That holiday time

So, Thanksgiving happened. I'm a bit confused, because I feel like we should still be in June sometime, rather than almost December....

Had a good holiday - enjoyed being back in my apartment with no horrendously close deadlines and no imminent travel, as I'd spent the last month away from home or with guests and big grant deadlines immediately after I got back. I do actually have things that need to be done this week, though, so I'm hoping for some productivity.

I almost feel like this time of year is a waste, as far as getting anything collaborative done. It's almost impossible to find everyone you need to talk to, and I'm personally so distracted by the holidays and getting to see my family (which I do once or twice a year, tops) that my productivity is pretty low anyways. Anyone have tips for actually being productive this time of year?

Data!

I FINALLY have some data to start working on for my dissertation! Field site 1 decided to cooperate, my equipment (after some argument) is working (ish), and I now have a few days to troubleshoot before I head back to collect more.

I am relieved... after over a year of trying, I finally have something to work on. Not that I wasn't busy, mind, but I was mainly working on my advisor's projects and writing theoretical proposals with no preliminary data. Now I can go happily to my committee meeting next month and have preliminary data for when I beg for money next. Love.

Catching up

Wow... it's been a while since I visited here. So, quick update.

~ Advisor and I got back from our field site a few weeks ago. The trip as a whole went pretty well, except for the whole data thing. Disappointing, to say the least. The critters were clearly there and ready to be studied and politics got in the way, again. Ugh. (As a side note, I'm beginning to think I'm cursed to never actually get data. A faculty member has told me that the universe is telling me I should do theory-based work, but what fun is that???)

Some of the critters from our trip (but not the ones we were studying)



~ My research is picking up, sort of. Lots of calls to potential collaborators, and it looks like two or three of them are actually willing to work with me. Hooray! I'm also taking a trip to my original field site next week, for one final (and I do mean final, because I'm pretty much at my breaking point with these people) meeting before tentatively collecting data the week after that.

~ My family (minus the sibling) is coming to visit me! They've only come to see me at this school once before, so we're going to take a few days this time and explore a bit more. It'll be pretty much perfect weather, too.

My lab is back to being busy and noisy again, because everyone is back from field seasons and thesis-writing seclusion. Makes it fun - lots of jabber and brainstorming and talking about science. I also have a new minion this semester, who seems bright and enthusiastic and responsible -- and she's mine, all mine. I get to train her and set her to work on the newest set of data I'm dealing with for Advisor. This semester is going well so far.

Finally! And... crap, that's this week!

Advisor and I are leaving for fieldwork on Wednesday. Like, the day after tomorrow. We fly to DC, then to a far away foreign country where I don't speak the language and we'll have no phone or internet for three weeks. I'm torn between excitement and dread. Hopefully there will be no drama related to last year's project cancellation or anything else. I just want to get through the airports smoothly, and then I'll deal with the rest as it comes. Advisor is all stressed out, too... at least we get to panic to each other, right??

Did some last minute errands and packed up equipment today. Last packing and weighing of the luggage tomorrow, and then we're out until October. Wish us luck!

On my lack of love for the piano, and the irresistable cuteness of blond toddlers

I don't mind classical music. In fact, when I'm in the right mood, it's wonderful. I played violin for 12 years, and really enjoy most of it. My one exception is the piano, which I would love to learn to play simply because I'm not sure I'm coordinated enough to get my extremities and eyes together to complete a song. For whatever reason, though, piano music does not generally excite me. I much prefer cello or a full orchestra.

Which makes it a wonderful coincidence that my new downstairs neighbor appears to have one hobby.... classical piano. Oi. And while he's very good, it's piano. And it's driving me nuts, because he appears to practice exclusively during the times I am trying to nap, or read, or blog, or generally enjoy some quiet downtime at home. Maybe this will change as the semester progresses and he gets a social life... but for now, I'm anticipating a forced lesson in how to appreciate the piano through my floor. Ew. (Or, I could take it as motivation to find more hobbies/spend more time in lab.... choices, choices...)

On a happier note, I went to visit some family last week and was greeted by these cuties and their parents.

Adorable, yes? They also helped me practice with my fancy schmancy camera, but I didn't come out with anything too spectacular.

(She knows she's cute, you can see it in her eyes. Both adorably cuddly, too.)

Fieldwork for Advisor's project (theoretically) starts in less than two weeks. HOLY CRAP. I need to pack and wrap up everything I'm doing for this month soon. Oi.

