July 17th, 2007 at 1:21 pm

DARHOP- I’m afraid that even if a dead one was brought in initially, there would still be scientists who would want to get their hands on a live one to study. I don’t agree with it, but I¹m pretty sure at least one is going to have to take one for the team in the end.

You know the worst thing about this statement is? In all actuality, you are right. Their will always be those wanting a live animal to study. My question is, will they study it to death? Probably. Will it be released after it has been studied? Probably not. If it dies during these studies, will they seek another to continue the study? Or will they leave well enough alone? Will just knowing they exist be enough
after one dies because of these studies? How was was the mountain gorilla studied in captivity before they went to studying them in the wild? Why do they need a live animal to study? Don’t they pretty much just want to dissect it like a frog in science class? Isn’t that what the study will eventually lead to, dissecting the Big One? So why do they need a live one? Poor things. Like I said, people can be so damn cruel. LONG LIVE THE BIG ONES!

Yes, their vast height and weight, fur covering, and stench will enable them to blend in completely in human civilization, get up close to their target, and dispatch him/her and slip away completely unnoticed, just like a ninja…?

BB reader Chris Zable says, “My first question when I read the item about the pygmies lodged at the zoo instead of a hotel was, has anyone asked THEM what they want?” He found the answer in a BBC report:

“It’s not good for men, women and children to all be in this one tent. We need some space,” dancer and musician David Motambo told the BBC. “We can’t live here where there are so many mosquitoes. Here in the city we can’t stay in the forest.”Boing Boing

One can only hope, but I imagine that it’ll be small consolation to all the native peoples that are now little more than an historical footnote in the book of Humanity. Extinction is not just an evolutionary concept…

Here’s another quote I found while looking for the one by Peltier-

“I am not so interested in what monkey man was derived from as I am in what kind of monkey he is to become.”
-Loren Eiseley

Racists will use whatever is at hand to reinforce their beliefs, Shumway, evolution included. Long before they invoked Darwin, they invoked the Bible as proof of white supremacy (more recently there are those who use it to promote black supremacy too…at least there’s equality among bigots). I posted the basic biblical racist viewpoint some time ago on another thread that I’m afraid I can’t recall now, but the gist of it is that the races are descended from the sons of Noah- Japheth, Ham, and Shem.

Traditionally, Japheth is seen as the progenitor of the Caucasian race (Called so not for any scientific reason, but because biblical scholars thought the sons of Japheth first settled in the Caucasus). Ham is seen as the progenitor of the Black races, which causes no end of trouble, because he’s usually condemned for getting his father drunk and looking at him naked, which is then used as an excuse for persecuting said race. Of course, the Tutsis of Rwanda used it to support their superiority over the Hutus and their resulting slaughter. Shem is seen as the progenitor of the Arab and Semitic races, and sometimes Asian as well, depending on the viewpoint.

The following is from Wikipedia (Not the most reliable, I know, but it reiterates what I’ve read elsewhere, and unlike that source material, I can copy and paste it)-

“During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Biblical statement that God shall enlarge Japheth (Genesis 9:27) was used by some Christians as a justification for the “enlargement” of European territories through Imperialism, interpreted as part of God’s plan for the world. However, rather than being a prediction, the statement appears, in the eyes of scholars, to be a pun on Japheth’s name meaning beauty, since the statement literally translates as God shall beautify Japheth.

Religious Jews and Arabs consider themselves sons of Shem (thus, Semites). There is a current dispute over whether or not Ishmael was the legitimate son of Abraham. Nevertheless, though the term Semitic has come to be attached to their language group including Hebrew and Arabic, in the opposing term anti-Semitic it is generally regarded in modern times as referring solely to the Jews. While, apart from Lydia and Elam, the groups usually associated with Shem are also identified as having a shared origin, the groups of Japheth and Ham are not always agreed to, and most secular and religious scholars have abandoned all claims of absolute accuracy for the table.”

Genocide over a misinterpreted pun…you gotta love religion! Seriously, this is why you shouldn’t believe everything you read.

Some medical researchers still claim the notion of race has value for its cultural/environmental reasons, meaning that the study of minority health risks is still valid because they have traditionally been exposed to different environmental factors than others in this society. I happen to agree with them, as historically so-called minorities have been restricted to poorer areas and denied such basics as clean air and water, not to mention health care. Many studies have shown that race is a consistent predictor of location of pollution sources, with pollution sources occurring more often in minority areas. But this is social, not biological. Cultural, not genetic. It has nothing to do with any underlying physical difference between minority or majority. It is imposed from without, not expressed from within.

According to modern genetic, evolutionary, and biological science, race as it is commonly categorized in the western world has no scientific basis whatsoever. As a person of Irish/Swedish/German descent, I am probably more likely to have more genetically in common with say, any given Inuit, Basque, Turk, or Baka than I am to any given resident of Dublin, Stockholm, or Berlin. Genetic variation is actually greater within ethnic groups than without.

Scientifically, we are all the same. Human. And as much as I don’t wish to rain on Darkshine’s parade concerning the better part of our nature, that includes the serial killer as well as the saint.

I am reminded of something I heard long ago, and which I had the presence of forethought to write down-

“It takes a long time not to feel like an alien, a long time to feel at home, and a long time to search out and discover who you are. But if you go all the way with that exploration, it takes you beyond race, beyond colour, beyond class, beyond every kind of category, and you find that you belong to Humanity, and that’s who you are. When you no longer feel like an alien anywhere, you’ve come home, you know who you are. You’ve found your family, the Human family, and there is no such thing as the Human family and others, not anymore. As long as you leave anyone out, you are the alien, and that search for wholeness, for oneness, for who you are, has to continue.”
-Wilfred Peltier