You missed a piece in this. When O'Brien went in for his dressing down with Sisko, O'Brien wondered out loud why the transporter wasn't shut down and isolated to O'Brien's com badge location when Sisko realized that O'Brien and his com badge weren't in the same place. O'Brien could not have carried out his plan without assistance from Sisko. Sisko gave a blustery non-answer.

I did not miss that part. However, 1) O'Brien had no way of knowing that Sisko and the rest of the DS9 team would aid him in his crazy scheme (and I'd like to point out that this is once again illustrated by him taking off his badge) and 2) Sisko, through his position of power and authority, is in better position to smooth things over. That's not to say Sisko's decision was right or wrong, just that Sisko was risking less with his choices than O'Brien was with his choices.

I don't think it's very unrealistic.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one, just because I think of the idea of risking the big picture for a small event is unrealistic behavior. I'm not saying that it's the right decision (and depending on when you talk to me I could go either way and I really hate moral quandries), but I'm just saying that I don't think the whole DS9 crew would be willing to take that risk.

About the hunters, I just saw a post on reddit yesterday about a hunter who was killed when the elephant he killed fell on him. The hunter and anti-hunter discussion turned so vitriolic that the thread had to be shut down due to death threats. It doesn't seem like the hunter question is very settled. There's not much more to explore.

Dude. Tell me about it. I love animals. I love nature. I believe conservation efforts are extremely important. That said, I don't think hunting is immoral and I do think there's a lot of validity that the act of hunting contributes to the conservation movement and hunting/fishing for your meat is more moral than factory farmed meat and there's all sorts of caveats to all of those statements and blah, blah, blah.

That said, holy shit, it's a contentious issue and it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that a conversation about it got out of control on a place like Reddit. Damn.