Thoughts from the first day of classes:

1) "Hey you kids, get off my lawn [campus]" is not appropriate. Yet. Or possibly ever, but at least until I'm out of grad school. I remember being an undergrad, but I swear I wasn't nearly as annoying as they are here. Maybe it's a different school thing. Or probably I'm just starting to feel old.

2) Dear undergrads, please note that your phones are NOT surgically attached to your fingers. Put them away, walk to where you are going, and THEN text or call or whatever you need to do. Just don't do it while walking. You tend to bump into things like trees, or signs, or cranky grad students. Also, the stopping in the middle of the sidewalk to text? Yeah, that's gotta go.

3) PROGRESS! Made contact with another research site today, and they seem much more enthusiastic/helpful/not-evil than my other site. Lovely.

4) Had lunch with Advisor today while she is between trips, which was nice. Got caught up on personal gossip and some research things. She made contact with some potential collaborators for me while she was on her last trip, so I'll be following up on that this week. Also? New data. YES.

Am also feeling much better... antibiotics are wonderful things. So, overall, a good day. :)

Popping in for a quick update

Haven't posted in a while... again. Oops. At least this time I have a good reason: poison ivy tried to eat my legs, and either the rash, subsequent staph infection, antibiotics or all three are sapping my energy to the point where I'm lucky if I'm awake for two hours in a row. (Of course, that only holds during the day - at night I'm always up at 4am, wide awake and itchy. Ugh)

Also? If you get poison ivy, WEAR GLOVES when you wash the clothes you were wearing. Otherwise, your fingers break out really badly. Trust me on this one.

I am incredibly pleased to have been linked to by the fabulous Zuska a few weeks ago, which bumped my traffic way up. And then, I of course did not post until all of the attention faded away. Le sigh.

Workwise - still stalled on the major portion of my project, but got one important phone call completed today and will do one on Monday, when I hope to be back at work full time.

And so that this isn't a completely pointless post: bat news!

Noise news

New info on the effects of noise on juvenile reef fish here. Interesting -- I think I'm going to go look up the actual paper.

Open letters

Dear Research spot,

Please, PLEASE stop being fucking dickheads. If you like the thing, say yes. If you don't like it, say no. But either way, stop fucking stringing me along and wasting my time and my assistants'. I'm sick and tired of your bullshit and your non-communication and your general assholishness. Screw off.

- me.

Dear chairman,

What are you thinking, allowing someone to replace a class they failed with TEACHING credits? Are you serious? How does that work?

Please grow a brain,
me.

Dear labmate,

I get it. You've put a lot of time and energy into this, and you want something out of it. Well, guess what. You've gotten something - you've been paid for the last two years, even though you're incompetent, rude, and have really whacked out priorities. Please get it through your head that no one likes having you around, and we're all hoping you wise up and leave soon. (and WITHOUT the degree that you most definitely have not earned.)

Sorry bout that, but it's true.
- me.

'Declined' vs. 'Rejected'

Got a grant rejected today - which I had guessed was coming, seeing as I submitted it in November, and had seen other ones from that program getting funded on Fastlane. Frustrating, but I really just wanted the reviews at this point. (Which I skimmed, and it seems to be a classic case of Reviewer Number 3...ugh).

What really gets to me is that I wasted so much time waiting for this grant, because I was hoping to approach potential collaborators with money in my pocket. Now, I have to approach six months later than I would have originally, and still with no money and no data. I am PISSED, mostly at myself, and upset in general. I suppose it's good that I got this news on a weekend, so I'm not as upset in lab tomorrow, but.... ugh.

My procrastination habit has got to go. It does nothing but hurt me, and my chances at ever getting a g-d iota of data and graduating and all sorts of shit like that. Dammit.

(Also, it kills me that Advisor says I should reapply next year when I will STILL not have the data the reviewers wanted. Fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck).

In keeping with the hotel theme...

I am at yet another hotel, near research site #1, for a meeting with collaborators and maybe (hopefully!) some preliminary data collection. Really, really wanting to get some data that I can start playing with, and approval to do some real work within the next month. I definitely feel more prepared than the last time I came here (though, that was coming off a conference in a foreign country two weeks previous, and the flu the morning of the meeting...), so hopefully things go well.

