In the end the Yankees did not relent. They didn't trade Phil Hughes for Johan Santana - which for this franchise is a new sort of thing. I'm pretty happy that Phil Hughes is staying. The 7year 20-25mil extension Santana is looking for is pretty scary. Understandably Hal, younger sibling to Hank, and Brian Cashman just didn't want to go there. Even if it's not my money, I have to say I'm happy they didn't go there either. Here's Tim Marchman's take:
By trading for 28-year-old left-hander Johan Santana, generally considered the best pitcher in baseball, Minaya has outdone himself. The deal will send four prospects to Minnesota so long as the Mets and Santana agree on a contract extension, likely for six or seven years, at something near $25 million a year. The deal makes them clear favorites to win the National League pennant, and gives them a young ace to match peerless young infielders David Wright and Jose Reyes.
Trading for Santana at all would have dispelled the evil funk that has surrounded the team since it collapsed down the stretch last fall; getting him by giving up what Minaya did makes for one of the great moments in team history. Much as the Atlanta Braves did when they signed Greg Maddux, then 27, in 1992, or the Boston Red Sox did when they traded for Martinez when he was 26, the Mets have acquired something irreplaceable: a pitcher established as the very best in the game with years left in his prime. It would be unfair to expect Santana to elevate his game, as Maddux and Martinez did by winning world championships and multiple Cy Young awards with their new teams. It would also be impossibly cynical not to wonder if he just might be able to do that.
Describing Santana as a two-time Cy Young award winner seems actually to diminish his achievements. He's in his own class. Over the last four years, Santana struck out 983 batters; Jake Peavy is second, with 844, and no one else has struck out even 800. His earned run average over that time was 2.89; one other American League pitcher with at least 600 innings has below 3.60. Impossibly efficient, he's never thrown 120 pitches in a game, and yet has pitched 25 more innings than anyone else in baseball over the last four years. He was dominant in his most recent playoff starts; he even won a Gold Glove award this year. And he did all this in perhaps the toughest division in baseball.
It might be a big win for the Mets, but in many ways, it's a big win for the Yankees for not getting fleeced out of their own farm. Phil Hughes plus Melky plus 2 more was a ridiculous price tag. There is no way that trade was anywhere near fair even for just the 2008 season and not counting the subsequent extension years Santana would have got.
This is it! My little cover version of The Who's classic song about middle-age grief. Come and hear me massacre a fan favorite right here. Can you hear the people complaining? Yeah, I'm sort of with them.
Photoshop Girls
This interesting video came thru the e-mail:
Pretty good work there, considering the source material. :)
Amazingly, a bunch of translations I've been doing for Mac Power magazine in Japan is going to see the light of day as a book. Once again, the author is Yumi Yamaguchi. If you haven't bought the other book already, shame on you...! :)
The scheduled release date is end of March, and I'm yet to see the manuscript o the compiled text as such. It's going to be mightily interesting to see how the 40-odd entries stack up.
Respected German historian Guido Knopp has compared a speech by US actor Tom Cruise to the Church of Scientology with a call to war by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
Knopp, an expert on World War II history, said in an interview with Bild newspaper: "Tom Cruise's manner calls to mind Goebbels."
The historian was commenting on a video recording of a rousing sermon Cruise delivered to fellow Scientology members four years ago that was recently posted on the internet.
The Mission Impossible star is seen asking fellow members of the church: "Should we clean this place up?"
Knopp said it was bound to remind Germans of Goebbels's notorious call for "total war" issued in Berlin on February 18, 1943.
"It is possible that the way in which Cruise speaks is common in many empowerment circles in the United States," he said.
"But the scene in which Cruise asks if the Scientologists should clean up the world and they all respond 'yes' will remind any German with an interest in history of Goebbels's infamous Sports Palace speech."
Cruise's portrayal of Nazi resistance hero Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, an aristocrat who led a failed plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944, has caused unhappiness in Germany because of the actor's links to Scientology.
It's a convoluted world we live in. The cut on Tom's NAZI uniform looks much better than the real thing worn by Goebbels.
It's "a fine line between clever and stupid" according to Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap, and more often than not it takes the kind of idiot like Nigel to cross the line with alacrity and ask, "who, me?" The news of the week is how the Sea Shepherd is having a showdown with the Japanese whaling fleet. In the latest run of action, a pair of protesters have boarded one of the Japanese vessels. Their return to the protest ship is looking uncertain.
