The Art Neuro Weblog

Update On Last Week's Stupid Headlines
Spielberg has an opinion on the media and it's not terribly positive. He's a little upset that the media didn't treat Tom Cruise well after his often displays of affection for Katie Holmes the Oprah Winfrey show.

"I was a little upset. I was a little upset," Spielberg told the magazine, referring to the attention generated by Cruise's recent appearance on "The Oprah Winfrey Show."

"Not at Tom, but at the press for making such a big deal out of a kind of small thing. Tom lost his cool because he was deliriously happy, and now he was being punished for his public display of happiness," Spielberg said.

Like, yeah Steven. The media gives you a free pass every day and now you're complaining on behalf of Tom Cruise? Are you a scientologist or something now?
Just thought a free kick at a succcessful director was in order here because I'm in a real mean mood.

It Won't Work?
Turns out that if the shuttle had problems in orbit, the crew's in for a world of trouble.

NASA's elaborate plan for bringing a damaged space shuttle back to Earth poses additional risks, and even the official who oversaw its development says it's not certain to work in all cases. For some of the plan's provisions, "there's no guarantee one way or another, but I'm invoking them because it's the best option that I have," says LeRoy Cain, the flight director for the ascent and entry portions of the next shuttle mission. "I hope we never need it."

The plan is designed to safeguard a shuttle with a damaged heat shield during the fiery return trip from orbit. NASA could draw on the new plan as early as the mission of shuttle Discovery, now scheduled to launch in July.

One former shuttle commander praised NASA's advance work. "It's very wise to ... look at that," says Richard Searfoss, who is now a professional speaker. He says changes the plan makes in the shuttle's re-entry procedure are "doable."
Another former commander, James Wetherbee, now a safety consultant, agrees that those changes could work but says he fears they could damage other parts of the ship. "You never get something for nothing," he says.

Even a tiny scratch in the heat shield can allow superheated gases to melt the vehicle as it dives through the atmosphere. Columbia disintegrated in 2003 after hot gases poured through a hole in the heat shield on its wing.

Yeah, right. The rest of the article is even more hope-destroying than hope-inspiring.

IWC Stoush II
More on the fun & games:

The panel voted 29-23 against lifting the ban. There were five abstentions, including countries that have often voted with Japan on other issues at the commission.
The 66-member commission, which regulates global whaling, banned commercial hunts in 1986, handing environmentalists a major victory in protecting the species near extinction after centuries of whaling.

Japan and its allies knew they had virtually no chance of getting the three-fourths
majority needed to overturn the moratorium. But they had hoped to obtain a simple majority to back Japan's proposal for a nonbinding measure expressing support for limited commercial catches.

That would have demonstrated that opinion among commission members has turned in favor of sanctioning commercial whale hunts.

New Zealand Minister of Conservation Chris Carter, a delegate at the meeting, said his country was "absolutely delighted" with the vote. "This has been a very serious loss of face for Japan."

Norway holds the world's only commercial whaling season in defiance of the ban. Japan, Norway and other nations that advocate what they call "sustainable use" of whales are expected to kill more than 1,550 of the mammals this year. On Monday, Japan said it would more than double its annual research cull of minke whales to as many as 935 from 440 this year, extending a researching whaling program begun in 1987.

Critics call it commercial whaling in disguise. Japan says it must kill whales to
study them. It then sells the meat, which is allowed under commission rules. The United States criticized the decision to expand the research hunts, saying scientific advances make it unnecessary to kill whales to study them.

Japan defends whaling as a national tradition and a vital part of its food culture. It
claims whale stocks have sufficiently recovered since 1986 to allow the resumption of limited hunts.

Countries led by Australia and New Zealand reject that view. They advocate protecting whales and encouraging alternative ways of profiting from them, through tourism and whale-watching.

Japan's proposals on deleting the issue of whale sanctuaries from the meeting's agenda and introducing secret ballots were narrowly defeated Monday, but might have passed if several pro-whaling countries including the Pacific island nation of Nauru had arrived at the meeting on time.

The annual meeting went into a closed session for about 90 minutes Tuesday in what critics blasted as a delay tactic until more members who back the resumption of commercial whale hunts could arrive. Members voted 28-20, with nine abstentions, in favor of the closed-door session as proposed by St. Lucia, one of several Caribbean countries in the pro-whaling camp.

Some participants evidently were frustrated that debate was being stalled; Brazil walked out of the closed meeting and accused pro-whaling countries of making long speeches on procedural issues.

"We just refuse to be taken hostage of rhetoric for unclear purposes," Brazil's
representative Maria Teresa Mesquita Pessoa said.

So Nauru was tardy with its dues and fees and arrival; Brazil was gormless; I wonder what the other nations' excuses were. By the way, that reason given by Brazil wouldn't fly at any other meeting on the planet - it's typical of the IWC, year after year. Who invited them anyway? Especially if they were going to bloody well abstain because they couldn't wait for mighty Nauru (hah!) to turn up. Anyway, the ban wasn't lifted, so that's a win for the sentimental anti-whaling lobby.

"The whole process has been a charade where anti-whaling nations have stalled
implementation of an RMS (revised management scheme) for more than 10 years," said Minoru Morimoto, the head of Japan's delegation.

The IWC's pro-whaling lobby has a slim majority for the first time since a moratorium on commercial whaling was introduced in 1986 following the accession of three states -- Gambia, Togo and Nauru -- to the commission.

But the three were unable to vote because they had not yet paid their dues or their delegates had yet to arrive in Ulsan, a former whaling port. Environmentalists fear that pro-whaling nations such as Japan and Norway may try to roll back conservation measures if they can swing a majority at the commission and critics accused Tokyo of delaying tactics.

"The pro-whale slaughtering nations are using every tactical method they can to slow down any substantive vote until the new members arrive," said Ian Campbell, Australia's environment minister told Reuters. "It is becoming farcical."

Australia's hopes of proposing an early resolution criticizing Japan's announcement that it plans to double its annual scientific catch of minke whales from 440 to 850 were scrapped due to proceedings Australia saw as slow.

Japan's well-flagged plan to dramatically expand its research program also includes hunting 10 fin whales a year for the first two years, although it says it will not hunt humpbacks for another two years.

That's right.
Norway's going to hunt its quota and Iceland is going to do what Iceland's alway done, which is hunt for whales in its waters. Japan will double its 'Scientifick' experimental kills and the anglophone nations can go home with a moral victory they can wave to the home-side and complain that the Japanese are exploiting the loophole for another year.

Anti-whaling states say Japan exploits a loophole in the 19-year-old ban on commercial whaling to hunt the giant mammals in the guise of science, and that much of the whale meat ends up on store shelves and on the tables of gourmet restaurants.

"It is commercial whaling by any other name," said Leah Garces, campaigns director for the World Society for the Protection of Animals, while Conall O'Connell, the head of Australia's delegation called it "an outrage."

This, from a country that happily locks boat people away in detention centres, pays other nations like Nauru to house such people on detention centres so that the home crowd don't get to have a close looks at them; but hey, hurt one whale and "IT'S AN OURAGE!"

- *ugh* -

Where do these people get off at? Where do they come from? Who makes them our mouthpiece delegates? It's vomit-inducing hypocrisy, Ostraya!
Told you I was in a mean mood.

- Art Neuro