Global warming hit Second Life flooding various areas in what was being called a global warming disaster. (Video of some of the flooded areas) Good on ‘em. If people are getting that worked up about their Second Life home - imagine… just IMAGINE that global warming disasters actually happened… Hmm. Too bad we can’t all live like Colin Beavan, even though Colbert is a huge jerk! Maybe we would be able to save animals that are going extinct because of this anthropogenic disaster that we’re creating. Luckily we’re seeing new breakthroughs and developments in solar energy… And not just planting trees, since that apparently causes more warming.

I’ve been seeing this ad all over my frequently visited environmental sites. When you click on it, it directs you to stopthesealhunt.org. Where you are asked to add your voice to those advocating against the seal hunt because 98% of the seals killed last year were between 2 weeks and 3 months old.

I’m a little torn.

On one side of the issue - the seal hunt isn’t a bad thing. When done properly the seal will feel virtually nothing, as studies by the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association have shown, and studies by Americans in the early 70’s came to the same conclusion. The clubbing of baby seals is just as humane, if not more humane than the practices you’ll see done on farms that pack chickens into tiny rooms, let pigs rot in their own filth and never let cows see the light of day. However some people are stupid and they don’t use the equipment right and they don’t follow procedure. So not only do the animals get clobbered inappropriately they are sometimes skinned alive, which probably isn’t fun for them.

And don’t even try the “well do animals really feel pain? does their pain matter because they can’t talk?” if you kick a baby seal in the head, it’s probably going to run away from you because it hurt, so under that basic assumption when you start ripping its skin off while its dangling in the air - it will probably hurt it. But at the same time, I hate it when activists watch these videos of amateur and use them to invoke emotion on an uniformed public. They will show a little baby seal wobbling around by an idiot, followed by a professional blow to the skull with a hakapik and spout it all as cruelty when really, the blow to the head would have caused an immediate unconsciousness and death.

The ecological argument that they’re using is just flat out wrong. The seal population is well over 4.5 million animals which is 3xs as many seals as there were in the 70s. Canada’s seal hunt allows for the quota of 325 000 seals… not a huge dent to the seal population - but far more than the natives are allowed to kill in their cultural and lifestyle practices.

Fact of the matter is the seal hunt brings in well over 15 million dollars to the Canadian economy. It is the main income for most Aboriginals and thousands of fisherman. We have successfully depleted the cod fisheries leaving the Newfies with not a whole lot of other options besides seal harvesting. At least the Canadian government has gained control over the seal hunt before it got out of hand like the cod fisheries did.

It is not a detrimental hunt to the environment, it is beneficial for the economy, it is the main source of money, food and resources for the aboriginals and can be done in a completely humane way. The last thing that we need to be doing is to be preventing aboriginals for doing even more of their cultural activities in the name of selfish western superiority and ideology. My only protest against it are the idiots who don’t know how to kill properly and end up putting the seals through a lot of unnecessary suffering.

There are ways to conduct seal hunting appropriately - like being informed on how to actually use a hakapik, ensuring that the animal is dead before skinning it and obviously shooting a seal for death, not just to wound it. Not to mention that the Canadian government should be taking responsibility of the seal hunt instead of just leaving it as is. It is obvious to everyone who knows about it that when the sealers are released for the seal hunt they don’t give a shit if they’re killing the seals properly because it’s a race against all other sealers. There’s no time to drain the blood and ensure the animal is actually dead. If the seal hunt were conducted in a more reasonable fashion these sorts of mess ups could be avoided.

Bush and his friends have quietly put a new spin on the Endangered Species Act. The “new spin” wouldn’t include protection over plants and animals that are thriving or have already disappeared. Instead the feds would protect only imperiled animals and only plants that are in an area of trouble. Where was the memo? On the interior of the website on Friday. Threatening to take the issue to court, the Center for Biological Diversity says that this “new policy” would mean that about 80% of the apx. 1300 species listed under the endangerment act would lose their protection.

That would make it easier to take the gray wolf off the federal threatened species list in Montana and Idaho, leaving it to the states to manage. And it would leave it listed in Wyoming, where the state has yet to adopt a protection plan that satisfies the federal government, Hall said.

