Whale Tale

My colleague Dennis O'Connor is spending a few days in Baja. He reports seeing whales every day.

I thought I'd browse around to see what mischief online I could find related to whales. It didn't take long to find www.icrwhales.net.

This is a fairly curious site which proclaims itself to be a parody. I haven't seen it listed on any of the standard hoax indices. The site, which calls itself the Institute of Delicious Whale Research (IDWR), contains stories and examples that suggest a humorous orientation. That might make a good challenge for older students: identify how the language of the site discloses its purpose.  It's pretty much the same skill set as trying to detect bias.

Perhaps more challenging to find is the AUTHOR and PUBLISHER. Let's see if anyone can come up with that information and post it here, along with a brief description how you found it.  Knowing more about the author(s) may help answer this question: can you detect whether the author is for or against whale hunting?

Another challenge: what site is icrwhales.net parodizing?


You may want to add this example to your list of hoax/parody sites.