Idiocy knows no bounds (or British Academia even dumber than US?)

[makattak]

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/04/30/animals-right-privacy-denied-wildlife-documentaries/

Animals filmed for television wildlife documentary series are denied their right to privacy, a leading U.K. academic claimed in a report that emerged Friday.

Dr. Brett Mills of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, southeastern England, analyzed the behind-the-scenes footage of the BBC documentary series "Nature's Great Events."

The series followed animals such as polar bears, African elephants and humpback whales during epic annual environmental events. Mills examined the way in which the animals were filmed and concluded that animals, like humans, have a basic right to privacy that the documentary filmmakers ignored by filming their most intimate moments.

He said that the show's producers only considered the mechanics of filming, using the latest equipment to capture previously unseen natural events, and did not take into account the ethics of broadcasting an animal mating, giving birth and dying.

Mills' report, published in the latest edition of Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, claimed that this is speciesism and that in order to make a successful wildlife documentary, filmmakers must inevitably deny many species the right to privacy.

However Piers Warren, the founder of interest group Filmmakers for Conservation, disagreed with Mills' claims.

"How can you say whether an animal wants to filmed? No animal will understand the concept," he said.

Animals. Have a right to privacy. 

I have no words. And "Filmmakers for Conservation" took the claim seriously? They didn't just laugh at the guy asking the question? 

[MechAg94]

What about the trees and plants in the backgrounds.  They were never asked to sign consent forms and were not compensated as extras.   

[TechMan]

They also have a right to munch on your warm carcase. 

[sanglant]

and what of all the poor little surfs in britain that are being filmed constantly?

[Perd Hapley]

What about our right to privacy on this web forum?  Did I consent to have other people read my posts?  I did not.   

[sanglant]

i tink thet wus im teh usur aggerment.

[mellestad]

Rofl.

The only logically consistent way for these people to live is to self-terminate.  You can't live without something else dying, much less without getting 'consent' from the anthropomorphized animal friends.

Heck, even self termination spells bad news for the bacteria inside of you (and any parasites, can't forget those!)

[Perd Hapley]

i tink thet wus im teh usur aggerment.

Voyeur!   

[MicroBalrog]

I'm amused this comes from a country that's supposedly entirely festooned with CCTV cams.

[TechMan]

I'm amused this comes from a country that's supposedly entirely festooned with CCTV cams.

IIRC There were about 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain back in 2006.

[sanglant]

yep that's what my crack was about.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

"Speciesism" ??

 

[sanglant]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciesism 

[mellestad]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciesism 

Well, most people do it though.  Most people don't get upset at animal cruelty laws, and those are designed to give 'rights' to certain classes of animals.  Stuff like this just gets people going because it is taking a culturally accepted idea to the ultimate end.

The thing that worries me is 'creep' where this stuff gets more and more acceptable and before you know if I can't eat what I want to and my belt and shoes are made of plastics (unless dead dinosaurs have rights too).  I'm not a huge fan of animal rights laws in general, for that reason.

I think we have very confused ideas about animals.

[gunsmith]

However Piers Warren, the founder of interest group Filmmakers for Conservation, disagreed with Mills' claims.

Piers Warren, the founder of interest group must be a nazi!

[mellestad]

Piers Warren, the founder of interest group must be a nazi!

Helping to perpetuate the animal holocaust, no doubt.

Actually, to these people that is kind of accurate.  The most extreme see animal life as being equal to human life, and so from their perspective meat literally is murder.

[MicroBalrog]

Helping to perpetuate the animal holocaust, no doubt.

Actually, to these people that is kind of accurate.  The most extreme see animal life as being equal to human life, and so from their perspective meat literally is murder.

Their groups here do distribute papers comparing butchers to Nazi camp operators.

[mellestad]

Their groups here do distribute papers comparing butchers to Nazi camp operators.

Makes sense.  Well, if you accept their premise anyway.

[taurusowner]

This is what happens when you start humanizing any animal.  The moment we stopped thinking of animals in any way other than food or beasts of burden, we paved the way for this kind of nonsense.  The words "ethics" and "animals" don't even belong in the same sentence together.  But we accepted the premise that they do, and thus we gave consent for things like this to pop up.

[Balog]

Animal cruelty laws exist for the same reason necrophilia laws do. Corpses don't have rights, but we recognize some behaviours as prima facia abhorent.

[Hawkmoon]

I have no words. And "Filmmakers for Conservation" took the claim seriously? They didn't just laugh at the guy asking the question? 

Sadly, in today's world you not only have to take such idiocy seriously, you have to respond quickly and firmly or the idiocy takes root and flourishes.

"Kill it with fire" is an operative philosophy. Small thermonuclear devices may also be salutary.

[MrRezister]

I think my IQ dropped like 10 points, and I only read the first line....

[sanglant]

I think my IQ dropped like 10 points, and I only read the first line....

so that's why i had trouble boiling that water earlier.


 

[Mabs2]

All this talk of disgust at animal cruelty laws and the idiocies of animal rights.

You are the same people who talked down to me when I spoke of using my cat as a punching bag.

Hypocrites.

[Hawkmoon]

I may well be in a minority of one, but I perceive a HUGE difference between objecting to unnecessary cruelty toward animals on the one hand, as compared with ascribing to them such human rights as a "right to privacy" that they cannot understand or appreciate on the other hand.

Most of us would probably object to the very concept of some unknown cinematographer secretly filming us while in the act of procreation, and if a social "scientist" were to ask me about it, I would be able to tell him/her in no uncertain terms that I would object to such filming. If that same social "scientist" were to wander up north and ask a polar bear if it objected to being filmed in the act from a distance, yon polar bear would probably sniff the wind and wonder how said social "scientist" would taste.