"Domestication" and DADT

When I was a young teenager my fellow geek best friend complained while I was sitting on a park swing that I “wanted a playmate not a companion.” Which young friend from reports 10 years after seems was gay. I don’t know if it made me feel “shallow” at the time but for a heterosexual male I was operating according to (innate) plan.

You can call the evolution of animal behavior by a fancy name, “sociobiology”, or you can just say human animals are “domesticated” to live with each other according to prescribed practical patterns – with simple interfaces that can be clunky (a million lawyers rise for the judge but never think: I don’t have to salute the flag :-]).

Straight male camaraderie with males is based on what gay males might think of as very one-dimensional: on mutual interest only. The chief gay male interest in males is the same as the chief straight male interest in females – getting into their pants. This very non-mutual interest may be easy to ignore -- or even have fun to kidding about -- in a civilian workplace but can automatically obstruct the kind of (innate-straight) all-for-one and one-for-all fellowship that combat arms operate optimally with (“saves lives”).

******

The sexual harassment to be feared from gay males living openly in the non-privacy of armed forces life is as multi-dimensional as male sexual harassment itself.

Straight males pester women on sex and everything else because our social perceptions have evolved blind to anything like the “overweening male ego” in females. I know this from observing the exact behavior in reverse from gays of both sexes. I often have to cut them slack for “taking me much too lightly” – they are incapable of learning “what they are up against”: my extremely self-important self (they would laugh -- this key trait may have evolved to get human males into child raising: monogamy – read “Lucy”). Expect endless trouble once pestering (especially – sneaky? – sexual type) gets type casted with gay – for their part they will never learn.

One more odd concept: gays do not understand why straight males and females are afraid of men because they are not afraid of men – they are afraid of women.

******

I sincerely hope that Obama’s accepting gay recruits just two weeks before elections doesn’t make a hole in the Democratic Party the way school busing harmed the Democratic Party of the 70s. For fence sitting (what I would call) moderates, it could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for many.

Giving in to one federal judge’s ruling to overturn Congress seems to pave the way (it may have been paved thus already and I didn’t know about it) for a two-branch, executive/judicial-veto/government. The executive now seems to just need any lone federal judge to claim a law unconstitutional and it can claim the administration must follow the judge – no need to fight all the way to Supreme Court: as much as it thinks nobody notices.

Still think coming out in the armed services should not pose any fundamental social upset that cannot be overcome by a modest slice or two of practical indoctrination? If you had a 12 year old gay son or daughter would you advise them not to worry too much about coming out in grammar school?

Today's minimum wage SHOUT!

If average output (income, same thing) grows why does the economics profession not understand that the minimum wage should grow along with it (as well as inflation) -- instead of being joined at the hip with the concern -- seemingly their only concern -- that a minimum wage raise may cause a rise in unemployment? Why should it cause a rise as long as the wage goes up in step with inflation AND OVERALL PRODUCTIVITY GAINS?!

Other nations -- sane nations -- the minimum wage is raised in step with inflation AND PRODUCTIVITY!!!

In the insane nation -- what 1968 Americans would call early 2007 US -- our federal minimum wage dropped almost in half (in constant dollars) while average income (output, whatever) doubled.

HOW TO PROVE HOW FAR OFF ALL THESE SEEMINGLY INFORMED (OVER INFORMED), INTELLIGENT (OVER INTELLIGENT) MINIMUM WAGE DISCUSSIONS TRULY ARE!

EUREKA! EUREKA! ARCHIMEDES MOMENT! FINALLY FIGURED OUT HOW TO PROVE HOW FAR OFF ALL THESE SEEMINGLY INFORMED (OVER INFORMED), INTELLIGENT (OVER INTELLIGENT) MINIMUM WAGE DISCUSSIONS TRULY ARE!

HOLD BOTTOM 50 PERCENTILE WAGES WHERE THEY ARE -- MULTIPLY TOP 50 PERCENTILE WAGES 10X: ECONOMISTS WOULD STILL BE HOLDING EXACTLY THE SAME OVER INFORMED, OVER INTELLIGENT MINIMUM WAGE DISCUSSIONS; EXACTLY THE SAME -- WORD FOR WORD.

