Do you remember before the internet, that it was thought the cause of collective stupidity was the lack of information?Well...it wasn't that.
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14:10 - Moarskrillex42: She said something about knowing why I wanted to move to Glasgow when she came in. She plopped down on my bed and told me to go ahead and open it for her.14:11 - Peter5930: So, she thought I was your lover and that I was sending you a box full of sex toys, and that you wanted to move to Glasgow to be with me?
It's ok to eat fishcos theydon't have anyfeelings
Do Fish Feel Pain?James Hamilton-PatersonThe answer is 'yes' says James Hamilton-Paterson and we should accept the consequences—as he does. 'I shall live with my own blood deeds, though not tormentedly.'Spearing fish is a savage business. It causes the fish gross physical damage and seldom kills them outright. Over several years I spent long months at a stretch living on an islet in the Philippines, learning how to spear fish in the local manner to feed myself. I had a lot to learn about the construction of spearguns and about the techniques of underwater hunting without scuba gear, whether diving alone or in company. But I also had to unlearn my own culture’s ideas of the acceptable ways of treating game animals.The locals were certainly short on sportsmanship. Their style was to hunt at night when many reef species are dozy, if not—like mullet—apparently fast asleep. In one hand we gripped a cheap torch ingeniously waterproofed with rubber or plastic and in the other an unwieldy wooden gun powered by rubber cut from inner tubes. With both hands thus occupied we held our breath and swam down into pitchy depths, maybe to thirty feet, in pursuit of the next day’s food. The steel spear was eyed at its base like a needle. Spliced through this hole was a length of polythene fishing-line with a stop at the end. The technique was to spear the fish or cephalopod and sweep it on down to the end of the line so that it trailed behind as you reloaded the gun and went on searching. After two or three hours of this the torch batteries were flat and we dragged ourselves from the sea, coral-grazed and weary, with grains of luminescence running off our bodies and, with any luck, a few pounds of edible flesh on our lines.I soon realized there is a big difference between a coarse fisherman sitting on a river bank, hauling up and killing his catch with a quick blow from a priest, and sharing a medium with one’s prey. Below the surface, encumbered with gear and limited to snatched lungfuls of air, you are at a huge disadvantage in any hunt. Yet you can stare your quarry in the eye through a few feet of water, learn to read its slightest twitch or attitude (such particulars vary with the species), slowly acquire familiarity with the behaviour and appearance of all sorts of marine creatures. Down there you can hear the spear actually strike, pok!, hear the animal’s whirring struggles, maybe its squawks or grunts, see the dark strands of blood, watch its mouth jerk open in a hopeless O. That was the moment of maximum adrenaline because you still had not caught your supper. Often the spear struck too close to the edge of your prey’s body or the barb failed to set and the animal could tear itself loose to escape in the dark with the flick of a fin. Often, too, you were at the end of your breath and desperate for air, and perhaps the fish was large enough to swim away even towing the weight of the spear. To lose a spear was shaming and besides, they took a lot of making. For every reason, then, it was necessary to make a supreme effort and lunge forward as fast as possible to get a grip on both spear and fish. If in doubt you safely ‘threaded’ the animal with a further stitch by pushing the spear completely through and piercing it again in a more secure place: typically through both eyes or behind one operculum (gill cover) and out through the mouth. Often you had to surface, bursting with stale air, and dizzily perform this operation while buffeted by black waves in a tangle of line and barbed spear and struggling prey, the torch clenched beneath one arm and the wooden gun beneath the other. It was not an easy way to feed yourself.But even in that triumphant moment of the hunt I remember not enjoying pushing a steel rod through a living creature’s eyes. I could feel the slight scrunch of bone and it was gruesome to release it then and watch by torchlight as it swam furiously in all directions with the line through its head, trailing its sightless eyeballs. If the fish was big it was best to kill it straight away because its tuggings could seriously upset your aim, while a dying stingray could blunder into your legs with its agonizing thorn. For this humane deed we would carry a knife strapped to one ankle. But we indifferently allowed smaller fish and cephalopods to die of their wounds. It was noticeable that some species (cuttlefish, parrot fish) tended to die more quickly than others. Moray eels (a fearsome prey underwater at night) and porcupine fish (whose livers were delicious) could survive for hours, even out of water. In those rural backwaters where there are few refrigerators, wounded game is habitually kept alive as long as possible, whether birds, fruit bats or fish.<continued>
