Just the other day Eyelid was posting about how Japan is killing whales not for food, because apparently whale meat tastes like shit, but mainly because they can and they don't like other countries (read: the USA) telling them not to. They kill them even though they have warehouses so packed with whale meat they're considering making it into dog food...and even though whale meat has dangerous levels of mercury and other bad things you and your dog should not ingest.

And then today, I stumbled across a news piece that Hayden Panettiere, the cheerleader from "Heroes" has an arrest warrant out on her in the country of Japan. What did she do that was so bad Japan wants her arrested? Aside from being part of the cheesy "Save the cheerleader, save the world" promo from last season? Well, she tried to save some dolphins from being slaughtered by...Japan.

She wasn't fucking around about it either. She didn't mouth off at a podium or on Entertainment Tonight about how evil Japan is. She and other activists paddled out into the the holding pen where a pod of dolphins was waiting to be driven into the killing cove and tried to create a barrier between the fishermen and the dolphins. (Warning: the video is not explicitly graphic but it is very disturbing.) If you look at the picture under the video, you can clearly see how the water is red with blood from all the slaughtered dolphins. The activists were ultimately unsuccessful in saving those dolphins, though I certainly hope that the resulting publicity is useful in preventing this in the future. There are several endangered species of dolphins, such as the Striped Dolphin, which are commonly hunted in Japan's killing sprees. And dolphins, like whales, contain high levels of dangerous chemicals so...there is no reason to be eating them.

When I was on vacation this summer in Hilton Head we went jet skiing. My sister threw me off and I broke a rib. I was in pain the entire hour we were out on the water. On our way back to shore at the end of our time, we saw a pod of dolphins playing not even 10 yards from us. And even though I was wet and cold and my rib was broken, seeing those dolphins was magical and the highlight of the whole week.

In short, Hayden and friends are awesome and Japan sucks.