These discussions could be relevant for price movements at the margin. When the federal minimum wage drops in half from 1968 to early 2007 -- and the American median wage grows only 25% -- while average income doubles, then, the folks at the bottom are getting something like an order of magnitude (not precisely the right measure, but you get the idea) less than they could be getting out of the (amazing, incredibly squeezing) American labor market. (Which wage super-shrinking America's over informed, over intelligent progressives from Obama on down never seem to catch on to.)

America's amazing, incredibly squeezing labor market

My reply on Economist's View today:
US per capita GDP is 150% of typical OECD GDPs. 17% of 150% equals 25% -- presumably leaving 125% of our uniquely bulging GDP to pay for everything else. What's the problem paying?

Same problem that causes every other social disaster in this country: our amazing, incredibly squeezing US labor market.

Rare labor lawyer Thomas Geoghegan on what rare pro-labor (do I use "pro-labor" just because he focuses on labor -- which is so rare?) economist Richard B. Freeman said in his book "America Works" (right at the top of p. 266 in Geoghegan's new book "WERE YOU BORN ON THE WRONG CONTINENT":
"... if real wages had risen with productivity in roughly the same way it did in Germany and other countries, then the American worker would have been making $25 an hour ($28.12 in 2010 dollars) on the average in 2005 instead of just $16."
******
I have just figured out that the Gini coefficient may no longer be a valid measure of American so-called "inequality" (I prefer "Great Wage Depression" or at least "shanghaied") because 90 percentile income share did not balloon any behind the 15% shift in income share to the top -- that begins above 97 percentile -- AND the 10 percentile figure leaves the gutting of the 50 percentile unreported and probably unnoticed by most who read the Gini ratio (who mostly presume 50 percentile share to be more or less where it should be -- true enough in Europe and 40 years ago here).

Not an economist (I do labor -- not rare for a cab driver) but I suspect a new ratio should be added to current "inequality" measures which would compare 50 percentile income to average income in the different economies -- only way I can think of to squeeze that missing AMERICAN 15% in -- but maybe the rare pro-labor economist can come up with a better one (maybe not: markets are not rocket science; just buying and selling).

The term "inequality" is like pointing to the tip of the iceberg

In 1991, Nicholas Scheele, the head of the Ford Motor Company in Mexico . . . said, "But is there any other country in the world where the working class . . . took a hit in their purchasing power of in excess of 50 percent over an eight-year period and you didn't have a social revolution?" [http://dieoff.org/page77.htm]

I don’t think anyone would call that kind of wage gouge by the weak, wan term “inequality.”

US average income doubled since 1968 while the median hourly wage grew 20%: from $12.50 to $15 – instead of a potential $25. Could that be a hidden gouge of 40%?

No need for “hidden loss” to describe the US federal minimum wage hit – as average income doubled. Between 1968 and early 2007 the minimum hourly dropped from $10 ($1.60 adjusted) to $5.50 – as average income doubled.

******

From 1966 to 1968 I lived in an East Village Manhattan apartment which featured year ‘round rats, gas jets (inoperable) in wall that once provided light and windows overlooking a long park along which we could watch every free police car in the precinct line up for every call – show of force – before returning to their normal beats.

If you wanted your car burned for the insurance you just removed your plates within sight of my block and within the hour the neighborhood kids would have it burned to the ground – no gratuity. One 16 year old told my 17 year old brother he could not wait to be 17 years old so he could go to Vietnam like his brother (it wasn’t patriotism)!

These days, drug gangs would contest a neighborhood like this. Back then, heroin was obtainable by the sorry few addicts – but supporting a neighborhood requires drugs with broader, especially suburban, appeal. Back then, the minimum hourly was 80% of, for its time, a much healthier median wage.

******

Yesterday something caused me to look up the 90th-to-10th percentile income ratio in The State of Working America 2008-2009 (table 8.15 on p. 380). US ratio was approaching 5 while the average of other OECD nations was a tad over 3.

Suddenly it hit me the US ratio is more like the tip of the iceberg. It is true that 15% of US income share shifted from the bottom 90% to the top 10% [http://ontodayspagelinks.blogspot.com/2008/08/income-share.html] BUT the 90-97 percentile did not get the extra share – the 90-97 percentile managed to keep pace with doubling income but that was all – they still enjoy the same percentage share they got 40 years ago (that their predecessors got anyway).

If today’s median hourly income dropped from $15 back to $12.50 over the next eight years would the media report it as mere “inequality”? Supposed it dropped to $10 or all the way back to $7.50 – at what point would everybody come up with a phrase that communicates the disaster as something much worse than a rise in “inequality”?

