Killer Whale Lives-Up To Name

Killer (“Shamu”) whale kills trainer at Sea World.

Well… yea.

I loved visiting Sea World in Ohio as a child. Seeing Shamu was a wonderful moment that I’ll probably never forget. And yet, even I’ll admit I wanted to make jokes at this one. “Killer Whale” isn’t a name that elicits the warm-fuzzies in us, and it isn’t supposed to. Like a police officer or a fireman, you put yourself in harm’s way long enough, it’s going to bite you. Literally.

I think I’d feel worse if I hadn’t seen a recent documentary about ocean mammal trade in Japan, funded mostly by Sea World and the Japanese Government. It details the capture and slaughter of dolphins  and whales for food and the animal entertainment industry. Shines a very poor light on the entire amusement park animal idea. This event just makes it worse.

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Incredible Shrinking Eggs

 

For the last 5 months, I’ve been noticing something different in my grocery store.  My eggs seem smaller.

 

No, it’s not a personal problem.

 

The normal “large” size eggs we usually buy seemed to be shrinking every week we’d go shopping. I thought it was just the brand carried by our local Meijer store, until I was mixing-up some batter for a perch-fry at my mom’s house in September. Her Wal-mart extra-large’s seem a bit medium-ish.  An industry trend, or am I just seeing things?

 

Now…Ethanol! So What?

For the first time, I saw a “flexfuel” Sedan in my area. It was a pretty, brand-new Chevy Impala. It’s shiny white paint glistened in the sun. It’s been a year and a half since I first wrote “Ethanol..Made to Fail?” , and 2 years since oil companies and car dealers in my area began pushing for local adoption. At the time, I was complaining that everyone was hailing Ethanol as our next energy savior, but no one would sell vehicles that ran on it.

 

Freshwater Dolphins, Mother Russia, and My Pocketbook

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A small story filtered through the web last week that caught me off guard. Some odd type of Chinese river dolphin was declared extinct. Not a plant, not a salamander, a dolphin. We’ve become used to the loss of species lately because of the changes we’ve created. This is now the new ‘normal’. A bird here, a frog there, a little bite-y insect I’d probably would have stepped on anyway..but not a mammal. Not a …dolphin!? These things are supposed to be just as smart as us! Didn’t they notice they were disappearing? Did they try to tell the Chinese to stop? Maybe they just got eaten every time they tried.  The Chinese will eat almost anything.