A Whale of a Problem

That whale up north, I guess, has made it back to the Pacific Ocean before the Japanese whalers got it to it, so that's all good. Still, there's been a lot more whales in the news the last few years than I ever remember hearing about before. Just the other month I think there was one in the Hudson river, too.

So I've been thinking about whales, just a little.

The Japanese, I hear, are introducing some new measure or other about hunting them, or some regulation or other, and I think I've finally discovered the problem. Some well-meaning, but misguided idiot, years ago decided that the offspring of a whale should be called a calf.

Big mistake.

If you don't want people eating something, I maintain that it's not a good idea to name it after one of the more delicious and widely eaten things on the planet. Leaving aside the Indians, the real ones, five-sixths of the world know there's few things more tasty than beef. If I wanted to protect whale babies, I think I'd name them poisonos or something. Something to discourage the thought of how good they'd taste barbecued. You call them calves, well, you're just asking for trouble.

The other thing these wayward whales have taught me is that we humans are very generous when it comes to calling things intelligent. Okay, I'll give you the ability to swim beats out, say, turning your face toward the sun, but I think that if one of the things that differentiate animals from plants is mobility, the ability to handle that movement should have some importance. Nowadays, whales are getting lost all the time, and that's just sad.

There are some who say it's our fault, that our navies are deafening them with sonar or something, and I think that would be pretty easy to test. It might be the mercury we're filling the ocean with, from all those early thermometers one would think, and, again, we could find that out pretty quick.

It may be that whales are to humans as men are to women. Everyone laughs at how stupid men are for not stopping to ask directions, and the whales are that stupid and more. Glorious animals, yes, but with too much pride to ask for help and too few muscles in their sense of direction, I'm thinking calling them intelligent may be stretching it.

I've been lucky enough to see them and was in awe of their majesty. I feel the same way about mountains.

Seasonal Musings

This weekend marks the unofficial beginning of Summer, 2007, which coincides with the end of Spring, 2007. Because of that, I'm going to pose my weather question.

I think I've already said that I have questions about the "inches of mercury" used to measure barometric pressure, ones that my personal assistant could answer for me if I'm ever lucky enough to have one. Another thing my assistant could figure out is why we measure rainfall in inches.

Not that we've had very much at all this year where I live. The word dry comes to mind, unless we're talking about my yard, in which case the better word would be brown. Still, the little rain we've gotten, as well as the seasonal norm, is always given as a matter of inches.

It goes without saying that when we receive rain every container in the yard fills up with about three times the amount the officials say we got. I suppose I could get around that and get a result more in line with the proper number if I had a tube about a foot tall with a one inch opening, but I don't. As it is, the buckets and coffee cans out there all give me a wildly inflated figure and get me excited about just how much rain we've gotten.

But that doesn't have much to do, at all, with my question.

Water, and by extension, rain, is a liquid last time I looked. I guess counting up the inches that have fallen is a measure of volume, but doesn't water already have a built-in measure of that? Don't we, for every thing other than rain or snow, measure volume in cups or quarts or shots? If we want to be scientific or European, we could use liters or ccs, and I think any of them would be a better way to measure rainfall than the way we do now. Inches, to me, measure length.

Liters of rain per square meter, or cups per square yard, would be a sensible way to measure rainfall, and I guess that's why we don't do it. One of the first things my personal assistant would be charged with is starting the march to get everyone on board with adopting the Russell Standard for Precipitation Measurement.

Unless, of course, someone else has come up with this idea already.

This Space Intentionally Left Blank

I'm reminded today of one of the better pieces of advice I've received.

If you can't say something nice about someone, don't say anything at all.

We Have a Loser...

It's entirely possible that my dog, Minardi, just got in the first fight of his life. Against a cat.

!@(loserdog.jpg:L120 popimg: "2ndPlace")

He seems pretty happy about it, though.

I wasn't around, of course, but he was out in the backyard, no doubt minding his own business or patrolling his territory. The cat encroached and scratched him up pretty badly. His eye is all red (not that you can see any detail in pics from my phone), and he has some mean scratches on his snout.

!@(loser1.jpg:L120 popimg: "lost2cat")

I was worried at first. I washed his face, but was relieved to see that he was more eager to go back out there than he was to be treated. He may have gotten his ass whomped, but I guess it didn't hurt as much as I feared. He may have lost, but it seems unlikely he learned any important life lessons.

And in that regard he may be more like me than I like.

Our Next President

According to some experts I heard about once, we elect people based -- as much as anything -- on appearance. This doesn't explain Henry Waxman, but every theory has exceptions.

If this holds true, I expect the GOP will go with Mitt Romney, about whom I'm less than ignorant. I saw him at the "debate," however, and he's as pandering as the his fellows, so I guess he has a good shot. To be a successful Republican primary candidate you need to be unrealistically obsessed with immigration, talking tough, and the sanctity of life (criminals and terrorists notwithstanding).

You also have to talk a lot about evil, a very religious-sounding term that puts you in the right.

The better looking Democratic candidates, I think, are Obama and Edwards. I'd add Kucinich to the mix based on his hot wife, but everyone focuses more on how short he is. Hillary doesn't look bad but she peaked a few years ago for me, so she's out.

I'm guessing one of those three will be our next president.

The Race Is On

Now that the GOP "debate" has been aired, I've most likely seen our next President in action, giving a one minute press conference.

Last week it was the Democratic hopefuls, and from somewhere in that mess of twenty people, the next US President will emerge. I can't say as I'm particularly thrilled with any of them and none of their names sound right yet with the President prefix.

What happens next, of course, is the primaries. Right now part of my dissatisfaction may have to do with every candidate running as hard to the extremes as possible. In the primary elections, you have to cater to the extreme elements in your party, and it's only when you have the party faithful do you move more toward the center and reason. So, while last week it was all about who hated Bush the most, this week it was all about who hated abortion.

They tell me that the successful candidate will need to raise about $100 million dollars by the end of the year, just to win the Primary. To do that, of course, is a full time job, so I'm thinking most of these Senators, Representatives, and Governors won't be doing hardly anything at all as far as their day job is considered. I guess most partisans are so fond of that "favorite son" thing that they won't mind that their elected officials are going to be too busy raising money to look after their interests.

I think this is a horrible way to select our next President.

The GOP candidates are all white men, as are most of the Democrats. I guess they're all still really good at raking in the money.