Comments

  1. Sastra says

    I wonder if this cartoon has anything to do with what I’ve heard will be some sort of upcoming movie or special about that self-trained grizzly bear “expert” who got himself and his girlfriend eaten by grizzly bears by relying a bit too much on mutual respect.

  2. Sastra says

    This blog is too busy. It was empty when I came in and wamba beat me while I was typing.

  3. wamba says

    This blog is too busy. It was empty when I came in and wamba beat me while I was typing.

    Beaten by a fool!

  4. Steve Forti says

    I remember that cartoon when it came out. PZ – if you aren’t familiar with Ted Rall, you should become so. You and he are the two people I most eagerly look forward to reading each day.

  5. says

    I’ve seen the documentary about the grizzly bear “expert” named Tim Treadwell. He was a stupid lunatic.

    He was not a biologist or ecologist or anything of the sort, but an extremely egotistical, washed up former surfer dude who found religious-style “salvation” by living with grizzly bears. He was kind of like the over-zealous environmentalists who chain themselves to trees for weeks, but with grizzly bears instead of trees. He was not a science and did nothing for science; in fact he clashed heads with the Alaska wildlife authorities on various things, and the documentary includes a scene where he curses the biologists for several minutes. He broke the park rules about staying away from grizzly bears and got them used to a human, something very dangerous for a bear, in the name of “protecting” them.

    He did one constructive thing: He took really good pictures and video of the bears. Other than that he was pretty much a nuisance to the bears and to biologists, and his most important act in life was probably to get eaten so that everyone would get the message that bears are dangerous.

    All that said, Herzog’s documentary “Grizzly Man” is really worth a watch. It’s a really interesting peek at the life and psyche of a very original madman.

  6. says

    interesting peek at the life and psyche of a very original madman

    Who? Treadwell or Herzog?

    You get a pretty good sampling of both in the movie.

  7. Sean Foley says

    Who? Treadwell or Herzog?

    You get a pretty good sampling of both in the movie.

    I suspect one of the reasons Herzog was drawn to the story is that Treadwell’s mania mirrored both his own and that of Klaus Kinski. I couldn’t help but see Grizzly Man as a companion piece to Aguirre.

  8. MYOB says

    What’s funny about that AIG subject about squid and octopi not being alive due to original sin is the way original sin actually originated. They ate some fruit from the forbidden tree.
    But the point is, they were eating to begin with.
    According to AIG there was no death prior to the fall of Adam and Eve. Thus we can assume that squid and octopi were the source of all consumption in the oceans since, they were not alive, they can be eaten and not die. Otherwise the question remains, how did the squid and Octopi survive if they did not eat? Did they consume each other? Or did they eat other sea life that was considered ‘alive’ which assumes something had to die after being eaten, otherwise they were eaten alive. Or were all the life in the sea vegetarians eating seaweed?
    Had Adam and Eve not eaten from the tree or any tree for that matter, had they not eaten anything at all.
    Would they have starved and died? Why even eat at all if you do not need to consume to live? Mere pleasure? What happened to the food? Did you digest it or did it simply lay in your stomache or elsewhere in the digestive tract? Was there human waste lying around? Did Adam and Eve shit? Why would they need to? If they retained everything due to bowel problems would they have died?

    The whole thing is so ridiculous it boggles the mind. Why such logic is so missing from these types makes me wonder how people who cannot fathom this stuff be asked to fathom the meaning of ‘god’s word???

    MYOB’
    .

  9. says

    Treadwell. I don’t really know anything about Herzog, but in Grizzly Man he seems like a pretty normal documentary filmmaker. I disliked a few things about how the film was organized overall, but it was still interesting to watch.

  10. says

    Oops, that last reply was in response to your question, “Who? Treadwell or Herzog?” For some reason today I keep forgetting to preview before posting…

  11. Helen of Troy says

    hmm. Has anyone pointed out to AiG that their helpful distinctions between red blood vs. pink and purple blood aren’t so helpful to certain anti-abortion arguments?

