BPC (* Before Political Correctness)

We all like to feel better about ourselves, whether it's the money we give, the time we donate or the products we buy. As I've covered here before, we're pretty vain creatures and don't mind doing the right things, but we'd prefer that someone be there to see it.

From living in a greener fashion - and why do you think I talk about it here so much? I'm one of the worst ones for narcissistic altruism - we are more likely to do what we think is right as long as others can see us being so damned good.

I'd love to see someone set up a hidden camera with a homeless guy on the same corner and have a crowd present for an hour and absent for the next. I think it could be pretty interesting.

I also think it allows the incredible markups on cruelty-free meats and related products so people with a hair too much expendable income can wander around high-end grocery stores with a great sense of self-satisfaction because their chicken was killed in the fastest way that is humanly possible.

I thought of that this week when I saw the story about a whale harvested off the coast of Alaska with a harpoon tip from the 1880s. The piece missing from the BBC's write up is that the tip was designed to carry a charge that would explode and cripple the whale, blowing a chunk out of the animal to make it easier to harvest.

I'd love to see how an exploding spear would be marketed for today's shopper. In the 1880s, you just explained that this let the whalers haul in the animal faster, which meant less of a chance of losing the carcass as it sunk.

I'm seeing a contemporary ad campaign about this being more humane, resulting in a quick, painless death for the whale. Or they could swim around with a hunk of metal embedded in a shoulder blade until the whale was finally finished off in the third century it had seen.

That could happen, too.

(Image from NHL94.com)