It's believed a government patrol vessel, the Oceanic Viking, has been sent to act as an intermediary as Foreign Minister Stephen Smith repeated demands for the pair to be released.
Two days ago, two crew members of the Sea Shepherd vessel, the Steve Irwin, boarded a Japanese whaling ship.
It's reported 28 year old Australian Benjamin Potts and 35 year old Britain Giles Lane, boarded the other vessel only to hand an anti-whaling letter to the captain.
The whaling ship however, claims they were attacked by activists from the Steve Irwin, who threw acid at their ship, and boarded their vessel as an act of piracy.
The piracy claim may be well founded.
'The acts by Sea Shepherd do fit the technical definition of piracy, under the law of the Sea Convention; so that at least is a strongly arguable case,' said Professor Gillian Trigg, a maritime law expert.
Paul Watson, the captain of the Steve Irwin, says Potts had to struggle to stop the whalers from throwing him overboard, while the boat was travelling at 17 knots.
Colleagues claim the pair was then left tied up on the deck in freezing conditions for hours.
A spokesman for the Japanese Institute for Cetacean Research has denied those allegations, and says the men are being well treated.
Federal Police are investigating the detention, and Foreign Minister Stephen Smith has demanded the men be released.
'The Australian Government wants the two gentlemen returned to the Steve Irwin in a safe and secure condition,' Mr Smith said.
But Sea Shepherd claim that the whalers are refusing to release the men until all anti-whaling action is called off.
And so we go through another round of what can only be called 'whaling non-diplomacy'. It's a bit early this year, as the IWC stoush usually takes place around May. I guess it's because the high seas are filled with busy whaling boats pretending to do science and media-slut eco-terrorists. Meanwhile the news papers have got the populace all stitched up in apoplectic frenzy.
Hundreds of Herald readers took part in a website forum yesterday after two activists were held by a Japanese whaling crew.
Most called for a tough but measured political and legal response by the Rudd Government and a couple jokingly suggested avoiding sushi restaurants and Japanese cars.
But there was also a belligerent fringe who referred to imperial Japan's atrocities during World War II as justification for more sinister action.
Several argued that the Japanese regarded the whale hunt as a matter of nationalism and would not back down.
The comments were vetted to prevent the debate teetering into unabashed Japan bashing and most contributors did not use their real names.
"Do we not have submarines loaded with torpedoes? … I say send the subs down to the whaling sanctuary and any ship that's deemed taking part in whaling activities [be] torpedoed and sunk," said Damo.
"Send in the gunboats!" demanded Dave Collins.
Several suggested the Royal Australian Navy police the Southern Ocean in the same way it does the seas to our north.
"If they were Indonesians fishing in the northern Australian waters, the Government would impound the vessel and imprison the crew … Diplomacy be damned," wrote Frank.
"Treat them the same as other illegal fishermen," suggested Thomas. "Take their boats and burn them, send the whalers back to Japan with a big fine."
In a way, it's score one to the Sea Shepherd and company. If hey can appeal to the base racism and cultural hatred for Japan to get them to support the anti-whaling position, then they've done good. This stuff is pretty far from reasoned debate. I mean, the captain of the Sea Shepherd's ship, the 'Steve irwin' captain is likening the whalers to Al Qaeda. Now that's hysterical rhetoric. The Japanese position is correspondingly overstated in its rhetoric:
The International Whaling Commission passed a global moratorium on commercial whaling in 1982, without any scientific justification and without recommendation by its scientific committee. Since then, differing opinions have become entrenched as polarised rhetoric. Together with a lack of good faith in negotiations, this raises serious questions about the commission's continued institutional legitimacy and whether it has a future.
The whaling convention is not - nor has it ever been - about protecting all whales irrespective of how abundant they are. When it was agreed in 1946, it was about the proper management of the whaling industry by regulating catch quotas so that whale stocks would not be diminished. That Australia was a whaling country when it signed the convention but subsequently changed its position to anti-whaling in the 1970s does not change the convention.