The short course/conference went well last month. The cranky-post was from the first day, and the week got much better as it went on. Made lots of contacts, had a good time with some old friends, and even learned a bit!

I have a post in progress (somewhere!) about my working style - if I ever remember it, I'll put it up. And maybe maybe next time I post, I'll have thesis progress! Woo!

I have the cranky

I'm at a conference/short course this week, living in a hotel with a roommate. And while both the hotel and the roommate are perfectly lovely, the rest of the conference is making me cranky. The lectures so far have been alternating between basic to the point of insulting and so complex that maybe one person in the room understands them. It's frustrating. And one particular person has been rather abrupt with me a few times today, which is understandable, but bothersome.

Add to this the fact that I'm pretty unsociable anyways, and you have a recipe for disaster. So I'm hiding in my room for the short break between lecture and dinner, and will probably do the same before the poster session (for which I have not prepared) tonight.

Ugh. It's going to be a long week.

I am behind

And as usual, blogging is the first thing to take the hit. Sorry, all.

I've been working on all sorts of projects, and just took a week to visit my family for the first time in six months. That felt good, and I even got a bit of work done while I was home.

I have a couple of posts backed up that I'll try and get to this weekend, but for now, there's this spiffy bit of science news.

That time again

I have the charlie-brown-missing-the-football cartoon posted on my desk at work. It's there to remind me not to get too comfortable with what I'm doing, because my target will inevitably be moved, at least occasionally. For instance: my first field season flopped, my practice talk got mauled before my comps, etc.

I'm choosing to think of today as the cb/football moment for the summer (or the spring, can't quite make up my mind if I want to be pessimistic about it yet). Oi. Had meeting with Advisor today, to go over our publication and my thesis, and came out of it feeling like my entire last week was wasted. and knowing that I'm not moving fast enough to suit her. Dammit. So I'm taking tonight to recover from the ego-crush, and then will get back into things tomorrow. Eff.

Also not helping is the fact that I keep fighting with my labmate. I just need to remind myself that she will be gone come fall. Thank goodness.

Need a way to cheer up tonight....alright. off to find one.

Goal logging

Today I:

~ faced up to my fear of the telephone and made a call to a collaborator (who was not in, so I'll have to call again later this week. Practice is a good thing?)

~ drafted the methods section of the paper Advisor wanted to have submitted last summer. She did the intro, and we're working out the results section tomorrow. So, way behind schedule, but progressing nicely at the moment.

~ went to a workshop on how to use one of my new software tools. Spiffy.

~ got two new books from the library, which will join the collection of library books that have been kept hostage on my shelf for the last year. Eventually I will read them all, I swear!

Tomorrow, I will:

~ revise and insert details into the methods draft mentioned above.

~ Meet with Advisor to keep her informed of my thesis work (phone calls count!) and talk about her project.

~ Continue my foreign language lessons, so that I'm not completely lost in fieldwork country come September.

~ try again to make contact with a lab-person who is in charge of the equipment I need to use this summer.



My officemates recently got bored and (with minimal suggestions from me), hung a whiteboard up by my desk. This has been good, because I use less paper on to-do lists and because I can keep said lists where they won't get covered with other papers and books. Unfortunately, it also provides space for me to spend time doodling whales and tropical islands. Hmmm. Then again, if I consider that to be stress-relief, maybe it's productive, too.

Oh. This week, I also sent off a draft proposal to another collaborator (whom I telephoned last week. this phone-paranoia has got to go. More practice necessary).

Also: I've recently changed my habits and am no longer drinking a glass of wine with dinner each night. I find that my sleep has improved, and I'm much more likely to get work done after I come home. That didn't happen until a few days after I stopped having wine with dinner... maybe I'll confine my drinking to weekends from now on.

A good and a bad

Good:
I'm still making at least a little progress each day. I may be a bit behind where I wanted to be, but I'm still okay to meet my goals for this month. And my labmate and I came up with an idea for a short-course for our undergrad minions that will help them understand what they need to, and give us a little bit of teaching experience. Awesome.

Also, the pie I baked and thought was inedible? Actually pretty darn good. I didn't take it to the party I made it for because I didn't want to poison anyone, so I've been having some for breakfast the last couple of days. Yum!

