If you can enforce a ban, you can enforce a quota

The International Whaling Commission (don’t let the name fool you–they’re ag’in’ whaling) is offering a truce to longtime animal warriors Japan. Instead of continuing their outright ban, which the Japanese dodge by calling their kills “science,” the IWC might permit them to limited whaling with as-of-yet undetermined quotas.

How do the Japanese justify killing the better part of 30,000 whales, the majority becoming food, since 1986 as science?

1) Food science is science. It’s science that you eat. Without out it, there would be no Twinkies, Cheez-Whiz and other “foods.” It’s only a matter of time before the Japanese discover a fish-like substance that tastes like whale.

2) Less whales equals more Japanese people. The world’s seaweed and tiny gross fish supplies are running scarce because whales eat it all. What will the Japanese eat if they can’t cut it up and tie it to rice? Spaghetti-Os?

3) The best technology comes from war. We’re at war, but the Japanese are facing a giant, intelligent foe that may use language to coordinate its underwater convoys. Therefore, any weapons they develop for whaling will lead to peacetime innovations like odorless braces and typhoon guns.

Good idea, bad idea: science

Good Idea:

Creating rice that will live both 41 days and 41 nights. Even God might not be able to knock out a new precision bred strain of rice that is highly flood resistant. Feast, and be merry!

Bad Idea:

Creating robots that will end us all. AGAIN. Mad scientists, keep in mind that people don’t want things smaller. No, if anything that this Escalade/Expedition/Navigator/H2 generation has told us, it’s that people want things bigger. Don’t give into their wishes and make larger carnivorous robots. Ones the size of tables are bad enough.

Wii would like to program

The Wii–it’s that other console that you play every now and then eight months after finally buying one. Yeah, the hard drive is super tiny, the game selection of good to bad is a ratio that you don’t want to know, it’s not formatted for a high definition world and waggle is just plain bad.

But.

It does have its purposes, here and there. And who is it that has managed to find a way to use the Wii properly? Why, it’s our good friend science!

Yes, the newest foray of the Wii outside the world of games has to do with a research project being conducted at Rice University, which hopes to find a way to use the Wiimote to control robot teachers. Oh yes, you heard that right. Our robot teachers. You see, science has finally done something to truly further mankind–we’re using their own technology to educate ourselves, thus putting our eventual robot overlords to good use. Take that, turkey!

Led by Rice professors Marcia O’Malley and Michael Byrne, the project plans to analyze motion using the controller and then compare it to an advanced capture device from Vicon. Whatever that means. Viva la human-lucion!