Australia has sacrificed the principles of science-based management and sustainable use that are the world standard (and which Australia uses in other international forums and for the management of its own wildlife) as a political expediency to satisfy the interests of non-government organisations. Australia's intransigence and continued lobbying of other members of the International Whaling Commission to resolutely oppose any return to sustainable commercial whaling - and research whaling - has helped to bring the commission to the brink of collapse. Australia's hypocritical behaviour has been one of the causes of Japan's desire to form an alternative whaling organisation through which appropriate management of whale resources could be pursued.
Furthermore, the suggestion of Australia's Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, and Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, that somehow Japan's whale research violates international law is without foundation. Article VIII of the whaling convention unequivocally provides the right to kill whales for research purposes.
Japan's research is of vital importance. Australia has no intention at the present time to resume commercial whaling so it has no need for the kind of scientific data needed for a sustainable management regime. However, since this is the purpose of Japan's research there are some kinds of indispensable data that simply cannot be obtained by non-lethal means.
As a result of Japan's research program, we now know more about the status of whale stocks and whale biology than at any time in history and this knowledge increases each year.
That about sums it up. the rest of it is the usual guff of mounting the 'cultural argument'. I'm a little over the cultural argument, as it is clear that the market for actual whale meat is just not what it used to be. So this whaling activity is looking more and more like a state-subsidised industry. Why is Japan willing to stick its neck out this much for a whole lot of meat not even its own constituents want to eat?
Don't expect that video to be up for long. Youtube is pulling it down every few hours.This link came in the e-mail today and it's worth a look. It's Tom Cruise talking in an indoctrination video for the Church of Scientology.
You have to watch this video. It shows Tom Cruise, with all the wide-eyed fervor that he brings to the promotion of a movie, making the argument for Scientology, the bizarre 20th-century religion. Making the argument is an understatement. The Hollywood actor, star of movies such as Mission Impossible, is a complete fanatic. "When you're a Scientologist, and you drive by an accident, you know you have to do something about it, because you know you're the only one who can really help... We are the way to happiness. We can bring peace and unite cultures." There's much much more. Let me put it this way: if Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah's couch was an 8 on the scale of scary, this is a 10.
My thoughts? Man, he is one weird bastard. "Love, compassion and toughness to get it done. " What, exactly on earth, is he talking about? In the video, he keeps saying he's dedicating his life to making the world a better place, but c'mon Tom, you're an *ACTOR* for crying out loud! Not Mother Teresa or the head of the Red Cross emergency services. If you want to help, donate all your money to a real cause instead of huckster cults.
Pan Macmillan will not print a local edition of the book Tom Cruise, An Unauthorised Biography in Australia due to legal concerns, a move that has been labelled an act of censorship.
But the book, which alleges that Scientology played a major role in the breakdown of the marriage between Hollywood superstar Cruise and Nicole Kidman, will still be imported for sale at independent bookshops.
Scientologists have denied claims by the book's author, Andrew Morton, that Kidman was threatened with blackmail if she spoke out against the controversial religion.
The Cruise book, which is expected to be a best-seller overseas, will be released in a blitz of marketing and publicity in the US overnight.
It's interesting the Scientologists are so big they can intimidate a publishing house int silence. I mean, if there's nothing to hide, they shouldn't be trying to shut people up. They should just mount their counter-argument in public. This sort of intimidation goes to the heart of why they are so reviled.
It's based on this story here. If you can't be bothered clicking, the entire article is thus:
Meet Pony. She is an orangutan from a small village in Borneo, where they cut down the rain forest to render the palm oil that gets sold abroad and made into lip salve, ice cream, chocolates, and cheese crackers.
Vice: So tell us about Pony.
Michelle Desilets [Director of the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation]: Pony is an orangutan from a prostitute village in Borneo. We found her chained to a wall, lying on a mattress. She had been shaved all over her body.
I want to cry.
If a man walked near her, she would turn herself around, present herself, and start gyrating and going through the motions. She was being used as a sex slave. She was probably about six or seven years old when we rescued her, but she had been held captive by a madam for a long time. The madam refused to give up the animal because everyone loved Pony and she was a big part of their income. They also thought Pony was lucky, as she would pick winning lottery numbers.
Did the clients realize that they were in fact getting an orangutan?
Oh yeah, they would come in especially for it. You could choose a human if you preferred, but it was a novelty for many of the men to have sex with an orangutan. They shaved her every other day, which meant that her skin had all these pimples and was very irritated. The mosquitoes would get to her very badly and the bites would become septic and be very infected, as she would scratch them constantly. They would put rings and necklaces on her. She was absolutely hideous to look at.
