Whaling - WHY?!

[one_to_tango]

[This was not meant to be a rant, but it descended into one. Sorry. That does rather lesson its academic credibility, but there you go. It's also bloody long - meep, you know me *looks sheepish*.]

I've been reading up again on that ecological pirate of the high seas, the Nisshin Maru.

For those of you that don't know, that is the whale hunter (sorry

Comments

[aidansean]

international community (an odious little word, community - one never knows entirely what it means)

I've always taken it to mean "There are other people/constructs to consider." and nothing more. Maybe you should replace "international community" with "group containing nations".

Suppose there exists a group I which contains every nation n in a closed manifold. Let W(r) be the distribution of whales across the manifold space r and let W'(n) be the distribution of whalemeat for each group member. In the limit W'(J)->int W(r) dr the element J is not being A Good Member. Bad member J!

(Aside: If it's a group then there exists some operation that converts one member into another. Preumably this would be a coup or military victory. Something along the lines of Campaign_ImperialJapan(Manchuria) -> JapanifiedManchuria whereas Campaign_NaziGermany(SovietRussia) -> SovietRussia (where Campaign_G = Barbarossa and lowers the G operator from +1/2 (victory) to -1/2 (defeat) and has no effect on any other operator.) Similarly Invasion_Russia has one eigenvalue of -1/2, and must be faciliated by a dictator, as experiments with Napoleon, Frederick the Great, Denekin and Hitler have shown.)

[one_to_tango]

Ah, but what about areas that are disputed, and demand their independence (often with good reason, until politicians get involved, and others who don't have a clue what the phrase "self-determination" mean).

E.g. Chechnya, Nagorno-Karabakh, Western Sahara, Transnistria, Puntland, Somaliland, South Ossetia, Taiwan even!, Palestine, Kosovo,...

And I'm still not sure mixing set theory or whatever it is with international politics is a good idea :s

Also, you actually read that mother of a post?! You beautiful schmuck!