A YouTube video showing diners at what is purported to be a Chinese restaurant eating a live and gasping fish has many animal activists in an uproar, PETA included. The video has recently made the news around the world with stories from the Telegraph and CBC catching my eye.
The video shows the fish being prepared while still very much alive with a chef first shaving the animal’s scales before slicing it open along its belly and then dipping it into boiling oil. The fish, still gasping though no longer wriggling at this point, is then covered in sauce and goes on to be consumed alive by diners with chop sticks.
Animal rights groups are calling the video barbaric while others are concerned about the negative impact the fallout from the video could have on Western impressions of Chinese practices. I’m with both camps; while I hope this is not a regular practice and therefore not reflective of Chinese customs as a whole, the video really is disgusting. I’m not sure what benefit the chef or diners see in torturing the fish to its very end but a quick death and compassionate treatment in preparation should be the norm in all cases.
Sometimes when looking at the stars in the night sky I’m overcome with a sudden feeling of primitive awe and wonder at the shapes I can trace among them. The feeling is distinctly reminiscent of how I know my ancestors must have felt each and every time they looked up at the intricate rigidity of the sunless sky.
I wouldn’t trade the knowledge that those distant dots of light are actually huge masses of burning gas for any emotional high but I do have to wonder what effect scientific study has on the primitive imagination.
I think it would be a simple matter to admit two easy points, all of us:
With all of the controversy surrounding human-induced climate change and global warming, I think it would be a simple matter to admit two easy points, all of us:
1. We can’t know every detail of the “health” of the Earth yesterday, today or tomorrow. We cannot provide irrefutable evidence for or against human-influenced “global warming” because we are a long, long way from an intimate understanding of the Earth as a long-term and intricate eco-system.
2. It doesn’t matter! Recycle, drive a smaller car (if any), don’t throw trash on the ground and reduce your footprint in general. Surely even the most stringent of the anti AGW bunch can see that there is surely no harm in buying into what you call propaganda if the only result is a cleaner planet.
This is a silly argument and has been for some time now. Anyone who wastes their resources trying to convince the other side of anything while still consuming and wasting like most of us in the world (the West especially) do is a hypocrite and a sloth – stop arguing, start doing. It’s a win/win situation no matter how you play it.
A fanciful re-rendering of the dating system used in human history. Not region-specific, the system would present problems with timing of the invention of metallurgy, etc, but the idea of a system not based on religious indulgences and centered around important historical happenings is pleasing to the eye.
Dubbed “ES” as “Epistic System” in honor of the site and its goal.
10,000 BCE (0 ES) – Neolithic Revolution begins
0 – 5,000 ES – Agricultural Period
5,001 – 6,699 ES – Early Memetic Period
6,700 – 8,850 ES – Metallurgical Period
8,851 – 10,500 ES – Classical Period
10,501 – 11,500 ES – Memetic Reformation Period
11,501 – 11,990 ES – Modern Period
11,991 – Current – Digital Period
A YouTube video showing diners at what is purported to be a Chinese restaurant eating a live and gasping fish has many animal activists in an uproar, PETA included. The video has recently made the news around the world with stories from the Telegraph and CBC catching my eye.
