Pundit Country

or “Can you really stone a whale to death?” From a recent article in Guyism:

Sea World is attempting to move on after one of its whales, Tillikum, killed his trainer last week. One Christian group, the American Family Association, is not quite as ready to move forward and is demanding retribution..in the form of stoning Tillikum to death.

Chalk another death up to animal rights insanity and to the ongoing failure of the West to take counsel on practical matters from the Scripture.

The Sentinel then recounts that Tilly, as he was affectionately known, had killed a trainer back in 1991 in front of spectators at a now defunct aquarium in Victoria, British Columbia.

Then in 1999 he killed a man who sneaked into SeaWorld to swim with the whales and was found the next morning draped dead across Tilly’s back. His body had been bit and the killer whale had torn off his swimming trunks after he had died.

If the counsel of the Judeo-Christian tradition had been followed, Tillikum would have been put out of everyone’s misery back in 1991 and would not have had the opportunity to claim two more human lives.

Says the ancient civil code of Israel, “When an ox gores a man or woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner shall not be liable.” (Exodus 21:28)

But don’t worry, Tilly. You wouldn’t die alone if it were up to the AFA. No, they also want Sea World’s animal curator, Chuck Thompson, dead too.

But, the Scripture soberly warns, if one of your animals kills a second time because you didn’t kill it after it claimed its first human victim, this time you die right along with your animal. To use the example from Exodus, if your ox kills a second time, “the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death.” (Exodus 21:29)

I don’t totally disagree with the owner needing some punishment. Well, other than how awkward it would be to have people come and stone to death both a man and a 20,000-pound whale in our modern times. It would raise so many questions, such as: Will the stone-throwers have to be charged? Who will provide the stones? Will there be wristbands?

My question would be who is this groups PR guy and is he off his meds? Releases like this make mockery almost too easy.

Gizmodo today caught a couple of really good Batman-related items today starting with this custom job of converting a limo to look like Tim Burton’s ideal Batman/Bruce Wayne travel machine.

However, it’s this one that totally won me over.

This is one of the sweetest designs I’ve ever seen and would be almost perfect if Christopher Nolan ever decided to build a badass Bat-inspired car for Bale’s Wayne. From the article:

I humbly propose this modified Lamborghini Ankonian.

A concept Russian design student Slavche Tanevski, the Ankonian, named after a breed of black-haired bull, combines sleek and angularity through a series of winged panels that appear carved from some metal obsidian alloy engineered for sheer badassery. And OLED lights built directly into the body, while a slight stretch of the imagination, are a welcome touch.

Related articles

• One Potential Batmobile [Concepts] (gizmodo.com)
• Danny Devito On Christopher Nolan’s Batman And Studio’s ‘Regress Of Progress’ (splashpage.mtv.com)
• Christian Bale Voted Most Popular Batman! (splashpage.mtv.com)

When I first saw this pic, I was about to say “What kind of self-respecting journalist would do something so stupid when discussing business news, or any other news for that matter?”.

Then I noticed the the logo at the bottom.

America’s biggest tobacco companies voluntarily stopped advertising cigarettes in magazines, because they care about you, the tobacco consumer.

But hey, have you tried this new “Snus?” Try it, in your mouth! Check out the magazine ad for it!

They’re advertising this “Snus” all over magazines, the NYT reports, because, hey: it’s not a cigarette, it’s a pouch filled with nasty tobacco that you put in your gums and you don’t even have to spit, like a redneck!

Does Big Tobacco have any more flavorful additions to our national tobacco consumption repertoire in the pipeline? They’re happy you asked!

R. J. Reynolds is also now test-marketing “dissolvables,” which include Camel Orbs, finely ground tobacco in the form of small mint pellets like Tic Tacs, and Camel Strips, which resemble Listerine breath-freshening strips and melt on the tongue.

Nasty tobacco mouth pouches and tobacco-flavored breath strips: taste the flavor. Of tobacco.

via Are All the Kids In Danger of Doing Nasty Mouth Tobacco? – Tobacco – Gawker.

Related articles

• Candy-flavored cigarettes get banned for kids, but what about cigarillos? (dailyfinance.com)
• Cloves Banned: FDA Bans Fruit, Candy-Flavored Cigarettes (huffingtonpost.com)
• Marlboro launches new premium brand cigarette – is its strategy up in smoke? (brandstrategy.wordpress.com)

Really? I know it can’t be all gloom and doom and there is obviously a benefit from covering the lighter side of life, but this? Really? How does this article not go beyond ten words at best? Let’s try and step it up a tad, shall we?