Stardate 20010728.1010 (On Screen): In a piece of political rhetoric rivalling the Philip Morris "Cigarettes are GOOD for you" fiasco
, Japan has topped itself in its attempts to find reasons why it should be permitted to continue to hunt whales. Today's theory is that whales eat "more than their share" of fish. In a masterpiece of post hoc fallacy, they note the correlation of a rise in whale populations (after the international moritorium on whaling) and the decline in fish stocks, and declare causality based on correlation. Of course overfishing by humans couldn't possibly have anything to do with the decline of fish stocks, could it? After all, fish stocks were declining even during the years when there was active whaling, but of course that doesn't matter at all.
This is about as unadroit of political advocacy as I've seen in a while, and it's about as convincing as a little kid's claim that a bear came in the door and broke the cookie jar. (Of course, their claim that they need to kill 500 whales per year for "research purposes" is equally idiotic.) (discuss)
