Good news for animals in entertainment on the first Norther!

Happy Norther!  After teasing my readers twice, it's time to celebrate.  First, I'll be a good environmentalist and recycle the conversation between the Archdruid and me about fake holidays.

I'm single-handedly keeping alive a fake holiday called Wester, which is the first Sunday following the first Full Moon after the Autumnal Equinox.  When I first posted about it, my Discordian friend claimed it for Discordianism.  As far as I'm concerned, it's still a Discordian holiday.
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Wester is funny; presumably that was the day that some messiah or other descended from the living?
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>I agree, Wester is funny.  As for an anointed one descending from the living, sorry, that wasn't part of the Wester story that I heard.  However, the holiday has its own animal mascot, the Wester Squirrel, which goes around and gathers goodies to hide instead of hiding goodies to pass out like the Easter Bunny.
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Druids would likely demand a Souther and a Norther, too, with a Souther Wombat and a Norther Lemming as animal mascots; I'll leave you to decide what if anything they do with goodies.
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Ah, but which solstice gets which holiday?  At first, I was not amused by your suggestion, as I thought one parody holiday was enough.  Then I slept on it and not only was I OK with it, I decided that Norther would come after the Winter Solstice and Souther would come after the Summer Solstice.  Why would a lemming visit in the middle of summer?  Norther would usually have little competition for holidays, at least in the U.S., most of the time.  Next year, it would fall on January 15th, the day before MLK Day.  Not a bad three-day weekend!

So that's the story of how I'm celebrating a fake holiday that the Archdruid came up with.  Oh, well, the Norther Lemming approves.


As this is also Sunday, it's time for an entertainment update.   I have just the one for a holiday with an animal mascot.  Follow over the jump.

'Face Your Food': Student sustainability video festival 24

After featuring trailers for two films, "No Impact Man" and "Tapped," that my students reviewed for extra credit, I'm returning to videos that they used in their presentations.  Here is the first video used in a presentation this semester, Peter Dinklage: Face Your Food.

"Game of Thrones" actor and longtime vegetarian Peter Dinklage narrates "Face Your Food," revealing the ugly truth about that meal on your table and how it got there.

It's no secret that I don't take PETA seriously, but I will give them credit when they have a point, especially when it reinforces one of mine.  In this case, it's one of Commoner's Laws, "There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch."  As I wrote in my worksheet to Food Inc., I mean it quite literally.

The ethics of orcas as entertainment

In PETA attempts a science-fiction solution to a real-world issue, I embedded a Next Media Animation video describing a lawsuit PETA filed against Sea World to release the aquarium chain's orcas, along with how the lawsuit was an action right out of Niven's Known Space stories.  That lawsuit was dismissed, but the controversy has continued, as ABC News reported in Should 'Killer Whales' Be Tourist Attractions?

Orcas are no threat to humans in the wild, but in captivity, they have killed.

When I included this video in Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (Solstice and Supermoon) at Daily Kos, one of the commenters responded with Simple answers to easy questions--"No."

LOL, PETA

PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is known for their very public, sometimes controversial, crusades against all forms of animal cruelty. Now they have trained their sights on a video game, Nintendo's Super Mario 3D Land.

In the game, the popular character Mario is able to wear a "tanooki suit," resembling a Japanese tanuki raccoon dog. PETA claims the suit encourages the wearing of fur products and has created a website in protest. The site features a parody game where players assume the role of a skinned "tanooki" who tries to wrestle his pelt back from an evil Mario lookalike.

People in the gaming press have been quick to point out that Mario is never seen harming a tanuki in the course of the game. One website called PETA's outrage "absurd and unresearched."

More at NMATV's YouTube page.

PETA has made two prior appearances here, the first in a Silly Sustainability Saturday during September and the second in a stand alone post in October. Now, they've made the silly sustainability news three months in a row. So, should we expect a story about them before Christmas?

In other news, my part in the hornet swatting ends today.  It's now up to other people.  I'll have details when it's done.