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Comment by darklajid | Hacker News Reader

That article is .. devoid of new information. It claims that we don't eat swans (maybe? probably? I certainly never did.) but fails to provide even a hint of an answer. Unless I miss a hidden link for a page 2 or 3 that is a very long "So we don't eat a big bird, think about it", which is .. thought provoking if you're feeling nice, lacking content if you're not.

Jumping between vastly different regions doesn't help either ("Swans are the property of the crown in the UK, but a pest in Michigan." What??).

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Perhaps you didn't, but I learned much from the article. I didn't know that swans are crown property in England [1], that only the royal family and the fellows of St. John’s College of Cambridge (!) are allowed to eat them, or that they have become pests in Michigan (which of course is relevant; the post is not about a region, but about swans). I didn't even realize that there was a taboo against eating swans, though it seems obvious now.

1. The article contains an interesting link to "An Act Concerning Swans" (1482): http://www.theswansanctuary.org.uk/images/an%20act%20concern...

   There once was a man from St John's
   Who coveted one of the swans,
   "Oh no" said the Porter,
   Please take my daughter,
   The swans are reserved for the dons.

There was also an interesting link about why we should consider eating invasive (non-native) species. Personally I think the Canadian Geese around Oracle HQ in Redwood City could use a good thinning.

Canada Geese just about anywhere could use a good thinning.

In the Chicago area, there are two populations of Canada Goose, one migratory. There was a concern that their population was going to grow substantially, but it was discovered that it had flattened out.

Someone then discovered that the growing population of coyotes in the area were going after the eggs, and the population as a result has stablized.

I think Oracle HQ could use a good "thinning" itself.

I think the word you look for is "tanning". [Not as in sunburnt.]

+1 our office is across from Oracle, those Geese are annoying.

Personally I think the Canadian Geese around Oracle HQ in Redwood City could use a good thinning.

- Why? You don't like animals chilling out in a protected area.

No, because they cause economic harm. Both in damage to aircraft coming into and out of San Mateo airport, damage to cars which are involved in goose related accidents, damage to property in the form of plant destruction and defecation. Without natural predators they have become a nuisance.

Much like kangaroos in rural Australia. With fewer predators and enormous amounts of native bushland cleared for farming, they have multiplied to the point that they've become a pest.

Fortunately, the meat is pretty tasty.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangaroo_meat

I tried kangaroo in Switzerland the last time I visited EPFL; the cafeterias there serve all sorts of weird stuff, like horse...

I didn't like it, it tasted a lot like rabbit to me, and sourness in a meat is just weird to me.

All sorts of weird stuff, like horse:

If you can get your hands on that sort of things, I really recommend trying

- a steak from a horse

- sausages, barbecued (hey, I'm German. Let's play the stereotype card) => Bratwurst

- as pointed out elsewhere in this thread: Sauerbraten (although that's somewhat 'special'. I'd say everyone eating meat should try the first two, the last one is really weird and a dish that is both savory and sweet)

> I didn't like it, it tasted a lot like rabbit to me, and sourness in a meat is just weird to me.

Odd. I have had both Rabbit and Kangaroo. Both were lean flavorful, the Kangaroo more close to a lean beef than anything. But I wouldn't associate "sour" with both meats. Could you have sampled a bad batch?

I'm not used to rabbit or roo, and how I characterize the taste is probably not very sophisticated. I thought it felt sour, but there were lots of other tastes going on that I wasn't able to process very well, and...I'm very familiar with east, south, southeast asian food...Europe is just weird to me in comparison.

I too wouldn't use the word sour, though I will say kangaroo is definitely gamey compared to beef, and somewhat of an acquired taste. It's not a meat I would choose to eat without accompaniments.

(Whereas a tender sous vide steak of beef can be utterly scrumptious on its own, even unseasoned.)

Like sibling poster I encourage you to try horse. If you ever end up in Parma (Italy) or surroundings try pesto di cavallo, which raw minced horse meat, not unlike a steak tartare.

I also didn't like Kangaroo, it tasted like dry. Perhaps the stuff we get in the USA is fresh.

Might've been cooked too long. Best quickly seared and then rested.

You mean San Carlos airport? (ICAO identifier "KSQL", I kid you not)

Apparently the SQL airport had its code decades prior to Oracle moving in next door. Co-incidence? All I know is the Oracle buildings are just barely outside the flight path, and every time I land on Rwy 12 I feel like I have to maneuver around them. We're supposed to avoid flying directly overhead, but they're directly where the base leg is supposed to be!

