The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Science & Nature => Topic started by: Carlos del Vaca on August 05, 2008, 02:20:06 pm
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/02/AR2008080201169.html
Wombat? Seriously, WTF? I like elephants as much as the next guy, but sending away the hippo? And the giraffes, from what I've heard?
BOO TO THAT
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/02/AR2008080201169.html
Wombat? Seriously, WTF? I like elephants as much as the next guy, but sending away the hippo? And the giraffes, from what I've heard?
BOO TO THAT
I blame the pandas. They are in some way responsible for every negative aspect of the zoo.
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Oh, don't get me started.
I am sure it is true that elephants need more space than the zoo was previously providing. But there are two ways you could solve that problem: Either build a huge expensive new exhibit, or decide that in a zoo that's in the middle of a major city, you just don't have room to keep elephants.
What drives me crazy is that with the millions that are going to this exhibit, we could have set up breeding programs for many of the frog species that are going extinct. We could be saving entire species instead of a just giving a few individual elephants a nice place to live. (If you don't know about the frog extinction issue read this (http://news.aol.ca/article/Frogs-Are-Disappearing/81754/).)
The party line at zoos is that they are important because they are in the forefront of conservation. This is sometimes true. But I don't see how keeping a few elephants in the middle of Washington DC contributes to that. The stock answer is that people need to be educated to care about animals, and that is true to some extent. But it's not like people don't know about elephants. I suspect that the real issue here is simply that the public expectation is that if they go to a major zoo, they will see elephants. And the zoo doesn't have the confidence to violate that expectation.
This seems like a bad use of limited funds, to me. But no one asked me.
The giraffes have been gone for quite a while, by the way. I don't know if they are planning to get any back when the exhibit is done.
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I'm at a zoo! Where are my charismatic African megafauna!
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They give the elephants priority because people love elephants. Frogs have limited appeal.
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Paul is right. And maybe that love of elephants means that people will be inspired to give more money. And maybe donations inspired by charismatic megafauna will trickle down to the animals with more limited appeal.
But, I have never seen any evidence of that. Like as far as I can tell, pandas at a zoo are like a winning football team at a university - gets you plenty of attention but does not seem to end up, say, raising the salary of linguistics professors or frog keepers.
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Maybe for other sports, but not for anything else. But they try to convince you that it's going to be good for unlovable common little ugly things at the university too. Which is a lie.
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Actually, I always thought that professors ought to figure out how to get sponsorships and wear the names of companies on our clothes. Think of the captive audience staring at the Coke or Nike logo on my back as I'm writing on the chalkboard. Wouldn't the advertising have gotten more attention on me doing something boring, than on a sports figure doing something interestingly distracting?
There's now a trend at zoos to have exhibits names after donors/sponsors. We haven't starting painting the Coke logo on the sides of the elephants yet though.
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We haven't starting painting the Coke logo on the sides of the elephants yet though.
The key word being yet.
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Actually, I always thought that professors ought to figure out how to get sponsorships and wear the names of companies on our clothes. Think of the captive audience staring at the Coke or Nike logo on my back as I'm writing on the chalkboard. Wouldn't the advertising have gotten more attention on me doing something boring, than on a sports figure doing something interestingly distracting?
There's now a trend at zoos to have exhibits names after donors/sponsors. We haven't starting painting the Coke logo on the sides of the elephants yet though.
That could work long-term. It's amazing how quickly people acclimate to that kind of advertising. I heard David Bern on the radio complaining about going to a Redskins game and seeing all kinds of adds all over FedEx Field. He was going on and on about how you can't look anywhere in FedEx Field without seeing an add for a cola or beer. And the areas around the scoreboards of FedEx Field are surrounded by ads too, so there's nowhere at all you can look and not see ads.
He was being very careful not to say any product names because he didn't want to encourage or help the advertising. But he said "FedEx Field" at least 2 dozen times without even realizing it. Because once it's there for a year or two it just seems natural. I still call it The Jack, mainly just to be a dick.
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Or like the stadiums in Houston now have never had any name other than their sponsor.
I do like the nickname for Minute Maid Park, The Juice Box.
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Oh, and what any football team does for a University is provide overflow funding for other sports that are not self supporting. I took a six figure ass kicking at Auburn and the check from that funded Title IX opportunities for women in 3 other sports that year, for example.
You went to Auburn?
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He was being very careful not to say any product names because he didn't want to encourage or help the advertising. But he said "FedEx Field" at least 2 dozen times without even realizing it. Because once it's there for a year or two it just seems natural. I still call it The Jack, mainly just to be a dick.
Actually, he kind of has to call it "Fedex Field," because of the most glaring example of Dan Snyder's douchbaggery (which Cort is probably well aware of, but I shall relate for the non-Washingtonians in the crowd).
The Cooke family demanded that the deal selling the team to Snyder include a clause specifying that the stadium was "Jack Kent Cooke Stadium," and it would never be renamed. Snyder reluctantly agreed. After the deal was complete, Snyder announced that the field had been named "FedEx Field," and the whole monstrosity was "FedEx Field at Jack Kent Cooke Stadium," and any media outlet referring to it as other than "FedEx Field" would have their credentials revoked.
Thus, the curse of Jack Kent Cooke. The Redskins shall not win a Super Bowl until they refer to the stadium according to JKC's wishes.
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any media outlet referring to it as other than "FedEx Field" would have their credentials revoked.
Thus, the curse of Jack Kent Cooke. The Redskins shall not win a Super Bowl until they refer to the stadium according to JKC's wishes.
I had heard that, but I doubt the all-talk station is really concerned with losing press credentials at Redskins stadium, since they don't even have any sports shows that I'm aware of. I think it was just habit on the host's part. But maybe the station is just paranoid because that Tony Kornhouser or whatever guy does seem to talk about sports an awful lot.