~~ And now an unscheduled break from my month of optimism ~~

Bad:
The situation in my office is rapidly deteriorating. Labmate K, who shares the office with me and 8 other people (and whom I've written about here) has gotten on one of my last nerves. And I'm usually pretty patient. K is leaving in August (yay!), but I still have to find some way to deal until then. K throws temper tantrums in the middle of the lab, is insulting to labmates and disrespectful to pretty much everyone, and somehow has no responsibility for any of her problems. Classes? The professor hates her. Research? The people who collected the data screwed up. Classical ecological theory? It's wrong, because she thinks it is. And pickles confuse her, so they must be bad.

I need help finding a way to not blow up in K's face this summer. Her complete refusal to take responsibility for her problems is grinding away at what patience I have left. If she was only nice about it, I could deal. But the next time she has a hissy fit or insults me I think I'm going to snap and take myself down to her level. Any tips for dealing with people like this?

First steps

Today I made progress.

That is what I want to be able to say every day for the rest of this summer (at least!). Yesterday I set goals for part of the summer, and today I took action on a task that has been sitting in my "procrastinate" box for at least a month. It feels so good to have it started. I just need to remember this feeling and keep doing things that get me here. And then I can ride the wave all the way in, right?

As I told Advisor yesterday, I'm making a deliberate attempt to be an optimist. Don't crush me! My normal cynicism aside, I'm typically pretty happy. But For the next month, I am going to be perpetually happy and looking for a silver lining. Like, when my labmate whines or insults me or goes googly eyed over some olympian that she doesn't have a chance with, I can go out for a walk with a friend and get a snack. Or when it freezes tonight - it's nice to have my plants inside to decorate my apartment. :)

So. Tomorrow, I will finish the task I started today, and cross at least two other things off my mini-goals list. (I have four major goals for each of May and June -- they're in baby steps, so I feel like I have a chance at getting them done, but still adequate to get me where I need to be at the end of the summer. The mini-goals list is lined out by specific tasks I have to do each week, and gets progressively more general out to about 1 year from now.)

Also - the fieldwork that got canceled last fall? On again for this year. YES. (Daily optimism: it will happen, and I will learn things that will benefit my career, if not my thesis. And it will be fun!)

I seem to be slowing down on my blogging - I suppose that's fitting, as just about everything else in my life has also slowed to the pace of molasses on a cold day, but it's frustrating. On both the life and blogging counts.

So. I have a conference next week, but after that (and possibly even during!), I resolve to get my lazy bum in gear and get working on my dissertation research and writing that paper that's been hanging over my head for years. Will do.

I am currently procrastinating on prepping for my talk next week (and my practice talk during lab meeting tomorrow)... It'll go fine, I'm just slightly more anxious than really necessary because 1) this is my first oral presentation at a meeting, and 2) I have no idea what the culture of this meeting is like, because I've never gone before. From all accounts, it's less formal and back-stabby than the October meeting, which is good.


Field work is now complete -- lots of good data, but short of the main goal again this year. Upsetting for my advisor, I'm sure. I personally think that new technology is going to be needed before we can get that data, because our lovely study species is doing a behavior that is just not working with the tech we have. So we'll see.

Random notes:
- People are confusing. And adorably sweet, but mostly confusing.
- Beets are kind of gross. Anyone have a recipe that can improve them?
- I love the weather. Especially as opposed to where my family is, which got several inches of snow yesterday. :)

And back

Back at school now, though the field season isn't over yet. Advisor and a bunch of other people are still out collecting data - they have some data points on species 1, and just last night got really excellent data on species 2. Go team!

I'm trying to get back into the swing of things now... I think I'll take today and try to catch up from home, and then go back into the lab and classes tomorrow. Have a conference coming up in a few weeks, as well, so I should be more than comfortably busy for a while.

Fieldwork

I've been out on fieldwork since Friday morning... I'm already exhausted. I think that it's mostly my body missing the nice easy routine that I'm used to doing on normal work days, but the sun and the salt (and the occasional rain/snow/sleet) probably amp it up a bit.

Finished goal one of the project this morning, so after the weather rolls through in the next couple of days, we should be good to get on with the rest of it. I love fieldwork.... as much as I might grumble about the hours and the work, I really truly love the people that we're working with and getting out on the water.

Good weather to all, and to all a good night!

So, that spring break thing...

You know how I said I was going to get work done last week (and you were all secretly laughing and saying "yeah, sure...")? You were right. I didn't get nearly as much done as I wanted to/ should have. Rats. Now I have to do extra this week, along with classes, and meetings, and field-prep.