Yeah, the instructions are a bit tricky, especially since SFO Class B (to the floor) is just up ahead as well, an invisible wall you better not run into. Friendly controllers, though, in my experience :-)

Yes, my mistake. Has the Hiller Air museum there, which is awesome btw.

And yet, this could be turned to another point of view: that human activity has caused environmental harm, with too many dangerous and polluting aircraft and cars, an airport in the birds' natural habitat, and the destruction of natural predators, with all the accompanying ecological side-effects...

And your proposed solution would be what? A thinning of the human population?

I think most people would prefer the OP's proposal.

I don't know. The OP's proposal is rather less modest.

Hey. I certainly don't want to ruin that article for you. For me (German, haven't left the country except for random vacations to France, NL, CH, IT or something and a year in IL) that was well-known. I've been in the UK once, in London, for two days. Guess that's a matter of which trivia based games you play or something.. ;-)

Michigan: No idea about that, that WAS news to me. But the article is about "Why don't we eat swans" and the Michigan part is really a bad example. So ... it's a pest? No hunting season though? And no explanation?

Frankly, I like swans. I regularly met and fed a couple of swans in Cologne in Germany here, checking on the young ones if the season was right.

I'd love to eat them though.

The article, for me at least, fails to deliver at least a hint of an answer to the question it proposed. That's just a bad format for me. If your main subject is a question, you need to at least try to answer it (and "yeah, they might be cute" isn't it).

What I got from it, while not a conclusive answer, was that because of the historical ban for anyone but the royal to eat swan, there is no tradition anywhere in the western world for it. Also people don't like to eat "cute" animals, like seals or squirrels. And lastly, when something is classified as a pest, people don't want to think of it on their dining room table.

While the article doesn't explicitly say the exact reason why, I think these were the main points. So I guess that is badly formatting on the article writers side.

But the premise is already weird. Who is "We" as in "Why don't we eat swans"? And who considers swans 'cute'?

I mean, I consider cats cute, lots of people consider dogs cute - and both animals are eaten in this world. Better example: Horses are cherished as companions and pets for some people and I _regularly_ like to eat them. There's even a dish local to the Rhine area in Germany [1] that (used to, it is replaced by beef quite often by now) is based on horse meat.

People tend to love dolphins. Asian cultures eat them. "They are cute" is not an argument here. That might explain a bias, but not why there's (according to the article) no swan to be found on any menu?

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauerbraten

"We" would presumably be the types of people who read the magazine. According to the about, that would be:

"window-herb growers, career farmers, people who have chickens, people who want to have chickens and anyone who wants to know more about how food reaches their plate"

and given the staff members are all US oriented, it's most likely assuming a US readership and US food culture.

Thus we, who are random fly-by strangers to the magazine, shouldn't really criticize harshly when they don't take an unexpected audience into account.

>> I'd love to eat them though.

This sentence you wrote exonerates the article in it's entirety. You would dearly love to eat a swan, but have not and will not, and you present no compelling reason on why you have not eaten one.

You embody the entire cognitive dissonance around swans.

Being from the UK all I know is that swans belong to my old boss and we teach children that a swan is powerful enough to break your arm if it feels threatened so stay away from them.

I would have no problem cooking and eating a swan but I imagine the majority of UK society would struggle to see the swan as anything other than a majestic, un-eatable animal rather than just an alternative to goose, duck, chicken, turkey or even pigeon.

Ducks, also, are both friendly and delicious.

And cute. Yet many of us (myself included) quite happily eat them.

I felt the same way. It asks "why don't we eat swans any more?" but as far as I can tell in the US we never did, and in fact the closest thing to an answer is just that we never got in the habit. I get the impression the excess swan problem in Michigan is a recent thing, probably a result of a decline of some swaniferous predator.

swaniferous (swan-bearing) =/= swanivorous (swan-eating).

People buy them as a pond decoration, then turn them loose when they become aggressive as adults.

Heaven forfend the article could be addressed to mankind! Obviously it was addressed to USAians and was given an odd title by mistake. That's definitely the intuitive, obvious, straight-forward possiblity.

LOL@swaniferous predator.

Maybe they could introduce cold hardy alligators to Michigan? But then there would be two problems....

Ironic: HN folks quibbling about a bad article title.

As long as it doesn't mention domestic surveillance or the iffy state of an economy propped up on QE, it's a perfectly cromulent HN topic.

Yep, this article is a completely content free fluff piece which can be summarized thusly:

"We don't eat swans. They are a pest in michigan. Why don't people eat swan?"

That is not an article it's something you'd say at a party while drunk and everyone would look at you funny.

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