Best prescription for statemanship ever -- on Lincoln

 

"In the President of the United States Providence has vouchsafed a leader whose moral perceptions are blinded neither by sophistry nor enthusiasm—who knows that permanent results must grow, and cannot be prematurely seized—a man who, whatever he has not, has that inestimable common sense which is the last best gift of Heaven to all who are clothed with great authority." 

 

[Finally dug this out of the internet -- after years. Saw it once in Sandburg's 1000 page, one book biography of Lincoln. Never could find the whole quote with the common sense ending anywhere again -- in the same book edition. ??? Best prescription for a statesman I have ever seen. Written by the editor of Harper's Weekly, May 3, 1862.]

GOOGLE search settings won't don't save -- 2 step fix

Two steps to reset search setting (this problem started yesterday, 9/10, when GOOGLE introduced instant search, apparently as default):

One: go into PREFERENCES and deselect "instant search" in favor of the old search -- THEN GET OUT.

Two: go BACK into PREFERENCES and reset your old preferences (if you try to do both at once it wont work -- "nice" ambush for troubleshooters).

WINNING ECONOMICS ISSUES FOR DUMMIES (meaning Democrats)

Economists – males most appropriately – suffer physics envy. Economic interactions are convoluted by government formulae. Distorting their look at those wheels within wheels are mostly unheard of male pack instincts along the well understood cultural biases (we have been "domesticated" to live with us for 100s of millennia).

Pack hunter midbrains channel groupthink – with a preference for on-the-spot doability: prey not tarrying while predators squabble. Wheels within wheels of groupthink: economic pros must in turn persuade mostly unknowing political and journalistic packs if they are actually going to cause any change. There seems walls within walls to innovation – to males.

Living too remotely from the day-to-day interactions – no pitfall in organic chemistry – can fuzz out crucial ifs, ands and buts. Economists of all stripes (most are progressive) start every minimum wage dialogue with ye ole first week supply and demand chart and mostly end there – skip selling fewer units (or hours) for more dollars – miss that a raise that increases teen unemployment may have attracted more trainable adults (labor price was too low) – forever blind to the missing American-born workers behind Chicago fast food counters where the state minimum wage recently reached Eisenhower's 1956 level, $8/hr – and even behind San Francisco counters where annual inflation adjustments will maintain the city minimum wage, at LBJ's 1968 level, $10/hr. $7.25/hr ($5.50/hr!): fuggedaboutit!

The first commandment of medical practitioners is making daily rounds to observe patients. Would it really take a "small army" of economists, as recently supposed, to plow enough data to explain income inequality (a wishy-washy phrase that sounds more like a shave than a haircut)? Or are everyday bad to worse American labor experiences enough to make the culprit perfectly plain: the almost total (but one-step undoable?) coast-to-coast blackout of labor bargaining power -- and political sway.

American unionized (!) labor hell: "Dr. Pepper Snapple Group made $555 million in profits last year. CEO Larry Young made $6.5 million but says Mott’s applesauce workers must take a $1.50 an hour pay cut" [see http://blog.aflcio.org/2010/09/07/motts-corporate-greed-rotten-to-the-core/]: specific fit to this specific occasion – where is the missing legally mandated, sector-wide labor agreement to neutralize management’s squawking about “above market pay”? Minimum wage hell: now $2.75/hr below LBJ's 1968 level, double the per capita income later: zero labor lobbying -- and going down.

The second commandment of medical practitioners is “studies show” -- even when they can’t pinpoint all contributory factors. Studies show that only legally mandated, sector-wide labor agreements (instituted originally along with welfare guarantees to contain labor costs to more quickly rebuild postwar Europe) have been proven effective in preventing the race to the wage and benefit bottom -- in decades of “trials” across first, second and third world labor markets.

Under sector-wide all employees in the same geographic locale doing the same work -- even for different employers – work under common collectively bargained contracts.

Card-check legislation would be to re-unionizing America what the $2.75/hr short-of-1968 hike was to restoring the minimum wage (in the poorest section of America, a $15/hr minimum would raise the price of: housing, medicine, transportation, food, clothing – what?). Today’s median wage is $15/hr – a teeny-tiny $2.50/hr more than the 1968 median. There appears no wholesome economic reason why the median could not have doubled to $25/hr as average income doubled. Is “shanghaied” be a better fit than “inequality”?

