From: phfrom@nyx.uni-konstanz.de (Hartmut Frommert)
Subject: Whales: The discussion
Keywords: Some backgrond for those who can't get sci.misc postings
Organization: Dept. of Physics, University of Constance
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 14:30:20 GMT

Some people notified me that they cannot subscribe to sci.misc, so I post a 
short summary of the origin of the whale for them (all others please excuse):

When I got the news that Norway decided to kill whales again, I posted the
following query on the list *sci.misc* (seemed most appropriate):

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Whale killing for "science" -- so for what?
Summary: Why are they murdered ?
Keywords: Whales, whale killing
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1992 13:16:54 GMT

Hi all !

Some days ago Norway sent out a fleet of whale killer ships, with the task
to kill numerous whales "for scientific reasons". Now my question is:
**********************************************************************
*  Which scientific results/goals could eventually be achieved from  *
*  dead whales ? Can anyone out there give some example ?            *
**********************************************************************
I know that whales are very interesting beings, with remarkable intelligence
and other interesting prop's, so that they are interesting for science as 
long as they *live*. But they are too different from primates to be of any 
interest for medical research. All possible biological science with dead
whales can also be done with dead *un*intelligent animals. 

So, can anyone give some reasonable example of scientific research on 
hundreds or thousands of dead whales ? I think that there is not a single
scientific motivation, but Norway (and some other countries) just insists
on historical economics disregarding any intelligence. This is just the same
as if some cannibals insist on eating men.
--
 Hartmut Frommert, LS Dehnen, Physics, | E-Mail: <phfrom@dknkurz1.bitnet>
 Univ of Constance, P.O.Box 55 60,     |     or  <phfrom@nyx.uni-konstanz.de>
 D-W-7750 Constance, Germany  | + SAVE THE WHALES ! BOYCOTT NORWAY !        +
 Phone: +49-(0)7531-88-3747   | + Whales R intelligent. Whale killers not.  +
+ Whale killing is murder. Eating whales is cannibalism. Eat whale killers. +
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In the successive postings there was general agreement that ther really are
*NO* scientific reasons for killing whales, but this was a fiction of the
Norwegian officials to make the general public (and EC officials) quiet.
(This fiction was probably copied from the Japanese who have previously
abused the word "scientific" for the same issue).

There was some discussion of the evidence of intelligence of whales. Some
persons (mainly from Norway) disclaimed any such evidence, while others
(including me) pointed to the more or less wellknown complex social 
structure, playing behaviour, and language observed at least for dolphins 
and orcas, as well as to the brain/body mass ratio indicating that some
dolphins/orcas might compare even to humans.

Some anti-whale disclaimer seemed so ignorant for me that it seemed matching
the news from the Galileo Earth flyby that the spacecraft found no 
intelligent life on Earth surface (picked from several newspapers). When
I mentioned that, someone cross-posted.

A remark on Galileo: Several readers of this list have told me that 
the spacecraft has well instruments to detect evidence for intelligent 
life on Earth, but, as it had other tasks, it did not look for and therefore 
not find.
 Hartmut Frommert, Physics, Univ of Constance, | + Whale killing is murder. +
 P.O.Box 55 60, D-W-7750 Konstanz, Germany | + Eat whale killers, not whales.
 E-Mail: <phfrom@dknkurz1.bitnet> or <phfrom@nyx.uni-konstanz.de>
+    "Windows NoT" expands in German to "Windows Noch Teurer"
+                                                ^even   ^more expensive