…

“It’s just so clearly illogical and anti-wildlife that I can’t wait to get this before a federal judge,” Suckling said. “They are rewarding industry for driving populations extinct. Because as soon as you drive a population extinct (in a certain area) it is no longer on the table. It no longer counts toward whether a species is endangered.”

Via MSNBC and

I forgot about Monday Love - luckily Lindsay posted this absolutely hilarious video of rats laughing that had me holding my sides. Its phenomenally great. Watch it. Seriously.

Another must check out comes from Bead - For the christian right, gay-hating is just the start …Who also has a post up about a haunted municipal house, which is entertaining as heck.

In other news, before I head to bed, a couple geology notes:

Uno - Torontorians were scared shitless by a “ball of fire” raging over head.

It’s not every day you see a meteor streaking across the sky. For some Torontonians, the sight of a green fireball on Sunday night was a surprisingly big event. Some were scared. Some were enchanted. Some braced for impact and some called the cops. However, as Constable Laurie Perks of the York Regional Police curtly puts it, space debris “is not a police matter. It’s an outer-space matter.”

The meteor, of a particularly bright type known as a bolide or fireball, prompted many locals to flights of fancy. “I wasn’t sure if I was seeing stuff,” admits Mike Mazeika, who saw the meteor from a ninth-floor apartment in North York. “It was so big and it lasted so long.” He describes the green- and orange-tinged fireball as being “bigger than a plane,” maybe “the size of a building” and adds that the sight of it literally froze him in his tracks.

“is not a police matter. It’s an outer-space matter.”

…Is that not one of the funniest things you’ve ever read? Seriously.

Dos - go check out this cool map of the San Andreas Fault. Maybe I just like maps too much - but I think it’s really cool.

Update: Jonathan Singer just posted this hilarious link - “Fox News’ Chyron: Anti-War Protestor Tells Fox He Believes He Saw UFO” on facebook. …yes, I’m friends with bloggers on facebook.

I was going to make these next three stories their own separate posts, but I’ve been blogging for a really long time tonight, and blogging a lot. So I will combine them into one post about teh sex in general.

The first is from Shelley, and it’s a PETA ad that makes absolutely no sense. I’m not saying that usually they DO make sense, just this time it REALLY doesn’t make sense.

Apparently - ignoring the fact that your parents have teh sex is like ignoring the fact that animals can think. …Here’s the difference. Sex… is sex. Animals… get eaten. I’m sorry, but I just don’t understand PETA, they use guilt far too often for my liking. Yeah - I know that my chicken came from a factory farm. That’s really tough shit because a) its already dead and b) it’s an animal. What would PETA like us to do? Set up a nice big chicken society, build schools for the chickens… so that they can go and use their incredibly developed brains to their full potentials?

…And just as a side note, I accept the fact that my parents had sex at least 3 times.

But at least they didn’t have sex with a partner because then they would just be retarded. Yes, retarded. (Via Dogs 2.0)

The same sex relationships, he said, caused mental retardation, depression and high tendency to commit suicide.

Incredible isn’t it? At least in America they’re using the "it’s against the bible" argument rather than the flat out wrong argument of "it makes you retarded." It’s pretty pathetic when the bible argument makes more sense than the alternative argument.

My last sex link is from Sage, and it’s a real good laugh and a real good read about real bad sex. I have some really absolutely hilarious stories about some of the worst sex in the ENTIRE world. One of them… seriously… would beat any other bad sexual experience story that anyone could whip out. Honestly. But I can’t tell it here - because I have some shred of decency left in me.

Instead, I will just say "amen" to a few things that Sage writes…

I mean I couldn’t imagine getting off, then ignoring the person I’m
with when it’s obvious he’s not done. I really couldn’t imagine being
that selfish or that exhausted. If I’m awake enough for me; I think I
can hang in there for you too.

It seems to me intercourse is an evolutionary fuck-up. 

I know an awful lot of women who’ve told me they fake it regularly. 

But if he’s hard, and I’m still dry, I get one of three responses: stop
to wait for me to get myself going, or just keep on pushing until the
lubing starts out of survival instinct. Or hork on me. Lovely.

Oh man, the things I could get into right now…