How did you get her away from there?
It took us over a year to rescue her, because every time we went in with forest police and local officers we would be overpowered by the villagers, who simply would not give her up. They would threaten us with guns and knives with poison on them. In the end it took 35 policemen armed with AK-47s and other weaponry going in there and demanding that they hand over Pony. It was filmed by a local television crew and in the background of the film when we are unchaining Pony you can hear the madam crying hysterically, screaming, “They are taking my baby, you can’t do this!” There is no law enforcement in Indonesia so these people didn’t face any sentence or anything for what they had done.
It took a while but Rich "Goose" Gossage finally made the Hall of Fame.
With a solid 86 percent of the vote from members of the Baseball Writers Association of America (75 percent is needed for election), Gossage was the only electee (Jim Rice finished second with 72.2 percent) and only the fifth reliever so honored (the others are Hoyt Wilhelm, Rollie Fingers, Dennis Eckersley and Bruce Sutter, the crème de la crème of his profession). Gossage also is the 45th Yankee (including players, managers and executives), the 36th who played at least one game in a Yankees' uniform, the 15th who pitched for the Yankees, including Babe Ruth who pitched five games for them, and their first reliever.
"I grew up in Colorado," Gossage said, "and I didn't have much exposure to Major League baseball as a kid. My dad and I used to watch the Yankees on the Game of the Week, with Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese announcing the games, and my whole family became Yankees fans. To get to play for them was an out of body experience."
I used to think it was really exciting how he'd come in and just start throwing really hard, almost uncontrolled, hellacious fireballs at the general direction of home plate. He wasn't totally without control. In fact, most nights he was dominant and accurate, and it was only on the odd night, he would just be scattergun. But those scattergum nights were pretty interesting watching too. So I've always had a soft spot for old Goose.
Apart from Reggie, Catfish Hunter , and Goose, there really weren't any Hall of Fame caliber guys on that late1970s glory teams that won 2 World Series and made another 2 appearances in the post season. I'd happily have Thurman and Nettles in there, but I've been assured they're definitely *not* worthy of enshrinement. Goose on the other hand suffered from being a reliever - and yet he really was like no other.
In all 3 graphs you can see he was simply superb in his prime years between '77 and '83 or so. Man, it brings back memories! (The way my Aussie friends talk about Lille and Thompson's intimidation factor is how I remember Goose.)
When you combine this with his workload throughout his career in the days before 'The Closer', he really was an exemplary 'Fireman', and really it's for that, that he should be enshrined. Anyway, it's a nice way to start 2008 as a Yankee fan.
An overexcited dog accidentally shot and killed its owner on a goose hunting trip in Texas, authorities said today.
Perry Price, 46, had just shot a goose and went back to his pickup truck to let his dog out to go find it in the brush.
He leaned over the bed of the truck and lay his shotgun down inside as he unhooked the tailgate, his hunting companion told investigators.
"When the dog got to jumping around it went off," deputy Nacheal Bonin of the Chambers County Sheriff's Department said.
The shotgun pellets went through the truck's tailgate and struck Price, a high school teacher and avid hunter, in the thigh.
His friend rushed Price to a hospital just a few miles away but the pellets had severed an artery and Price could not be saved. He was pronounced dead at 6.20pm on Saturday.
"It just caught him in the wrong area. It's a freak accident," Bonin said.
There will be no further investigation because the gun was covered with the chocolate Labrador Retriever's muddy paw prints she added.
It's not uncommon for hunters to be shot by their dogs.
A pack of hunting dogs shot an Iowa man in the leg as he went to retrieve a fallen pheasant in October.
He had put his gun on the ground to climb a fence and retrieve the fallen bird. But the dogs followed him too closely, stepping on the gun's trigger before he managed to get over the fence.
He was badly injured when 100 to 120 pellets of birdshot hit him square in the left calf but survived the incident.
A day after the hoopla on the Japanese calling Australians racist over whaling, there's a big hoopla over in India over an Australian calling an Indian a racist over cricket.