Will someone please shout out “sector-wide labor agreements” at their next crowded economic or political forum? They won’t cause a panicked stampede – except maybe from the outside-in. Supermarket workers and airline employees (for a start) are ready to kill (even vote) for mandatory sector-wide bargaining. 50 million voting age toilers out of 100 million say they want to be unionized – before any nationwide re-unionizing dialogue has even begun.

Should Dubai laugh Israel out of Gaza and the West Bank?

Should Dubai laugh Israel out of Gaza and the West Bank?

Was it oil mad money that empowered a couple of hundred thousand native Dubains -- along with a million or so foreign workers -- to "build them" a global showcase? Not recently; these days Dubains realize about 2 billion dollars a year from oil, some more from natural gas. Their natural resource is their natural business sense (a resource unknown to Israelis?). [See Vali Nasr's 2009 book "Forces of Fortune."]

After downing 200 billion (2010) US direct aid dollars over 40 years Israel has little to show but a vastly overbuilt military which could literally repel an invasion by British, French and German ground forces at the height of their Cold War force levels -- 3,000 NATO quality tanks on defense equal 9,000 on offense; Central European armies 1980s tank count: only 6,000. (Throw in 3,000 more for, then, active duty US Army and we have a match after all. :-])

Israel smashed a 1973 all out surprise attack by Egypt, Syria and Jordan BEFORE collecting hundreds of billions to pay for high tech weaponry but after the Arabs were overloaded by Russia with the then novel Sagger anti-tank and still deadly SA-6 anti-aircraft missiles. [Read up on the 1973 war in US Army chief historian, Col. Trevor N. Dupuy's book "Elusive Victory."]

Great green gobs of US military aid may have enabled Israel to embrace an ultimately self-destructive -- muscle-flexing/sandy-land grabbing -- lifestyle: can be honestly likened to "welfare mentality." Do land grabbing "Tell Tale Hearts" add to very real Holocaust memories to provoke irrational invasion fears (2010 Middle East nations, including Iran, are preoccupied with their modern middle classes struggles to get the upper hand zero inclination for any knock-down-drag-outs)? Could two millennia of neighborhood building rather than nation building have confused Israelis about the difference between the two?

Doing a Dubai -- instead of a Zionist "1984" -- with even half those US aid dollars could have profited enough to procure all the land in the sand that Israel could ever covet.

DIRECT AID TO ISRAEL SINCE 1970 (millions of dollars)
Year------ Nominal------- Adjusted-------------------- Total

1970---------- 93.6--------- 530.00

1971--------- 643.3------- 3,489.70

1972--------- 430.9------- 2,264.00

1973--------- 492.8------- 2,438.47

1974------- 2,621.3----- 11,681.53

1975--------- 778.0------- 3,177.07

1976------- 2,337.7------- 9,026.23

1977------- 1,762.5------- 6,389.79

1978------- 1,822.6------- 6,141.49

1979------- 4,888.0------ 14,791.92-------------- 59,930.02

*****************************************

1980------- 2,121.0------- 5,655.14

1981------- 2,413.4------- 5,833.05

1982------- 2,250.5------- 5,123.66

1983------- 2,505.6------- 5,526.91

1984------- 2,631.6------- 5,564.61

1985------- 3,376.7 ------ 6,894.62

1986------- 3,663.5------- 7,343.71

1987------- 3040.2-------- 5,879.68

1988------- 3,043.4------- 5,885.87

1989------- 3,045.6------- 5,656.11-------------- 59,363.36

*****************************************

1990------- 3,034.9------- 5,377.16

1991------- 3,712.3------- 5,988.20

1992------- 3,100.0------- 4,854.38

1993------- 3,103.4------- 4,178.46

1994------- 3,097.2------- 4,591.46

1995------- 3,102.4------- 4,472.42

1996------- 3,144.0------- 4,402.40

1997------- 3,132.1------- 4,287.37

1998------- 3,080.0------- 4,050.36

1999------- 3,010.0------- 3,969.37-------------- 46,171.58

*****************************************

2000------ 4,131.85------- 5,144.00

2001------ 2,876.05------- 3,569.88

2002------ 2,850.65------- 3,481.31

2003------ 3,745.15------- 4,471.79

2004------ 2,867.25------- 3,334.75

2005------ 2,612.15------- 2,938.50

2006------ 2,534.5--------- 2,762.05

2007------ 2,500.2--------- 2,649.75

2008------ 2,423.9--------- 2,474.59

2009------ 2,550.0--------- 2,611.82-------------- 33,438.44

*****************************************

-------------------------------------------------198,903.40

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf

http://www.minneapolisfed.org/

A school paddling is a BEATING (instictive hunters don't spank) + new DOUBLE BARRELED insight!

