Comments caniscandida has made

bravo, Earth First!er!

Yes, caro cugino Wolverine, I see what you mean.

Perhaps our dear David has gone soft, and ever so vaguely conservative-ish, being a father of small children.  Whether that is fair, to examine him and his life too closely, he (presumably) would argue respectably, saying: Radicals accomplish nothing; consider the ancient Fable of the Sun and the Wind, each trying to wrest the cloak from the traveler; all that matters is what will work.

That said (so much in defense of dear David), I strongly agree with you (AGAINST dear David) that many environmentalists are acting like knaves, dropping all kinds of important values out of the lifeboat in order to save their monolithic, monotheistic idol, the anti-global-warming movement as the sole (Orthodox, true Muslim, so to speak) cause of environmentalists.  Sure, the climate crisis is Issue Number One, and deservedly so.  But simply to declare that "there is no god but [that]" is an inhumane form of idolatry.

Radically understood, environmentalism is the activist-oriented concern for the well-being of ALL sentient beings, and the ecosystems in which they dwell and flourish, first of all (so far as we know) on this planet.  To limit the "appropriate" subject of environmentalists to the current climate crisis, admittedly grave, is, simply, dumb.  I.e., thoughtless.

Another good friend of ours, Erik Hoffner, recently said something on another thread which suggested that the concern of some environmentalists to preserve a wetlands region, which might soon be submerged in the Ocean thanks to the global-warming-related rise in sea level, was way dumb and misdirected.  If indeed I understood Erik correctly then, I sadly admit to feeling some anger towards him.

We environmentalists MUST understand our basic, timeless values.  And we MUST lovingly encourage one another to work in defense of what each of us loves.

On a not altogether unrelated matter: My beloved brother Amazing, a terrific historian (we cannot do enough by way of examining the 1930s, and how -- well or ill?-- FDR handled both the economic problems at home and the fascist/militarist problems abroad; plus, I highly recommend the informative, if not well edited, movie "The Cradle Will Rock," about an interesting episode of protest back then), has commented that the perceptible drop in the number of FEMALE contributors to this blog definitely has brought down its quality and its fun-ness.

That may be true.  And indeed, yes, we have had some excellent female correspondents in the past, enlightening us on all manner of subjects, who seem to have run off to spend their time more profitably.  Our loss!

It is ironic, though, seeing that back in Catholic grade school, it was the girls who were fun-less, and super-obedient, so that when Sister Mary Bertrille ordered, "Underline the VJMJ at the top of your page with your ruler and your red pen," the girls would all do just that, without question, while the boys would be doing something sloppy and uneven because they had lost their rulers, or perhaps were drawing a football, or a rocket-ship, or were stabbing their innocent but hateful neighbors with their red pens ... .

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

wolves in trouble again

By the way, not in Alaska but in the Yellowstone states, wolves are still in trouble:

http://www.defenders.org/

I have long suspected that Obama was not going to be the man to stand up for animals (as happy as I am otherwise regarding his election), nor is Ken Salazar the right person either.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

America, schizoid nation

Cf. the Paxton Boys: 18th-century Scotch-Irish settlers in the Susquehanna valley, Pennsylvania, who could not care less that the Conestoga/Susquehannock people already dwelled in the land; they wanted that land, and wanted to use it without restriction, including without interference from the Conestoga.  Legally, the Quaker-dominated government in Philadelphia would have tied their hands, and so they simply marched on Philadelphia and threatened a coup.

This is American democracy, capitalism, and the free market: the hideous freedom of those who can, to destroy, and commit all manner of injustice, in the name of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

So long as there is a business interest, a commercial interest, in Hawaii, which would prefer to procede with no care whatsoever about the fate of snagged, drowned dolphins, then we friends of the dolphins will surely have a tough time defending them.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

watch out, kid

Let us avoid using potentially homophobic or gay-bashing language, even lightly, spoofingly, metaphorically, in the context of disapproving of something, no matter how very different.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Way wrong

Harpoons away!  Blood in the water!  Yay humanity!

Regardless of environmental ethics, whatever exactly they may be, there is NOTHING justifiable about the slaughter of cetaceans.On U.S. denounces Iceland whaling move posted 9 months ago 7 Responses

people allergies, bee deaths

This needs work.  As suggested by OrganicJewelry, allergic reaction to bee stings is an issue worth considering (of course, bees do not automatically sting, willy-nilly; they only sting if provoked in defense of their home).  And in general, "living with bees" is ethically deficient if all that means is a happy uncomplicated way of exploiting them for human purposes.

(Thanks, Amazing, for bringing this to my attention.)