I've gotten used to it being light outside when my alarm goes off in the morning, and it was great, because it made it that much easier to crawl out of my nice warm bed. But when I woke up today, it was dark. Thanks, daylight savings time. (on a related note, happy Pi day!)

Also, the undergrads are back and mobbing the grocery store. Which I should have expected, but was still shocked by when I went to buy things to make scalloped potatoes with today. I'm trying out my grandmother's recipe for the first time, so this should be interesting. Do any of you know if potatoes freeze well? I'm essentially making these to use up a bag of potatoes before my fieldwork, and I'd like to freeze about half the pan for the week between my trip and my conference, but I've never tried to freeze potatoes. Hmm.

Still impatient about my DDIG application, but I was accepted to the other thing I applied for. Excellent.

Alright. On to cooking and back to finishing up homework I should have done last week. :)

Wait, what happened to February?

I am astonished that it's March already. I haven't accomplished nearly as much as I feel like I should have (though I've done a fair amount and jumped at least one major hurdle), and I can't remember what happened through most of February (which is why I'm meeting with Advisor tomorrow - I feel like my brain shut off on the 4th and I need a kick-start to get it going again. eep!)

To follow up from last time:
point 2: YES. This will happen. I'll be gone for 10 days, which works perfectly - just enough of a time crunch to motivate me but not enough to really interfere with classes, and a lovely short break from the bench. Awesome.

point 3: We will also NOT extend an offer to the second prospective student we interviewed. Note to applicants: please have an idea of what you'd like to work on, and have some questions for the current grad students. Sitting and staring at each other for 30 minutes is not really a great way to impress us.

I'm starting to panic about conference stuff and thesis stuff... but I can discuss that in my meeting tomorrow, and spring break is next week (!!!), so I should have some time to deal with it.

I'm getting impatient about the two applications for things that I have out... my NSF DDIG app, which I don't expect to hear from for at least a couple more months, is driving me nuts. The other one is minor and as Advisor is on the review panel, I can probably dig up hints. Hmmmm.

December of this year will bring this. I can't wait.

I have no witty title today

It is snowing. Again. Please, please, please.... can we just go one week with no new snow? Please? (I've almost decided that if and when I get to choose where I live & work, there will be zero possibility of snow, and it will be glorious.)

I've been meaning to update for a while and just haven't gotten around to it. So here we go, in list form.

1. A fairly major person in my field, Dr. Ronald Schusterman, died recently. I don't know much of his work, but his lab focused on some really interesting stuff, and I know my advisor is close to at least one of his students. I'm disappointed that I never got to meet him.

2. There is a possibility that I will go on some field work in the next couple of months. YES. I need this. I need to get out of the lab and to see some of the people that I've worked with the last couple of years. (I also need the time crunch that will get me motivated to finish my analyses for my conference in April, but we won't talk about that...)

3. Advisor has told me that our lab will "make an offer" for one of the students we interviewed. Kind of makes it sound like we're buying a car, rather than hiring someone, though I suppose that's how it's done. Should be interesting.... when she interviewed, she mentioned that another school was going to take her whale-watching during her visit. I still haven't decided if that's a point in our favor (the other lab doesn't study whales), or not. Hmm.

4. It turns out that my cooking repertoire is somewhat limited. Pasta, while lovely, gets very old, very fast. Do any of you have favorite recipes I can try out? I'm a decent cook, so if you have something you really like (that hopefully involves minimal pasta!), tell me!

And there you have it, my life in bullet points. Or numbers, I suppose.

Let's hope for warm and sunny weather this week!

It's like whack-a-mole

Seriously, I keep knocking off some projects (see: committee meeting and major exam, whoo!), and ending up with more! (Yes, I know this is how life works. Shush.)

Class work is really eating my time these days, though hopefully the workload is about to slack off a bit and I can catch up on some research stuff. Or, you know, interview prospective students who apparently feel that they are allowed to switch their interviews by a week & not let the program know.... etc. I'm a little put off by the fact that my advisor really wants this one & is aggressively wooing them, which means that I'm expected to snuggle up to them too. And take them out on Friday night, etc. Ugh. And then the official interview weekend is coming up, which I always volunteer at (and have fun with), so that should be good.

Yet another clash between whalers and activists last weekend...this one ended with a hole in one of the ships. When are they going to learn?

Ouch.