http://nospank.net/n-u88.htm

When I first wrote my 5 part essay opposing school corporal punishment I wrote:
"Being a male of the species who evolved primarily to swing a bat on meat I would have no problem personally paddling kids if only I could see their little office management inefficiencies as morally offensive (if only I could forget that kids who mess up the most are most likely to be emotionally messed up the most; a teacher can never tell)."

Lately I have been thinking that I must have been too insensitive to the pain I would be meeting out to the harmless school kid (for nothing yet: tardiness is just traffic control -- we don't beat people, least of all children for traffic control).
******
Then I saw a silly auto insurance commercial where the lady salesperson for some reason brandished a full sized wooden paddle. Seeing the paddle I could fully envision myself pounding away on some poor kid"s flesh -- as hard as possible; can't cause any permanent physical harm; do the job!

What's behind this? Sociobiological answer: powerful male hunting instinct (overall concept filled out below -- point will be that there is very much an instinct).

What is the point of the hunter/killer insight for opposing school corporal punishment? Hunting instinct delivers a spanking BEATING -- not a spanking, doesn't it? [3 second illustration, click here: http://nospank.net/paddler3.wmv]
******
Now that we have established a school paddling as a beating on a visceral, emotional level, we can fully appreciate why paddling a student for no legitimate reason could be prosecuted under the law as a violent assault.

Which in turn makes it harder to justify the exception for violent school beatings from Fourteenth Amendment mandated equal protection of the law. 90 of female corporal punishment and 75% of male are for tardiness -- traffic control. The rest could be said to be for office management (dress code, etc.).

Anti paddlers make a sales error -- they "define deviancy down, undercutting their own purpose -- by concentrating on the secondary mal effects of paddling. The correct sociobiological (how we are emotionally wired) approach, if you ask me, is that paddling is a violent beating (large) to correct little inefficiencies (small) on the part of school children. The core problem is that teachers have got this very backwards. If we don't seem to emphasize the serious violence itself why ask anybody to care about the secondary damage.
******
(More info on evolved human male hunting behavior -- just to fill out the concept: Got claws -- or only nails? Got fangs -- or only HUGE fang roots (check them out -- ask your dentist what they are)? Got four feet? Send you off into the woods with a club and a sharp stick and you are not likely to return with the bacon? Got an idea -- like get the other boys? That is the only way you (plural) are going to trap a feral animal that relies on it's body -- not it's brain. UPSHOT OF ALL THIS: you, human male tend to think in the third person-cooperative. Try to get a new idea through to you and the first thing you are likely to think is what everybody else is thinking -- likely you will (instinctively) see no way to rearrange all that and the new idea may pass out of your head like it was never there. Just to fill out the concept...)
******
******
FLASH -- NEW DOUBLE-BARRELED INSIGHT:
A few days ago it occurred to me that this hunter/paddler link could be stretched further: that maybe we beat children as an unconscious OUTLET for hunting instinct in our modern paperwork lives (who is into paperwork more than teachers and principals?). This is not to portray anyone as vicious. It can explain stories mostly from decades ago of some men volunteering to do the then frequent paddling for other teachers -- that is, explain that they might not be the monsters such stories make them out but possibly totally unconsciously just outletting hunting instinct.

Today it occurred to me why we cannot beat adult fellow school employees with the all out effort with which we customarily paddle school kids (think of the gasping boy in the Boonville video). When we beat a kid like that we are not thinking of the pain we are inflicting at all -- not at all -- we are only thinking of the job. We could not beat an "equal" adult without thinking of the pain -- while only thinking of the job -- which is why we cannot beat a "social equal" employee we are obligated to fully respect.

At very least we can never do "the job" if we can think of the pain (not if we are normal I would say). Next thing to figure out (to wait for it to "occur" :-]) is exactly what allows us to think of the job only when beating a child -- a perfectly normal sociobiological (evolved behavior) expectation. In the meantime it might help the cause to share with school paddlers the insight that they could not beat a school child if they thought of the pain they were trying to inflict (they are trying to do "the job" with all their might) -- just could stop a lot of them in their tracks.

