... And pretty soon everybody else was jumping up and down....' It is the smart coc*roaches that always fool me. When I go to step More...

omg - alice doesn't live here any more!!! it has been donkeys years since I've heard that! wonder if its on youtube?

oooops big boo booo - i got so excited - Alice's restaurant - and yes - its on youtube...

Ok - something serious to ponder on...
Should the Japanese be allowed to continue with whaling? School kids get fried whale meat served to them...

That is an interesting question. Don't know much about it though. My first reaction is to ask why kill a whale when there are more readily replenished sources of protien. My second is to realize that Spok and Captain Kirk aren't real. They can't come back and save the earth with the last two More...

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/bizfocus/archives/2007/03/18 /2003352853

Gives you a fairly good summary of the debate...I had heard on the radio that in testing fish markets for Minke whale meat other species had been identified, namely the Blue whale. There are enough alternatives to be More...

Before Spock and Kirk, there was a splendid science fiction novel called ''The Deep Range,'' by Arthur C. Clarke. It was a story about ranching whales and taking them to market, herding them along their migratory paths, using little submarines instead of horses. Good read.

To get at the More...

Ian:
You're throwing morality into the pot. That's not fair. Now I have to get out of my smartalecky pants and into something less comfortable. How about if we broaden the scope and discuss mores? Fundamental arenas could include; tribal, national, regional, social, political or even gender. More...

The original question was regarding whales, so lets start there. How are whales perceived as one species among thousands on this earth? I'll start a list and invite additional input, positive or negative.
They are:
part of an eco-system.
perceptivly smarter than cows.
social creatures More...

Ian:
I have been going back and re-reading the first two pages. Your comment posted 18/Mar/07 11:46 AM (Isn't that neat?) suggests the potential for censorship of the forum. Rosemry's instructions at the top of the page should preclude any concerns about this. Open discussion of issues, the More...

The ecosystem debate is an interesting one. If we give blanket protection sea lions, and they destroy an entire population of salmon, and then starve themselves, what have we done? For some reason, the ocean escapes the usual rules we use for the land. We could restore the population of black bears More...

I have argued for a long time that ubanization has isolated populations from their environment to such an extent that they have become blind to their relationship to it. Pre-industrial cultures just 'knew' what would happen if A then B. Knew is probably a poor choice of words here. Attuned may More...

There is an exchange from the Tokyo Times on the subject of whaling. To gauge the strength of some people's feelings on the matter, there are comparisons between whaling and the treatment of Australian POWs on the Burma railway during WWII.

http://www.wordpress.tokyotimes.org/?p=872

The Japanese claim the minke whale population is thriving. The killing of them will not endanger the species, but like i said, other whale species have supposedly been caught up in the 'kill'. Personally, I don't believe in whaling, there is nothing 'humane' in the practise for a mammal that is More...

...I should have said that it is the Japanese that claim that the killing of minke whales will not endanger the species...

Animal population control is fraught with wild guesses and half baked research. Biologist who have studied specific species are often puzzled by population fluctuations. I doubt that there is a Japanese marine researcher who can positivly state how many minke whales there actually are. Another More...

The problem with stock assessment is the methodology used. Some are outdated, some depend more on statistics than real observation, and some are biased. You can't survey the ocean the way you do the land. For example, you could use road kill as a great way to come up with a stock assessment for More...

Comments?


The Berlin Zoo's abandoned polar bear cub Knut looks cute, cuddly and has become a front-page media darling, but an animal-rights activist insisted Monday he would have been better off dead than raised by humans.

'Feeding by hand is not species-appropriate but a gross More...

For more on the subject...

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,260122,00. html

wish some whales will be spared still in the ocean when i go for the whale watching this summer!!!and agree with jeb,why kill a whale??

Ian - sorry, I will respond eventually, just chortling ever so slightly over 'fuzzy Knut's frolicking'. but just quickly - Frank's statement doesn't seem to benefit either humans or the bear, the bear is being cared for, surely instinctually it would want to live? ok - it may not be the way nature intended it to live...but it's in a zoo anyway.

'instinctively' - don't even know if instinctually is a word!

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair so Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't fuzzy was he was a bear Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair so Fuzzy Wazzy wasn't fuzzy was he was a beouch somebody looking over my shoulder
Every cause has it's share of overzelous fanatics. Based on his position regarding Knut, simple More...

On second thought, this is taking place in Germany. No telling how the Germans deal with such stuff. And if the EU gets involved who knows?

It's interesting that Germany is the greenest of the EU countries these days. For example, the animal rights activists there have succeeded in prohibiting sport fishing. You can still fish with a rod and reel, but you have to take it home for food. No ''catch and release.'' Thay may have a point. More...

I think that conservation alone does not justify the existence of zoo's but a strong commitment to individual animal welfare, promoting natural behaviours, natural enviroments etc should be the main contributory factor in question..

André:
Zoos are an ancient concept that have taken on a life of their own, no pun intended. The Roman emperors brought back exotic animals to amaze their subjects from the far distant lands they had conquered. That zoos are already in place, well staffed by veteranarians and biologists, what More...

Ian:
I have been interested in watching the outcome of banning mountain lion hunts in California. Biologists say one thing, animal rights people say another and the few folks who have nearly or did wind up on a mountain lion's dinner plate have something else entirely to say about it.

And the same goes for bears. Concerning deer (Bambi); 40 years ago, if someone saw a deer around here it was front page news. in the past 15 or 20 years the population has exploded. And with that explosion has come unsubstantiated reports of mountain lion sightings. It is nothing to see 5 or 6 More...

Interesting statistic...animals kill about 200 people annually in the US. A few dogs, the occasional snake, a horse here and there, even bees. But 3/4 of the fatalities are people who die in collisions with deer.

It would be useful to have a direct link on the home page to the Forum page, with a notation about the number of comments posted. It would save the trouble of clicking, scrolling, clicking, scrolling...to see if there were any new comments posted.




I'm also curious to know if More...

At the moment, there is a string of jokes about Alzheimer's being posted in Comments. Anyone who has had to deal with a family member with Alzheimer's knows what a heart-breaker it is, as well as being inexorably fatal. Why can we joke about that, but not cancer?