鯨魚業

國家地理雜誌早前有一個專題報導，介紹鯨魚的生態，其中有這張照片，展示人和鯨魚共處的情況。龐大的鯨魚身軀和人類細小的身形比較起來顯得格格不入，人在這巨大生物面前變得很渺小。這個近距離拍攝鯨魚的情景只在非常近代才出現。不久之前，鯨魚被認為是凶猛的野生動物，捕捉鯨魚是一個非常危險的行業。



但人類是萬物之靈。就算是世界上最巨大的動物都不敵於人類的科技。現代捕鯨不再是無比敵時代的近身搏鬥，而是機械協助半自動式的予取予攜。這隻日本捕鯨船很輕易就捉到兩條鯨魚。



現時捕捉鯨魚由國際捕鯨委員會監管，設有不少合法途徑可供捕殺鯨魚。除了一些稀有品種之外，各個捕鯨委員會成員國都有捕鯨配額，可以捕捉鯨魚以作商業用途；一些土著居民群體又可以用文化傳統和生計理由捕鯨；而各國亦可用科學研究的藉口捕捉一些鯨魚。但捕鯨配額對以捕鯨為生的行業和群體有很大的影響，格陵蘭就因經濟問題要求提高捕鯨配額，又威脅要退出國際捕鯨委員會，以不再受配額限制。



香港不大流行進食鯨魚肉，而供應亦非常少，但在世界各地，鯨魚業非常蓬勃。我們最常聽到的是日本非法捕鯨，它是最被環保人員針對的捕鯨國家。日本有自己的捕鯨配額，又以科研理由再補充。它又以文化理由申請捕鯨，因為日本土著幾百年來都以捕鯨為神聖工作，但可能因為太高調而最終被國際捕鯨委員會否決。但進食鯨魚肉是日本古老文化，鯨魚肉刺身和火鍋都是日本菜精髓；所以它不理會鯨魚愛護者反對，繼續供應鯨魚肉。

鯨魚肉刺身加生雞蛋，價值不菲。


鯨魚肉售賣專門店，在日本大受歡迎。


在挪威，進食鯨魚肉是當然的事，沒有人大驚少怪，國際對它亦沒有如對日本般指責。鯨魚業在挪威規模很大，是以工業型式運作，這是一個鯨魚肉工廠在處理大量鯨魚肉。



在挪威的貝根，鯨魚肉普遍地在肉類市場售賣，市場小販都有急凍鯨魚肉出售。



法羅群島位於北大西洋，鯨魚肉對當地居民來說是重要的肉類供應，通常由捕鯨獵人和居民分享。因配額不足，居民非常缺乏這類肉食。但每當捕鯨獵人能夠滿載歸來，居民就可獲分發鯨魚肉。下面是居民排隊等候分發，這在當地是大事，市長和議員會親自主持分發鯨魚肉活動以親近民眾。



在其他地方，鯨魚肉並不一定是美食。加拿大就有人將鯨魚肉加工磨碎，製成鯨魚肉末，可以用來造漢堡扒，但看這個包裝，可能是用來作為狗糧居多。



雖然捕鯨有很多限制，但鯨魚肉在有些地方似乎並不短缺。在日本，鯨魚肉亦會被製成鯨大和煮，以罐頭包裝，以便保存長期售賣。



丹麥亦設有罐頭工廠，將鯨魚肉加工製成罐頭出售。

The Logic of Life

The Logic of Life
- The Rational Economics of an Irrational World
by Tim Hartford



Tim Hartford is the author of the book The Uncovered Economist. He is a new style economist who looks at everyday phenomenon from the economic angle. The stories in that book cover a few things which we take for granted, but Tim Hartford vividly reveals the underlying economics, much to the surprise of the readers. His new attempt the Logic of Life goes a step further and suggests that there is logic in many life decisions.

Contrary to his observation of a life logical, life actually seems illogical at times. Many people do illogical things such as taking drugs, mugging others on the street. Even love sometimes looks irrational; similarly so does divorce. To Tim Hartford, many of these seemingly illogical or irrational actions are being done as a rational choice of the persons. Drawing on statistics, there is a change in the pattern of people doing illegal things whenever the laws, incentives or the environment change. People do accept calculated risks in many areas where we normally consider as irrational behaviour. This concept is in sharp contrast with the book Fooled by Randomness I recently read. In that book, the author shows that there is randomness in our everyday life. Quite often, things will turn out in the most improbable way. A famous phenomenon known as the black swan effect which will catch anyone by surprise, will eventually occur no matter how improbable, at an unexpected time. To this end, Tim Hartford explains that the behaviour of people is governed by their rational choices. However, a rational choice does not mean a probable outcome. Although behaviour is rational, outcome is random.

Many may find it illogical that our bosses are always overpaid, and many talents in the office go unrewarded. Tim Hartford explains that the problem of the office stems from the lack of information about who is talented, who is honest and who is hardworking, and pay them accordingly. Different from the measurement of output by piece work or by sales return to the company, office work cannot be measured accurately, particularly under a subjective performance appraisal system. He says managers are just lying weasels. Just look at how many Very Effective appraisals are awarded to EO. The scenario of a large pool of office workers with blurry appraised performance which look very similar to each other is not conducive to work motivation. Thus encouraging any effort at all is going to require a large disparity between what the winners get. Absurdly high pay and perk for the bosses is a logical way to motivate the subordinates. This may not be entirely true for government workers whose pay and perk are largely regulated. But many such examples are found in the commercial world.

Another observation is the distribution of household in Washington DC which displays a scenario of racial difference by an artificial demarcation of neighbourhood of blacks and whites. The author introduces an experiment devised by Thomas Schelling, a game theorist. Suppose there are two groups of people; Schelling calls them the greens and the purples, but this can apply to black and white, rich and poor, Christian and Catholic, or fat and slim. They are not discriminatory to each other. In fact, they are comfortable with some others living in their neighbourhood. They can tolerate a few, and even to be slightly outnumbered. However, if anyone finds that more than two-thirds of her neighbours is of the other colour, she will become unhappy and move.

Schelling arranges these green and purple households by colour on a chessboard. First, there is the utopia situation where the coloured chess pieces are arranged in alternate order. This is a perfect situation where the two colours are perfectly integrated with an optimum number of mixed coloured pieces in the neighbourhood of each piece.



He then randomly takes away twenty pieces from the chessboard, and randomly replaces five pieces to the empty spaces. When the utopia situation is disturbed, some pieces have to move elsewhere where it is not so overwhelmed by the other colour. This in turn affects the other pieces. After a few generations of movement, the pieces reorganize themselves into clusters of greens and purples.



One may think that in this free world, discrimination is becoming a lesser and lesser problem and neighborhood will gradually integrate. The experiment shows that there is logic and rational choice behind the phenomenon of automatic and voluntary segregation. People make rational choices, but the outcome may not be favourable.

There are arguments that people do not always make rational choices. In this world, there may be irrational people who make decisions out of intuition and gut feeling. This is also the argument against game theory which makes prediction on decisions made by rational people, that there are irrational people who do not play by the rule. However, in a macro sense, when the aggregation of many events is taken into account, it is possible to identify the choices made by people and the logic and reasons behind them.

The book has many more case studies expanding on the proposition that there is logic in many life decisions. It is reassuring to know that people consciously or subconsciously do things rationally. However, it is sad to learn that rational decision does not automatically lead to a happy ending. Life is unpredictable after all.