One more question on DADT

One question that could be added to the DADT is how many straight male service personnel have ever in their lives or would ever hang out socially on a regular basis with gay acting males. Likely answer: pretty much zero.

First, no homophobe talking here. The first place I moved to as an adult was the Chelsea neighborhood in Manhattan in the '60s, had a gay boy half my age living with me for a year in the late '70s, drove a San Francisco cab for three years (earned a good part of my living "hustling" in the Castro, picking up gay men and taking them home for a fee; also gay women, or anyone else who would pay the fare :-]).

Second, no homophobe here. Was approved for training to get a Ph.D. in psychology in the early '70s (still high school grad) -- so having a gay boy living with me for a year could teach me what homosexuality is all about mechanically: gays of both sexes merely see what straights see as the big MALE ego as the big FEMALE ego and are permanently blind to seeing any such thing in males. Has to be some big difference, right? But that's all there is.

Now for straight male camaraderie -- mechanically. We link up with other males on a basis gays males would consider very narrow and one-dimensional: activities we share a common interest in. That is all there is to that. If we know the biggest thing on the other guy's mind (the biggest thing on every guy's mind) is the last activity we want to do with another guy that tends strongly (understatement?) to break said link as about as much as it can be broken.

Sociobiology: nothing anyone can do about it. Doesn't have to work in every case -- or even most cases; everyone is different. But it will work that way for at least half of servicemen (how many will hang out with, etc.?). I would conjecture that it might have the most effect on straight males who are most into doing the job at hand.
******
LATE NOTES ON DADT
Gays may not understand why we fear gay males as dangerous, grasping and invading -- because gays don't see men that way (!); they see said dangerous, over weaning ego in females. (Lesbos are doing their best to radiate that image.)

Think straight male aversion to paling around with gay males (see one-dimensional camaraderie above) is rationally overcome with just some common sense and good will? How much would you be willing to depend on that -- in a very liberal, upper end grammar school (especially if you watch "Law & Order" :-]) -- to advise your gay 12 year old to come out of the closet? Or how much would you fear how naturally endemic the problem is?

Questions, questions about female firefighters

Why doesn't someone find out exactly how many women firefighters have been graduated by the NYFD year in, year out since 1982 -- and then do a "where are they now"? How many have been hired in all that time, nearly 500? Why are there never more than 30 something on the force -- especially since their supporters claim they have to pass overly stringent testing?

What is the comparative drop out rate between men and women?

How many are on light duty today? I read someplace back in the '80s that 12 out of first 38 (that's the number the story quoted) NYFD female firefighters immediately opted for light duty like public relations right out of the academy.
******
Jan. 10, 1983 New York Magazine cover story on rookie female firefighter by Michael Daly.

BART officer Mehserle either guilty of deliberate homicide or not -- adrenalin and stupidity

Adrenalin can make you as stupid as alcohol. When I was I Bronx cab driver the closest I came to accidents was with police cars who had ALREADY made an arrest -- blowing through red lights without lights or sirens. Whatever happened in the BART station could reasonably have raised the BART officer Mehserle's -- or anybody's -- adrenalin level.

He either intended to shoot a gun or he intended to shoot a Taser when he pulled the trigger. Given a normal adrenalin rush, carelessness can not be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

As far as the rioters, they can be compared with supporters of Israel who always call its critics anti-Semitic -- they unfortunately (if maybe not consciously) may be the actual racists.

Save the polar bears -- from the penguins???

A post over at Fred Pohl's http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com gave me an idea to save the polar bear species from habitat destruction brought on by global warming. Just transfer several dozen males and females to the Antarctic and let them feed on penguins who don't have enough sense to run away.

Penguins may have to spend more time in the water. Be interesting to see how long a race of gang biting penguins takes to evolve. How will killer whales survive should penguins start to thin out? Whales can add polar bears swimming after the remaining penguins to their menu.

One further "ecological" complication could be killer whales, having learned to feed on four legged mammals, might become a danger to humans whenever they wander into our habitats. No more happy animal interest stories: get me Steven Spielberg!

Wouldn't take a government program, just one private boat could do the experiment -- may not even be a law against it!