RICKY PONTING must be sacked as captain of the Australian cricket team. If Cricket Australia cares a fig for the tattered reputation of our national team in our national sport, it will not for a moment longer tolerate the sort of arrogant and abrasive conduct seen from the captain and his senior players over the past few days. Beyond comparison it was the ugliest performance put up by an Australian side for 20 years. The only surprising part of it is that the Indians have not packed their bags and gone home. There is no justice for them in this country, nor any manners.
That the senior players in the Australian team are oblivious to the fury they raised among many followers of the game in this country and beyond merely confirms their own narrow and self-obsessed viewpoint. Doubtless they were not exposed to the messages that poured in from distressed enthusiasts aghast to see the scenes of bad sportsmanship and triumphalism presented at the SCG during and after the Test. Pained past players rang to express their disgust. It was a wretched and ill-mannered display and not to be endured from any side, let alone an international outfit representing a proud sporting nation.
Make no mistake, it is not only the reputation of these cricketers that has suffered. Australia itself has been embarrassed. The notion that Ponting can hereafter take the Australian team to India is preposterous. He has shown not the slightest interest in the well-being of the game, not the slightest sign of diplomatic skills, not a single mark of respect for his accomplished and widely admired opponents.
While there is no doubt the Indians were hard done by in Sydney, Kumble and his men need to be reminded that the Australians, too, suffered because of the poor umpiring. It is foolhardy for the Indians to suggest they are being persecuted; Indian cricket has an uneasy history with Bucknor, but his appointment was made from Dubai, not from Melbourne.
Furthermore, for all their distress, Kumble and his masters must keep the issue in perspective. Certainly their sensibilities have been offended, which is most regrettable, but they must guard against using the disappointment to mask another failure in the middle.
It may very well be that Australia plays the game too hard in the eyes of some, but equally, in the eyes of others, India does not play it hard enough. As always, in such disputes, sport can never be separated from the wider culture of the countries involved. And therein lies the rub as Kumble and Ponting prepare to draw new lines of engagement for the scheduled third and fourth Test matches later this month.
The latter sums up my feelings much more. The Indians are more than a little soft; they'd like that to be interpreted as being gentlemanly, but in the world of Elite Sports, it's just plain weak. The Australians are an obnoxious bunch who press for every advantage - sometimes one that are merely imaginary. Both sides knew this going in. The Aussies can do better for themselves simply by not pushing for the imaginary advantages; and the Indians can do themselves a world of good by shutting up and knuckling down. God only knows they do better when they do. In other words, as Frank Zappa once was told 'Shut Up and Play Yer Guitar'. Cricket, in this instance.
The Media Circus And The Umpire Has there ever been this much controversy since, say, the underarm bowling incident? Media people are likening statements to Woodfull's statements about the Bodyline Series 75 years ago. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but no, it's echoes of Bill Woodfull all the way.
I've been watching much less cricket this year thanks to my work schedule, but it has to be said there's a desperation in the Australian overage to see Ponting's squad equal the Waugh teams' record of 16 Test wins. As well, there has been an immense amount of media guff about how the Indians stopped the Waugh team back in 2001. So the stakes are high. Not to mention the ump did a crap-tacular job... As umps do in most sports. Remember, my adage is: The road to hell isn't paved with 'Good Intentions', it's paved with 'Umpiring Decisions'.
The International Cricket Council (ICC) has dumped umpire Steve Bucknor from the third Test between Australia and India in Perth.
New Zealand umpire Billy Bowden will be substituted for Bucknor for the Perth Test beginning on January 16.
The Indian Cricket Board (BCCI) had requested that the Jamaican umpire be replaced after a series of poor decisions in the controversial second Test in Sydney.
However ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed denies the change of umpire is a win for the Indian team.
"I'd like to think that the game has had a win, because we've been able to take a decision that will take some of the tension out of the situation and enable both teams to focus on the cricket rather than on the umpires," he said.
"I take the view that a good umpire is an umpire when you come to a ground... and you go home at the end of the day and you can't recall who was the umpire."
Mr Speed says the changes have been made to ease tension and to ensure the following two Test matches are played in the spirit of the game.
"What we need to do is to alleviate some of the tension that is focused on this match and one way of doing that is to bring in a new umpiring team with Billy Bowden and Asad Rauf as the two umpires, I think that gives us an opportunity to move on," he said.
How do you say "He had a crap game" without actually spelling it out? The media can claim that scalp. I always thought Bucknor was great.
