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Human Error
Sep. 13th, 2010 01:24 amFirst, read THIS.
Summary: Japan has a HUGE surplus of whale meat just sitting around in a freezer. The volume keeps building because not enough people want to buy it (for various reasons...most likely because it's just not that popular over here), so in their brilliance, the business dudes in charge of Whale Meat Mountain thought to themselves, "Hey, you know who we could give this to who won't have any chance to complain because the people who pay for their meals will totally JUMP at the chance to cut costs on anything? KIDS IN SCHOOL. It's BRILLIANT!" And the REAL punchline? There's enough mercury in that stuff to KILL THEM ALL.
Now, explain to me...how is it possible that a group of people can be SO stubborn that they would rather ENDANGER THEIR OWN CHILDREN than STOP DOING SOMETHING THEY'RE GETTING A LOT OF BAD PRESS ABOUT???
If you ask me, this seems to have become more of an issue of stubbornness (dare I say, akin to Japan's reluctance to apologize to Korea over the whole WWII thing?) than anything else. Japan DOESN'T rely on whales as a diet staple, it DOESN'T depend on the industry financially, and it certainly DOESN'T reap any brownie points in the eyes of the West for busting through Greenpeace rubber raft blockades to get to pods of whales/dolphins splashing around in the ocean. So why do they continue hunting whales, even if the only solution to the resulting meat surplus is feeding heavy metal to unsuspecting children?
Tradition.
Summary: Japan has a HUGE surplus of whale meat just sitting around in a freezer. The volume keeps building because not enough people want to buy it (for various reasons...most likely because it's just not that popular over here), so in their brilliance, the business dudes in charge of Whale Meat Mountain thought to themselves, "Hey, you know who we could give this to who won't have any chance to complain because the people who pay for their meals will totally JUMP at the chance to cut costs on anything? KIDS IN SCHOOL. It's BRILLIANT!" And the REAL punchline? There's enough mercury in that stuff to KILL THEM ALL.Now, explain to me...how is it possible that a group of people can be SO stubborn that they would rather ENDANGER THEIR OWN CHILDREN than STOP DOING SOMETHING THEY'RE GETTING A LOT OF BAD PRESS ABOUT???
If you ask me, this seems to have become more of an issue of stubbornness (dare I say, akin to Japan's reluctance to apologize to Korea over the whole WWII thing?) than anything else. Japan DOESN'T rely on whales as a diet staple, it DOESN'T depend on the industry financially, and it certainly DOESN'T reap any brownie points in the eyes of the West for busting through Greenpeace rubber raft blockades to get to pods of whales/dolphins splashing around in the ocean. So why do they continue hunting whales, even if the only solution to the resulting meat surplus is feeding heavy metal to unsuspecting children?
Tradition.