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

chickens, actually, are better

The same sort of phenomenon was/has been/is present in the credit crisis.  All the experts were saying that investers/borrowers/lenders should show confidence in the credit system: but then, nobody did the noble thing, and everybody ducked back, not wanting to take a hit.  "Leadership," of course, means risking taking a hit, in the knowledge that putting oneself forward is ultimately the right thing to do for the common good.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

sons of Adam first?

It is just a matter of time before we all have a serious discussion about which species count, which species deserve consideration, on the one hand, and which species are expendible and fluff, on the other.

The majority -- the ever-increasing majority, apparently, to judge from the ever greater rates of carnivory in Asia -- seem to think that at present, only human beings count.

So I guess I have been wrong to hope that we are evolving, morally, toward an attitude of greater compassion and fairness.On Bush admin removes independent scientific reviews from Endangered Species Act posted 11 months, 3 weeks ago 3 Responses

self-sacrifice

Odd use of "philosophically."  Of course we know how Johnson is using it, in a thoughtless, boring, conventional way.  But it bears insisting that there is nothing especially "philosophical" about either what Johnson has to say, or what he repeats W. as saying.

Is sacrifice simply an impossible option?  Are the American people simply another Master Race, such that "maintaining our nation's competitiveness," economic or otherwise, is our obligation and our destiny (?!; and in that case, which divinity is writing the Books of Fate?), and allowing ourselves to slip backwards into a kinder, gentler state is out of the question?

Well, there are indeed some great goods which require the support of American wealth.  E.g., here close to home in NYC, the Metropolitan Opera (Natalie Dessay singing Bel Canto is alone a treasure), the Metropolitan Museum (a visit to the Cloisters is as beneficial as a religious pilgrimage), and Columbia University (one alumnus of which is the President-Elect).  But does the maintenance of such goods require ever-increasing wealth, founded in competitiveness?

The maintenance of goods internationally, i.e. in places other than the US, may indeed require American wealth, too.  But there especially, isn't competitiveness/competition counter-productive?  Why is the creation of an international class of losers a good thing?

Perhaps we can divide humanity (yet again!) into two categories: those who consider competitiveness/competition to be a mother of virtue; and those who consider competitiveness/competition to be a mother of suffering and death.

Possibly George W. Bush is correct, that Americans, of course!, must always do what they can to maintain their economic competitiveness.  But why? -- if we are to claim to speak philosophically, we must ask that.

And, possibly, it would be political suicide for any prominent American to suggest anything different, than that American competitiveness, and subsequent supremacy, must be maintained.

Nevertheless, is it not the case that within environmentalism, there has always been a vocation to recession, and surrender, and abnegation, as a truer path to salvation than that offered by the promoters of competition?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

lux ex Borowitz

<<
Subject: Illinois Guv Shocker

December 9, 2008

Illinois Guv Offers Senate Seat to Arresting Officer

Daring Escape Attempt Caught on Tape

In what is being called one of the most daring escape attempts in the history of law enforcement, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich today offered the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama to the FBI agent who took him into Federal custody this morning.
According to U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, the astonishing escape attempt occurred moments after Mr. Blagojevich was handcuffed by the agent, who was wearing a wire and captured the entire expletive-laden offer on tape.
"'You can be the [bleeping] junior Senator from [bleeping] Illinois if you let me out of these [bleeping] handcuffs,'" Mr. Fitzgerald read from a transcript. "'And if that mother-[bleeper] Barack Obama tries to [bleep] with me, I'll [bleep] him up.'"
According to Mr. Fitzgerald, "When I say bleep,' he didn't really say bleep' on the tape," adding, "I'm going to keep making that joke until one of you [bleepers] laughs at it."
Gov. Blagojevich has been charged with a laundry list of Federal crimes, including stealing his haircut from the dad on "The Brady Bunch."

>>

Hurray online journalism!

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Chicago!

Thanks, Jon, I shall look at this in a bit.

Of course, Chicago is the place to be, right now, with regard to newspapers, what with the Tribune's two big stories: the bankruptcy of the parent company yesterday, and all this remarkable Blagojevich business, with Tribune connexions, today.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

It's Grist's fault! (ha ha)

In an age when print journalism is in decline (hurray the trees!, and all the little critters who live in them!), it remains to be seen whether the NY Times, the WashPost, the Christian Science Monitor, etc., will adapt to the changing habits of Generation Grist.

But the engaging of William Kristol, as if to prove to the Fox viewers and Limbaugh ditto-heads how "fair and balanced" the NYT is, was plainly wrong-headed.