Is 'Monkey' Even A Racist Term? Let's face, just as with the whaling thing, accusations of racism just don't help - but there you have it, there's a Three Test Match Ban on Harbhajan Singh. Rightfully, the Indians want to press their case against Australian sledging calls. In Symonds' defence, at least it's not a big, tall, blonde Nordic type of man complaining of being called, say, 'a Nazi'. He is the token non-white bloke the Australian cricket team have to show for their meager egalitarianism.
Ponting revealed yesterday exactly how the incident unfolded.
"I was made aware by Michael Clarke, who heard it on the way past," Ponting said.
"He told me straight away. I told (umpire Mark) Benson straight away. Making his way to slip, Haydos (Hayden) told me he heard it as well.
"When I knew a couple of guys had heard it, I made my way off the ground and spoke to (team manager) Steve Bernard straight away and explained to him everything that had happened.
"This is what I'm instructed to do by the referee, tell the umpires first, then tell your management. I ticked all the boxes, did what I had to do, then got on with playing the game."
The code of conduct hearing was held in the emotional aftermath of the Sydney Test, which Australia won with seven balls to spare and India lost after suffering almost as many bad umpiring decisions.
Symonds, being the only non-white (how do you put this politely?) and therefore only target for vilification says monkey is hurtful as it implies he is sub-human. The funny thing it's the kind of taunt that is readily heard in the school yard. ...And it's not like Singh used the N-word.
I'll accept the case that it is pretty derogatory, but then I've heard worse in Australia. So I can understand the fury of the Indians who for once find themselves on the side of the persecutors. It's the fury of irony. Speaking of which...
Roger Clemens said during an interview with 60 Minutes on Sunday that he was never injected with illegal performance-enhancing drugs by his former trainer and doesn't know what he can do to prove his innocence. "Never happened," Clemens told CBS correspondent Mike Wallace. "And if I have these needles and these steroids and all these drugs, what, where did I get them? Where is the person out there (who) gave them to me? Please, please come forward."
Crikey. You'd think they were called goat-fuckers.
A JAPANESE pro-whaling video condemning Australia as a racist nation using images of the infamous Cronulla riots has been launched on YouTube. The 10-minute video, with English and Japanese subtitles, accuses Australia of white supremacy, exclusionist nationalism, a racist ideology and of prejudice towards the Japanese.
It shows graphic images of slain dingoes, a wallaby being killed by a child bashing it against a ute, and one horrific scene in which an Australian-looking man takes a baby kangaroo from its mother's pouch and stomps on it in the dirt.
It also reproduces famous photographs of angry, young men lashing out violently during the Cronulla riots.
Awesome. The video is here. It's created a firestorm of responses on news.com and YouTube. I won't post the video here because I actually don't want to add fuel to the fire. It's a pretty irritating and provocative video. You sort of wonder what the editors of News.com were thinking when they hoisted it up on their site. I guess "more hits!" You'd think they were iCompers and MySpace sluts. :)
Anyway. It's hardly productive to accuse one another of racism - even if it true - so let's stick to the main point. Dingos and Kangaroos get culled in Australia. There are over 100,000 Minke whales, that the Japanese want to hunt. Both of these cases are argued on the grounds of being sustainable, and both are opposed on the grounds of cruelty ot animals. The facts are, if one is willing to countenance one, the other should be fine. If not to one, then the other should be opposed. That's about the long and short of it, and everything the Australian government has argued in the IWC meetings past is immensely bad faith.
ENVIRONMENTALIST and 2007 Australian of the Year Tim Flannery has declared his support for the hugely unpopular Japanese whaling program.
As Australia prepares to monitor the whaling fleet in Antarctica amid rising diplomatic tensions with Japan, Professor Flannery says there is nothing unsustainable about its annual cull of up to 1000 whales - particularly the common minke whale.
"In terms of sustainability, you can't be sure that the Japanese whaling is entirely unsustainable," Professor Flannery said. "It's hard to imagine that the whaling would lead to a new decline in population."
But the staunch environmentalist, influential scientist, author and climate change crusader said he was pleased Japan had decided to ditch plans to kill up to 50 threatened humpbacks this summer.
"I'm very relieved to see the humpback whale quota dumped," he said. But the 935 minke whales that Japan aims to kill each year under its so-called scientific whaling program should not threaten the survival of that species.