    Such a nice concise summary of the life requires blood statements of the Bible. Hemoglobin = red and ruddy = life. Hemocyanin = blue (or brown, pink, purple) = not life. Artificial blood research and blood substitutes = Evil Zombie research?

  12. Helen of Troy says

    oops. Didn’t see the new thread. Happily awaiting the anti-abortion response there.

  13. says

    Troutnut, ahem.

    I knew Tim Treadwell slightly, and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t a “stupid lunatic.” He was eccentric, yes. But he was also an eloquent speaker and presenter who introduced thousands of people to a closer, more compassionate view of Alaskan grizzlies.

    The movie “Grizzly Man” was a deliberate hit piece, in my opinion, carefully crafted to make Tim, and just about everybody else in the movie, look demented.

    Here’s what that film was engineered to do: Sensationally appeal to chickenheads. Every chickenhead in the world who saw that film concluded just what you concluded, went away cackling complacently about how insane the guy was, and never had one new thought.

    The grizzlies were made out to be tabloid-fodder killing machines, the same stupidly sensationalistic view that attends too much of our approach to wildlife.

    It’s all too easy to say that Tim was a nut. All too easy to say that grizzlies are nothing but killers, and that he was crazy and wrong to ever go near them. All too easy to focus on the moment of his death, and miss the fact of his life — lived within virtual touching distance of grizzlies for thirteen summers.

    Too easy to avoid any new thoughts, and to miss the interesting and important stuff implied in the fact of those thirteen summers.

  14. says

    Maybe you and Rall could write and illustrate a children’s book about squids. You could call it, “Inked!”

  15. Bruce says

    Mr. Fox, while raising awareness about wild animals of all types is of value to society, it seems that it is very easy to let our egos get too involved. Back in the old college days, my roommate and I rescued a black bear yearling we found on the side of Mt. Baker and brought him home. (Mother was apparently killed and this guy was also pretty close to death.) Later, I found my buddy sitting in the room with the bear, “meditating to help the bear relax”. The bear, of course, was cowering in the corner, not looking relaxed at all. I love me some wildlife and consider myself blessed to see bears in the woods, but I know they know we’re not the good guys on the planet. Respect means not getting in their face.
    We did find a home for our foundling; not so surprisingly, he was much harder to handle after he had been fed for a couple weeks.

  16. Stan Peterson says

    I thought we were onto the NEXT TRENDY THING for the leftwingnuts for which to oraganize demonstrations and raise hell and cut classes.

    INTERSPECIES MARRIAGE of course!

    Just because SquidMan and the Squid are platonic lovers, what is so wrong about the caring Harry the Homosexual Sapiens, and Gerry the Gerbil getting married?

    Naturally there would be some counter demonstrations anticipated but from the PETA wackos, was unanticipated.

    PETAsts crying that Gerry’s life in Harry’s rectum a a fletchling, was hardly a consensual affair unless Gerry had reached his/her/its full maturity and particiapted in a wedding. Once they were a$$ured that such was the case (at this time), the PETAsts founded a rump group & joined the demonstration.

    A gaseous rump group however, vowed to found the National Association for Man – Gerbil Youth Love, MANGY-Love, and fight for full rights for cloacal co-habitation from birth onward for all Gerbils.

    That will be the focus of next weeks War of Liberation however.

  17. anonymous says

    More fine Japanese food:

    Perhaps squid-flavored chocolate will, especially as it comes with in both white and bitter flavors.

    “It’s true that it gives off a squid smell when you open the package. I’ve bought both the white and bitter flavors,” funky food fan Yonebayashi says. “I somehow managed to get my way through the white squid-flavored chocolate, but when it came to the bitter stuff I had to give up halfway through.”

    http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/waiwai/news/20060323p2g00m0dm014000c.html