I did a talk today. A practice, for when I have my committee meeting & almost-last exam next month. Let's just leave our discussion of the results as: unpleasant. Also, Advisor apparently hadn't picked up on how nervous/stressed/whatever it is I am about this, and was teasing and finally (after my talk) figured out that that was a bad idea and decided I needed a pep talk.... which didn't really work, because I was waiting to get some time on my own so I could break down & cry.

oiiii. I blame this on being stressed because I spent almost the entire last 2 weeks working up a formal proposal, which is now on my committee's desks, and not really de-stressing at all. I got the same amount of sleep, because that is one of the things I don't compromise on, but my other leisure activities took the hit. Doesn't help that I'm also doing hw for classes. Oh well.

On the plus side of today, I finally heard back from collaborators on two seperate projects, both with positive responses. One was from the maybe-scooping-me group, which I've been twitchy about for the last couple years.... so we'll see about them. But. probably a neutral day if I really have to think about it. Two middlingly big pluses, one gigantic minus that was a practice for something I can now improve.... everyone needs a good soul-crushing now and again, right? Or maybe I'm just playing this up because I've actually really enjoyed grad school so far & hadn't had a really bad day in a while.... meh. It's friday, and I'm going to go to bed early, sleep late, and take it from there tomorrow.

Also, I've relapsed into thinking about adopting a cat. There's one at my local shelter with ghost-eyes (one green, one bluish), who has a great face and looks HUGE in the pictures. We'll see. Anyone have suggestions about cats?

Good start to the semester

Met with Advisor today to discuss what I did over the break [read: did last week while Advisor was out of town] and my plans for this semester, etc. It actually went well, much to my surprise. I had some really nice results to present, and a re-done outline of my research plans. So now I'm re-energized about that side project and motivated by looming deadlines to get mine done. Woo!

Also found out that I'm a) getting scooped OR b) planned into a project that I've been talking to people about, but wasn't aware there was any formal planning for.... so I'm talking to my contact on that project again this week to figure out what's going on. Kind of a charlie brown/football moment, though... things like this are the reason I have that cartoon near my work area. Oi.

I'm taking three classes this semester, along with taking a fairly major exam.... Advisor was advocating adding another class (or auditing), and helping with the undergrad minions we've hired, plus potential fieldwork. Situation normal, uber-busy but happy.

:)

How's everyone else's semester going? Any fun things to report?

Not sure who's in the right here

Marginally related to this post.

There's been some discussion in the popular press recently about a collision between a Japanese ship and an anti-whaling activism vessel in the Southern Ocean. The six people on the smaller boat were lucky to survive what appears to be a deliberate ramming by the Japanese ship (videos from the whaling ship and the activist base vessel here).

As I mentioned in the previous post, being stupid in the Southern Ocean is a good way to die. Taking a non-icebreaker rated ship into dense bergs is stupid. Harassing people in large ships from a zodiac is stupid. Taking your fancy new $2.5 million dollar boat into a situation where it could be damaged (and now sunk) is stupid. It is a miracle that no one has yet been killed during these mistakes - how much longer do they think they can do it? (And on another note, the activists have called piracy on the Japanese - what hypocrites, after they boarded a whaling ship without permission!)

That said, I'm definitely not saying the Japanese are in the right this time. A deliberate ramming of so small a boat risks people being thrown overboard or crushed between the hulls. If someone had been in the bow section, they would be dead. The water cannon and acoustic harassment devices are understandable defenses against the acid-bombs and prop foulers the activists use; escalating the conflict by ramming, especially in light of the size differences between the vessels is simply dangerous and unacceptable.

I wish people could have a rational discussion about whaling. I personally don't agree with it, and don't see a need, but some cultures do. Whaling under the "scientific" clause appalls me, because they publish very little that can't be discovered through non-lethal methods, but they can't get approval through the commercial clause. I have no right to comment on the ethics of eating whale meat, because I'm not a vegetarian, and I don't object to hunting other animals for food - it only becomes an issue to me if the killing is unethical (exploding harpoons are not exactly humane...), or the animal is endangered or in a position to become so.

I'm not sure how to resolve this situation, or whether or not it will ever be solved. I wish the countries would get together and realize that someone is going to die if this continues, though. I believe that negotiation is the best way to go about this - the Japanese are not going to stop trying to make money just because some activist gets killed. If we can give them a financial incentive, maybe we can make progress.