well, drat. and caution- rant ahead.

a bit of happiness before the rantiness. apparently, there's such a thing as the World Association of Copepodologists. I love it. love love love it. I want to belong to the WAC. I mean...c'mon. it's copepods. hooray for copepods!

plus, there's the amazingly sexy Coastal and Oceanic Plankton Ecology, Production & Observation Database, which just so happens to spell copepod.

I know. I just used the words 'sexy' 'database' and 'plankton' in the same sentence. I don't care.

on with the rant! I shan't be offended if you cease reading- I've illuminated the darkness of your non-copepod knowing soul. I'm content.

my nice happy non-ecoterrorist Sierra Club shares a close connection or two with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. and it's impossible to tell what's coincidence, what's vitriol and what's on second. (I don't know/third base!)

Drat. the sscs makes my skin crawl almost as much as the earth liberation front. sigh.

I have reaffirmed my -I can't really call it hatred, but it's pretty much as close as I get to true hatred- towards PETA. I can understand and empathize with the desire to not test cosmetics on animals, to better conditions for feedstock like chickens and cows and turkeys, etc. free range good, antibiotics and growth hormones bad. check. no argument here. but condoning violence, giving money to anyone even remotely connected to terrorists like the earth liberation front- no. the whole point to freedom of speech is that violence isn't necessary to be heard. ugh. blarg blarg blarg. stupid.

and wounded! I have been sorely, deeply, painfully wounded by the knowledge that The Man- Richard Dean Anderson (MacGyver)- is on the board of directors of the sea shepherd conservation society.

that's like finding out obi-wan kenobi was emperor palpatine's bowling buddy.

MacGuyver on the dark side. whaat? and Pierce Brosnan. it makes you want to go...ok, yeah, great, support the environment! stop non-indigenous sealing! awesome! but don't, oh god don't support ecoterrorism. they sink ships. they say it's legal, but it's legal in the way that only really slimy smarmy lawyers can find. it's vigilantism at its worst. or finest. it's a greenpeace spinoff.

and greenpeace runs ships into reefs. oh sorry- they had bad charts given to them.
and they blow up ships. no wait, that was France's fault. and it was, actually, but you gotta wonder why greenpeace needed the ship in the first place.

there is no impartiality. you go to a greenpeace website, a peta website, a sea shepherd website, and it all looks great. sometimes sort of intense, but hey, intense can be good. although the phrase
"We accomplish these goals through public education, investigation, documentation and, where appropriate and where legal authority exists under international law or under agreement with national governments, enforcement of violations of the international treaties, laws and conventions designed to protect the oceans." (from the Sea Shepherd website)
should make you kind of go ...hm... if you're reading carefully.

and then you go to something like activistcash or the center for consumer freedom websites and get bombarded by "look! evil! they LIE! see this and this and this and this" (I'm paraphrasing. actually no, I'm hyperbole-ing, but you understand. or maybe you don't.)

and then you go look up who exactly is running those websites and get sent to websites saying "Look! EVIL! funding from phillip morris/exxon/enron/cato institute/heartland institute etc etc etc bad bad bad don't listen!"

(and if you really want your head to hurt, look up who's running/funding the websites of the websites of the websites.)

it's a depressing cycle. are they (peta/sscs/greenpeace, etc) as bad as they (activistcash, etc) make them out to be? probably not quite so evil.
are they (activist cash, etc) as bad as (peta/sscs/greenpeace etc) say they are? probably not quite so evil. everybody's got fingers in everybody's pies.

but it does beg the question: if government/big industry/etc hates all environmental advocacy groups and tries to discredit them with lies, terrible lies...then why does a google search for the ocean conservancy yield nothing like the vitriol connected to peta/sscs/greenpeace etc? or the worldwide wildlife fund? the nature conservancy? earthwatch?

maybe they're just not important enough.

I don't really care that neither side is telling the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I subscribe to the parenting philosophy of "if you're both fighting, you're both not right." or to the Simon Burris philosophy of "no, you're wrong. but take heart- there's always someone wrong-er."

still. in this age of going green, buying green, offsetting your carbon footprint through action or donation, etc...

where's your money going, ultimately? do you know?

advice?

so I set up my fishtank. once it's done building up a biofilter, then I want to get a fishy, because I miss Ovid.

but I'll be leaving all summer for the skog and, quite possibly, moving to the sanfran area sometime after that.

grarg.

someone give me a major kick in the pants so I finish Lars's Dr Who.
and then someone agree to kidnap and beat some sense into me if I ever think of making another Dr Who.

must rip out crown of beret, too.
and finish shawl the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.
and finish the samesjal.
and the rest of the projects in the happy stashbox.
good lord.