Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Celebrity!

Hey gang,
Some of you may find this mildly amusing. I found this on the internet last night: a 2003 lecture I gave in a class at Cornell that among other things covers animal rights and the philosophy of sport hunting.

If you've got a spare twenty or so minutes and want something to run on your machine as "background noise," go to http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/handle/1813/7697 , let the mpeg fully load, and then skip ahead to just past the halfway point of the lecture to listen to "Tantillo on the Philosophy of Sport Hunting."

Of course if you're not pressed for time, or have no life, you could always listen to the entire 50-minute lecture, which also covers no-kill animal shelters and feral cats.

Also, as an added bonus I read from a book titled, 'Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving, which by itself is worth the price of admission.

Enjoy.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jimbo!

It's 3:00am and I've been listening to your wax on hunting. Woke up in latent grief over the loss of my hunting dog Abbey... go figure. I love your story on septic system installation and star nosed moles. The clean kill, something we hold so close to our view of the ethical hunt, is so frickin' western. I'm reminded of the time I dispatched a spider eater that one of my assistants had shot in Borneo. It had been wounded with a pellet from a pump gun. My attempts at explaining the duty of a painless death to these forest hunters rang so hollow. Were they aware of the concept of stress induced anelgesia? Their view was that by keeping the bird alive one prolonged the preservation of its flesh. By wringing it's neck I'd started the decay clock ticking in that unbelieveably humid, tropical environment. Wasted meat? More importantly, in an environment where survival in the forest was THE way of life, I felt extremely silly imposing values obtained from a life of casual interaction.

Great stuff Jim. You should write a book on it some day. I don't think all of your material has yet been scooped.

Pete

Jim T said...

hey Pete,

I'm glad to hear this, glad to know somebody's actually listened to the thing.... The book issue is still somewhere out there, I understand some of the IHEA (hunter ed) people are kicking it around.

hope you get some sleep. Katie's still on the DL, I'm waiting to hear from Keith today whether we're taking Mistress out for woodcock. Keith, if you're out there, CALL ME!