Clark Hoyt, the current Public Editor, recently alluded to a sense among many that the Times has a "liberal bias."  That may be so; but if that sense is founded on more than just the editorials and (most of) the op-eds, i.e. the news articles as well, then it is quite unfair.

But it just confirms what I have said before: adherence to the Republican Party (since the presidency of Gerald Ford) is a sign of moral deficiency, of one kind or another.  Take for example two big stories, leading the latter half of this past Sunday's (12/7) NYTimes, the "National" section: one on the discovery of a big dog-fighting circuit in east Texas, another on the bankruptcy of a big bakery in Ohio, leaving many laid-off people with no health care.  There is nothing at all left-leaning about the way the articles are written, as it seems to me.  But inasmuch as the very selection of those stories as worthy of coverage will strike many Limbaughesque readers as intolerably liberal, that plainly is morally deficient.

JMG,
do you remember that segment of Woody Allen's "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex," in which the Armenian shepherd goes to the office of the sophisticated shrink, played by Gene Wilder, and declares, "I am in love with a sheep!"?  Prezioso!

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"divide and conquer"

This is very sad.  The rivalry, even enmity, between the Hopi and the Navajo/Dine' is an old, on-going relationship, starting when the Navajo moved into that region in the first place, a century or so before Spaniards arrived.  But I did not know that that rivalry has been exploited and kept active nowadays by coal interests and other Southwestern developers, when there is no reason otherwise for the different Native peoples not to be allies.

Raul Grijalva is being recommended by the Humane Society of the United States also:

https://community.hsus.org/campaign/HSLF_2008_obama_cabinet/nap7mtnwe3

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"he's still cute"

Of course he is!  You just need to change your perspective.  After all, we can refer to both a 5-year-old and a 20-year-old as "cute," even though we mean something a bit different in each case.

So hopefully young Knut will find a more hospitable home elsewhere, where he may be introduced to a future Mrs. Knut, and together they may perform their duty to the race, and produce lots of baby Knuts.

As for the "beancounters": It is unfortunate that zoos have to operate as though they were any other sort of business.  Unlike many other proponents of animal rights, I am not down on zoos entirely; at least the larger ones, in relatively enlightened cities, tend to treat their animals fairly humanely.  (Most of them, anyway; especially controversial is the keeping of elephants in ANY zoo in North America or Europe.)  Still, constant cynical observation is required.

In her excellent recent book on animal-welfare issues, "Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way We Treat Animals," Karen Dawn writes (p.66):

<<
Captivity itself, life in cates, is the most obvious problem for animals in zoos -- no small issue, as human society locks up its own members only when they have committed crimes [a somewhat naive assessment of how humans in power make use of prisons].  Zoos are improving, and we have all seen or heard about large natural enclosures at some of the world's best zoos.  Yet even when visiting a zoo with the terrific reputation of the famous San Diego Zoo, one finds pairs of monkeys who spend every minute of their lives in cages no bigger than maximum-security jail cells so that visitors can get a close look.  If only people would settle for a video and a package of fresh monkey poop.  Actually, it isn't really fair to compare the monkey cages to jail cells -- at least murderers and rapists get an hour a day in the exercise yard.
>>

That is in chapter Three, "All the World's a Cage: Animal Entertainment."  Those zoos who try to justify their holding animals captive on the grounds that they do good work in conservation and in public education, are at grave risk of an ethical violation, inasmuch as an important part of their operation functions as an entertainment business.  Regarding the educational purpose, one person is quoted by Dawn to the effect that "the only thing I learned is that it is OK to kidnap animals and hold them in endless confinement."

That said, I am glad that when Knut was born, and abandoned by his mother, he was not euthanized, as some animal-rights activists were demanding.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"commercially viable"

The cause is terrific: to reduce the number of animals upon whom we inflict suffering, for the sole purpose of eating their flesh.

But plainly, one big task will be coaxing babyish diners to try something new, which they may very well like in preference to something they used to eat.

And then there will inevitably be all those ignorant, ethics-phobic infants, who say such things as "I will just stick with me old-fashioned hamburgers thank you very much," and who will affirm one another's backward prejudices.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

science writing

The equation for the kinetic energy of a moving object, with which the writer quibbles, is actually submitted not by Easterbrook but by a correspondent of his in Montana.

Still, knowledgeable public sources on scientific topics, including climate science, are precious and few.  Notice this troubling development, reported by Andrew Revkin:

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/science-cove ....

It is hard to believe that CNN will be dismissing Miles O'Brien, a warhorse of theirs.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

And the species are ... ?

