"Drill, baby, drill!", now on Discovery Networks

I really try to keep religion, politics, and anything of the like off of Superoceras. But I'd be naive to think that I'd be able to do so all the time. I feel like this issue is relevant in some way to my normal musings here, so I'm going to bring it up. But I won't go into to much detail, because as much as I wish what I'm writing about wasn't happening in the first place, and as much as I want to change it, I'm not willing to waste a lot of "breath" on this issue. I've blogged about it before, but have come to the conclusion that some people just don't deserve that much of my attention.

Here's the short version. Sarah Palin is being paid millions of dollars to do a show on The Learning Channel (TLC). It's going to be called "Sarah Palin's Alaska". Discovery Networks doesn't seem to see a conflict of interest between it's mission statement, and Sarah Palin's reputation as an enemy of wildlife and the environment. In fact, they are so into selling themselves out now, that the first episode of "Sarah Palin's Alaska" is going to feature another "reality celebrity", Kate Gosselin, in an effort to cross promote her new TLC show.

The Discovery Hostage Situation

As much as I don't want to write about this, I feel I have to say something.

Silver Spring, Maryland, right down the road from where I work and live, and home to the Discovery Communications headquarters building, made national news yesterday as a hostage situation unfolded. "Environmental fundamentalist" James J. Lee entered the lobby of the Discovery building around 1:00PM, 01 September, 2010 firing shots and taking hostages. A little before 5:00PM, police had shot and killed Lee after hours of surveillance and attempted negotiation, fearing for the lives of the hostages as he brandished a firearm and told police he had explosives in the building. Watching the situation unfold via live web streams, Twitter updates, and Google Buzz posts took up a large portion of my afternoon.

Why do you do these things?

I have to start out by saying that I thought long and hard about actually publishing this post. It is, for the most part, an opinion piece, and distracts from the primary focus of my blog. It communicates little science, and is for all intents and purposes, more of a rant than anything. But it does tie into other issues covered here at Superoceras in the past, like the role of the media in communicating scientific knowledge, and protection/conservation of wildlife. For that reason I'll get on with it.

Vanessa over at NatureBreak recently posted a new video titled "Is Wildlife Filming Cruel to Animals?" that has started quite the discussion. I didn't want to distract from the conversation there by getting off topic, or distract here by starting my own on the subject (please follow the link, join NatureBreak, and comment on the video there yourself). But I did want to quickly speak my mind about something that really gets under my skin: Bear Grylls.