Also, I'm pretty sure that JKC didn't name the stadium after himself. I think it was his son after he died, so it would be the Cooke family's wishes.
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Tony Kornholer?
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Kornheiser, actually.
The Cooke family demanded that the deal selling the team to Snyder include a clause specifying that the stadium was "Jack Kent Cooke Stadium," and it would never be renamed. Snyder reluctantly agreed. After the deal was complete, Snyder announced that the field had been named "FedEx Field," and the whole monstrosity was "FedEx Field at Jack Kent Cooke Stadium," and any media outlet referring to it as other than "FedEx Field" would have their credentials revoked.
Wow, that's fiendishly clever. Maybe I'd follow local sports if all the stories were as interesting as that one.
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Wow, that's fiendishly clever. Maybe I'd follow local sports if all the stories were as interesting as that one.
While I don't have any examples or anything, this type of thing happens all the time, just maybe not as serious of punishment.
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Kornheiser, actually.
Wow, that's fiendishly clever. Maybe I'd follow local sports if all the stories were as interesting as that one.
Whatever. I know it's some guy who when his show started they acted like he was all famous and it was a big deal that the station had him, but I'd never heard of him, the SO had never heard of him, none of our parents had heard of him, and 15 random people at my office had never heard of him. But he acts all famous and important and it drives me crazy. Plus he's proud of not understanding e-mail or Google.
I remember this on the news when the sale was happening. The contract also states that if Snyder sells the team he has to include the same no-renaming stipulation in his contract. So it must remain The Jack as long as the Redskins are affiliated with it in any way.
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Wow, that's fiendishly clever. Maybe I'd follow local sports if all the stories were as interesting as that one.
It gets even better down the road. I'm sure most schools are like this, but I was always struck when I had UVA season tickets about the "how many donor's names can we slap on this place?" feel of The Carl Smith Center, Home of David A. Harrison III Field at Scott Stadium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Stadium)
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I just watched Idiocracy for the first time last night, I decided it was alright but a bit heavy handed and silly. Now I'm not so sure.
Hippos are awesome though. Beautiful yet deadly, like raptors.
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It gets even better down the road. I'm sure most schools are like this, but I was always struck when I had UVA season tickets about the "how many donor's names can we slap on this place?" feel of The Carl Smith Center, Home of David A. Harrison III Field at Scott Stadium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Stadium)
The funniest part is that "Carl Smith Center" is effectively the tiny, tiny parking lot.
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Whatever happened to "Anonymous Donor?" I miss that guy. *Sigh*
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Whatever. I know it's some guy who when his show started they acted like he was all famous and it was a big deal that the station had him, but I'd never heard of him, the SO had never heard of him, none of our parents had heard of him, and 15 random people at my office had never heard of him. But he acts all famous and important and it drives me crazy. Plus he's proud of not understanding e-mail or Google.
Kornheiser writes for the Washington Post, which is why I know who he is. I guess he thinks he's famous because he doesn't realize that no one reads your byline on a newspaper story.
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The funniest part is that "Carl Smith Center" is effectively the tiny, tiny parking lot.
Dang, I want a parking lot named after me!
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Dang, I want a parking lot named after me!
The best namesake ever is the sewage field near the South Pole station, affectionately known as Lake Patterson (http://www.adventure-antarctica.de/dictionary-of-south-pole-english/#Lake%20Patterson) after the fellow (http://www.southpolestation.com/fall/nude.html) who discovered its extent by falling into it.
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They give the elephants priority because people love elephants. Frogs have limited appeal.
Plus the cranial capacity and complex social and communication structures exhibited by elephants hints at an intelligence that could possibly include true sentience. In which case, they should get priority over other animals until we are able to communicate with them fully.
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Kornheiser writes for the Washington Post, which is why I know who he is. I guess he thinks he's famous because he doesn't realize that no one reads your byline on a newspaper story.
To be honest, 99% of us who know who Tony Kornheiser is know him from Pardon the Interruption. And he's pretty funny on there, although Wilbon carries the show.
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Plus the cranial capacity and complex social and communication structures exhibited by elephants hints at an intelligence that could possibly include true sentience. In which case, they should get priority over other animals until we are able to communicate with them fully.
Yes, well, maybe some animals are more equal than others. But it's not just a choice of animals. It's also a choice of putting the money where it will support actual conservation of animal species as opposed to just allowing a handful of individual animals to live in what amounts to a nice hotel suite.
Not that some exhibits shouldn't be just exhibits. But this is SO much money, it just seems hard to justify. The money spent on the pandas at least allegedly goes back to China for panda conservation.
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Yes, well, maybe some animals are more equal than others. But it's not just a choice of animals. It's also a choice of putting the money where it will support actual conservation of animal species as opposed to just allowing a handful of individual animals to live in what amounts to a nice hotel suite.
Not that some exhibits shouldn't be just exhibits. But this is SO much money, it just seems hard to justify. The money spent on the pandas at least allegedly goes back to China for panda conservation.
It would be interesting if the elephants and the dolphins managed to talk to each other first using sonic methods out of our range. They could pair up to get revenge on humans; the elephant's "opposable thumb" of a trunk coupled with the dolphin's superior navigation ability. Imagine a dolphin strapped to an elephant. This symbiosis will fuck us up.
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I think we're safe, because a dolphin strapped to the back of an elephant would get too dried out. But since an elephant is strong enough to also carry a very large vat of moisturizer, I could be wrong.
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I think we're safe, because a dolphin strapped to the back of an elephant would get too dried out. But since an elephant is strong enough to also carry a very large vat of moisturizer, I could be wrong.
Elephants can swim quite adeptly too, no? They can sabotage our coastal facilities. Or maybe they can crossbreed the old fashioned way. With liquor.