Earlier this year, there was a great death of migratory birds in a false toxic pond in northern Alberta.  An estimate of fatalities was published, but the species of the birds were not; and I subsequently found it impossible to research that.

Same thing here, apparently.

To animal-rights ethicists, the pure number of dead birds is pretty much all that matters.  But to environmental ethicists, it is important to have a sense of which species will be most affected.On Canadian oil sands projects could kill up to 166 million birds, study says posted 12 months ago 3 Responses

the ecosystem is precious

Bivalve molluscs, such as the oysters of Chesapeake Bay, probably fall below the line of sentience that many of us animal-rights promoters consider with great care.  (But cephalopod molluscs, the octopuses, squids and cuttlefishes, are definitely above that line.  Gastropod molluscs, e.g. snails, aka escargots, are probably up there with the cephalopods, but we need to study them more.)

Still, it is not well done to think of any animal, no matter how far from sentience (oysters in this case), simply as a "resource," who deserve our attention only as an ephemeral source of pleasure.  MFK Fisher is a gem of a writer; but her old Mediterranean friends are not likely to have been great moral examples, when it comes to how to think about the animals that they taught her to eat.

Anyway, the bay floor's ecosystems are rich, and the over-ample dumping of chicken shit surely is bad news for many animals besides the oysters.  Animal-rights ethics and environmental ethics are united on this issue.

To say nothing of the chickens ...

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"It's only Africa"

Hello, Whiskerfish.  It is always good to receive your contributions.

Some of us at least, from outside Africa, with no real knowledge of African realities, despite the countless superficial impressions we may have of African lands, people, societies, etc., would appreciate having more detailed information about how Africans have traditionally gone about feeding themselves, and how traditions are changing, or being abandoned.

For me, an important recent "source," if that is the right word, on southern African matters, is the delightful comic series, "The Number 1 Ladies' Detective Agency," by Alexander McCall Smith, which for the most part takes place in Botswana, especially the capital city, Gaborone.  Smith is ethnically British, but was born in Zimbabwe, back when it was Rhodesia (and Malawi was Nyasaland), and was for many years a professor of law at the University of Botswana in Gaborone.

His descriptions of the place are fairly detailed, though it remains difficult for me quite to envision what he is talking about.  E.g., so far as food and agriculture go:

1. Southern/eastern Botswana is obviously an arid country, dependent on a rainy season which, if it comes, turns the land green and colorful.  The Limpopo River is a bit to the east, but apparently too distant to affect agriculture much.  On the other hand, the Kalahari Desert to the west is a much more pressing reality.

2. In the midst of those conditions, cattle are raised, and seem to be a foundation of traditional culture.  But how are they raised?  What do they eat?  How often are they slaughtered and eaten?  Also, so far from being kept in kraals at night, many wander about, and get onto the roads, and become traffic hazards.

3. Something called "pumpkin" is widely cultivated and enjoyed.  Presumably that is a member of the plant family Cucurbitaceae, the "gourds," but also not the same as what we North Americans call "pumpkin," a variety of Cucurbita pepo."

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Excellent!

Very well done, all of them!

Hryckowian's stop-sign turkey is especially ambitious.  As for the artisans who call themselves "tamponcraft," does the name give us a clue about what their preferred medium might be?

Thanks for this, Ashley!

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

McKibben on Friedman

Fans of Bill McKibben will be interested to read his hot-then-cold review of Thomas Friedman's "Hot, Flat and Crowded," in the November 6 issue of The New York Review of Books.

And hopefully one of them will be moved to comment on that review here in Grist, since to my knowledge it has thusfar escaped notice.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

kinship, alienation

"Sacrament" and "poison" are strong words -- it is probably not very often that an actual divinization, or murder, takes place at a Thanksgiving dinnertable.  But Prentice and Casey are certainly right to observe that on such occasions, much can happen, for good or for ill, of great importance to how we get on with people who might be of uncertain closeness to us.

The verb "to reconnect" sounds rather cheap, prosaic and quick in this context.  It is what you do when the coffee pot's plug gets bumped and falls out of its socket.  E.M. Forster, one of my favorite writers, was indulging in a gnomic, vatic concision that we should not too readily try to imitate, when he made for his great novel "Howard's End" the epigraph and moral, "Only connect!"  The resumption of old conversations with distant loved ones, whom a happy occasion has gathered together with us, is a truly beautiful and precious thing, and deserves a better word than "reconnect."

And as for "traditions," they deserve to be sent to hell, if they are clung to merely through fear, or laziness, or a desire to control.  Certainly that Thanksgiving dinnertable will not be cultivating true "kinship," if a vegetarian/vegan is made to feel trapped, with no friend or ally, in a bitter dilemma: either eat the flesh of an unjustly slaughtered fellow sentient creature, or insult the company.

