I've just returned from seeing some news articles and videos --- man-eating bull shark ate a man at a resort beach of the Seychelles Isles, evidently a vacation resort on an island in the Indian Ocean, several miles north of Madagascar not far from the equator, hot-hot-hot. On honeymoon. Wife watched her husband consumed by a shark from the beach. I saw a video a few weeks ago, a documentary about sharks by a guy who swims among them. The guy caught today by a bullshark was splashing with flippers and blowing bubbles with a snorkel. According to the guy who swims among sharks, that's not the way to do it. The bubbles puzzle their senses and attracts them. The flippers look like a seal. The article said a week before a French guy was taken by a bullshark. They assume the same one. Somebody, an authority, said when a shark tastes human flesh and loses fear of humans, they become killer sharks. Somebody else came on to say they'll find it and kill it. I say humans don't belong in the ocean. Even though humans have depopulated the ocean dangerously, everything in the ocean is looking for something to eat. It's not somebody's backyard swimming pool.
In the documentary about sharks, the guy making the film, Sharkwater, said when a shark bites a human it's a matter of curiosity, something the shark doesn't recognize, and the shark uses its teeth to feel what the curious object is. The leg feeling something jerks and the shark's teeth pointing backward clamp down and the leg can't get free. The frenzy and the blood excites the shark, then there's hell to pay. The guy swimming among sharks doesn't thrash his flippers. He swims smoothly like a fish using the flippers as a fish uses is tail to propel it through the water, arms at his side, not blowing any bubbles with his snorkel. He could swim with them and pet them. He also had to take some time to let them see he's not a threat. He's too big to eat. He said they can feel, sense fear and it attracts them. He could swim among them because he'd studied them and learned before he went into the water with them to feel no fear and show no aggression. Go in peace, essentially. Teaching himself to feel no fear made a great difference in his life, too. It strikes me odd that I see this film and over the few weeks between then and now I hear of two shark attacks in the news. Neither one sounded like benign mistakes.
I can't help but wonder about the ocean exceeding its banks in tsunamis all over Asia as the ocean reaching up a hand and slapping us, saying: Stop it! I'd like to wonder if the shark attacks represent the other creatures in the ocean by biting a human for the underwater world. Shark poaching for shark fin soup all over Asia has brought down the shark population over the last 10 years by 90%. Could the remaining sharks be striking at us saying: Stop it! I read in the back of a Newsweek a few years ago of a small island in the Southeast Asian archipelago where bulldozers were taking out the forest for lumber. They'd taken about 3/4 of the island's trees and tigers started attacking bulldozer drivers. It might not be, but I can't help but see these kinds of things as the earth slapping us like a mother, saying: Stop it! There is a point we can plunder and pillage to that Mother Earth will allow. Beyond that point, and I suspect we're at that point with the entire planet, there is hell to pay.
On the news today a repbulican running for president, Romney, said he doesn't believe global warming. It's just a theory. That's good republican party line talk, but I doubt he has much of a chance against Rick Perry, who is coming on calling himself a new Reagan, just like W did, the magic name for republicans. I don't get it that half the American people believe what they're told to believe to be a republican. No wonder it's the party of the so-called christians who are dead set against doubt. Don't doubt the leader. The no two ways about it party. It's Jesus or hell. They focus on satan so much that I'm sorry for them. Why not try loving your neighbor as you love yourself instead of wanting to set up a police state to patrol the non-believers and force them to submit the way our government forces places like Iraq and Afghanistan to take up democracy. You be a democracy or we'll kill ever dang one of ye.
What arrogance. Talking with someone yesterday of the arrogance of Americans, the arrogance of the English, the arrogance of the French, the arrogance of the Chinese. Then look at the human attitude toward all the life forms we share the planet with. To be killed at will. They're here for us to kill. How arrogant is that? Our arrogance as a species is commiting genocide on the other life forms of our home planet. I heard a man once explain that in the Bible God gave man dominion over the animals. He interpreted dominion the right to kill. That rattled my head a moment. I didn't let on. I wasn't going to argue something like that. It's just another possible interpretation. For me, dominion means the responsibility to take care of. I live in a world of people for whom the right to kill is sacred. Ever since childhood I didn't like that. I've never been comfortable with our human arrogance over all other life forms. I've a hope that after the Age of Oil the earth will come into balance again.
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