Professor Flannery said there were much bigger threats to marine biodiversity and sustainability, including to the future of krill, small crustaceans essential in the sea food chain - and the main sustenance for whales in the Southern Ocean.
Krill populations are declining as a result of over-fishing and because rising sea temperatures are killing off their food sources. Professor Flannery said he was more concerned about those issues "where our future is most under threat, which is not the minkes".
In other words, the conservation argument for 'Zero Tolerance' doesn't work.
Yet, on top of all that, just to muddy the waters, there's been the cultural argument that's been mounted by the Japanese, but it's not a very good one. The notion that somehow whaling is an ancient Japanese custom has been (rightly) disputed greatly. Besides, how good is that argument really in justifying whaling? After all, as a Samoan guy once pointed out to me, "Mate, killing and eating people is our cultural way, but it's just wrong, y'know? At some point we can't just do that."
If the cultural argument - "We've been doing it a long time, it's our way" - is lent any weight, we might have to accept things like anti-semitism as the 'traditional culture' and therefore the natural right of Europeans - they'll be wanting to bring back pogroms and ghettos and NAZI-sm and Auschwitz and... Somehow I just don't think that's going to fly.
What's really irksome about this video is that the taunts and abuses being hurled has descended down from activists to ordinary people. One wonders if this is the kind of thing the respective governments want. I noticed that as soon a sthe hits started to mount, News.com buried this page deep in their site. Well, I would too if I were them, lest we see another load of Cronulla style riots - and this is what really hurts. The erosion of trust is going to be harmful to both Canberra and Tokyo.
If anything, the Australia has been very un-diplomatic in its refusal to countenance a recommencement of commercial whaling at the IWC every year. It might have to reconsider just what it is that it's hanging so much political capital and prestige upon. It may be the case that 935 Minke whales just aren't worth it when there are much bigger projects to save. The 'Zero Tolerance' approach has not yielded the results sought.
'Crashing By Design' - 101 Pages Yeah. Kind of amazing to say this, but after fleshing out a few notes-only scenes and laying out the story outline in Script Format, the whole thing comes to 101 pages. Just looking at the story points, the first turning point comes a little late for me, as it sits at around page 40 instead of 30-35. Having said that, we have to introduce a lot, so its an area that needs looking. Consequently, Act 2 is feeling a tad short.
The Second turning point where grand ma gets killed however, landed smack bang on page 85. Are we good or what? :) Given that the third act was always a little short, I'm pretty comfortable about the shape the script is in at First Words to paper stage. Having 10-15 pages to flesh stuff out is a fantastic luxury at this point - even though it may get cut back again.
Posting Music I'm seriously contemplating leaving iCompositions. Either that or just go to minimum exposure. It's been a good 3 years, but I also feel like I've done my dash. I've made some friends and I don't think I've made too many enemies. Lately, I'm finding that the Angry Fat Man is hyperactive on the site dispensing with his ignorance and hack efforts and I just can't take a site seriously when people are so accommodating of a charlatan. So staring from 2008, I'm going to post my stuff further and wider. See what happens.
'Happiness Is Easy' Also working on a manuscript for a book. More details on this later. :)
I Gotta Write More That's it. Well, That, and try to make shitload of money, but I always resolve to do so and never manage it, so I don't know why I keep trying. I guess one day I will. Other than that I'm going to keep following my bliss and all that stuff.
What's on the cards? I'm frantically working on a first-words-to-paper draft of 'Crashing By Design'. This will take another week as I'm sort of half way through the process, having had a fire lit up my backside by the FTO people ("That's you, MW, I'm comin' to gitcha!").
I'm also working on a manuscript for a book called 'Happiness Is Easy'. Take it from me, writing this thing isn't, but I'm sort of wading into that process in my spare time. It's going to be a self-help book parody full of irony, sarcasm, and hopefully witticisms.
I'll probably write some songs, but I probably won't record as much this year as I want to go back to more film. 3 years hiatus is long enough. I might even pen a short MiniDV/HDV type feature and go for that once more. Not that I have any plots for it as such. But it's good to think of thee things. Anyway, the vow this year is to be more productive with the writing thing. Gotta get back to it, you know, like some Beat Gen writer on Benzedrine. :)
