Cetacean outrage

Oh, my God.

You know how we (well, a lot of us) try to avoid consuming tuna that is caught with nets that also endanger dolphins? Well, the Japanese have figured out an ingenuous solution to the problem. They hunt the dolphins directly. They lure and confuse the dolphins into coves where men in boats can easily kill them with sickles, spilling so much blood that the water literally turns red. (Warning: the link contains graphic pictures of bloody water which seem to have been Photoshopped to make the water red to an absurd degree. Personally, I find the pile of dolphin cadavers in the boat as damning as the bloody water.)

As much as I love the Japanese and Nordic cultures, their insistence on hunting marine mammals (and let's not indulge the fantasy that these animals are killed for "scientific research" reasons) disgusts me to the core. (I should note a bit of "balance" here, as there's a lot about my own culture that disgusts me to the core.)

(Link via John Scalzi.)