Thanks, April, for being a peacemaker ("Blessed are the peacemakers ... "), and for those mightily happy-sounding recipes.

And thanks, Amy Matthews, for reminding us that there are few sentient creatures who suffer as much injustice as dairy cows.On Thanksgiving can reconnect families and revive traditions -- like sweet potato rolls posted 1 year ago 15 Responses

ESA in trouble

What Grist warned about back in August is about to take place, by tomorrow:

http://www.truthout.org/112008M

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

questionable chemical-dumping

This is an off-topic tangent, but I do not know if Grist covered this interesting report, on the possible environmental damage caused by fire retardant:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/us/16wildfires.html?_r= ...

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

tyranny of fashion, sushi edition

Forty-six nations are represented at this meeting (yet another hand-wringing, do-nothing meeting?).  But the truly interesting player is Japan.

By curious synchronicity, these are the days when the Japanese whaling fleet, bearing mighty instruments of death, is leaving port, heading for southern oceans ...

The Japanese are certainly not the only fishers who are pillaging the Mediterranean Sea.  To their great shame, Spaniards too (an example of local culprits) have a hand in over-fishing, everywhere.

But it is worth consideration, that the by now globalized taste for sushi bears much responsibility for the unsustainable pressures placed on tuna populations.

As one who professes that through Art comes salvation for Humanity, I find it a bitter truth that artistic expression and appreciation have so often required the deaths of many animals.  After the fact, hope sometimes glimmers through -- as when the Audubon Society was founded by American ladies protesting the women's fashion of wearing pieces, or even entire corpses, of birds on their heads.

And so, hopefully, however high tuna-based sushi ranks as a culinary artistic treat, the fashion will pass before very much longer.On International talks to save Atlantic tuna begin in Morocco posted 1 year ago 5 Responses

yay celebration!

Some random observations:

- No doubt same-sex couples across the land were equally drunk and celebratory, post Obama's victory.  That there should ensue a "baby boom," however, is highly unlikely.  "Not that there is anything wrong with that!," of course, as Jerry Seinfeld's friends might say:

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

• On the other hand, the shameful victory of Proposition 8 in California, and of a few other significant expressions of homophobia elsewhere, had a way of stifling the euphoria.

• Meanwhile, environmentalists (aka "los sen~ores ambientalistas") seem still not to have girded their cojones firmly enough, so as to request: "You young drunk happy people!, Please refrain from conceiving on these premises!  Just think of the outcome!"

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Remorse is Memory awake

Or this, by Emily Dickinson:

<<
Remorse -- is Memory -- awake --
Her Parties all astir --
A Presence of Departed Acts --
At window -- and at Door --

Its Past -- set down before the Soul
And lighted with a Match --
Perusal -- to facilitate --
And help Belief to stretch --

Remorse is cureless -- the Disease
Not even God -- can heal --
For 'tis His institution -- and
The Adequate of Hell --
>>

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"The message is optimism"

So the much-respected Mark Bittman quotes David Festa, of the Environmental Defense Fund, in his essay, today, on "the future of fish":

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/weekinreview/16bittman. ....

The similarly much-respected Carl Safina is also an optimist, according to Bittman, provided we take the right actions, globally, pronto.

As cheered as I am by this kind of talk, I remain a pessimist.  That fish populations, even overfished ones, should be able to reflourish, given the right conditions, is not too surprising a bit of wisdom from the fish experts.

But human nature is the big obstacle; and human nature is an entirely other matter.

For starters, even the well-meaning Mark Bittman does not take the time to suggest that there is far more to thinking about wild fish, our close vertebrate kin, with regard to ecology and ethics, than simply dropping a net into the ocean, pulling it back up, and hoping there will be something (someone) inside for dinner.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

false threats and police states

Excellent connexion, Wolverine.  Cf. the Dick Cheney Hypothesis: Even as little as a 5% risk justifies trashing the Constitution.On Navy can use sonar despite risk of whale harm, says Supreme Court posted 1 year ago 16 Responses

Male Sexuality 101

No special permission needed; fulfills Boringness requirement.

Very many men, apparently, crave competition, and winning, especially in a physical, corporeal context (Who is fastest?; Who is strongest?; Who can cause the most destruction?; Who is deadliest?).

It is a doubly astonishing bizarrerie of our civilization, that we so normally conjoin three totally independent kinds of male behavior, as if they were somehow all interconnected aspects of the same underlying unity -- 1. warfare/fighting; 2. athletics/game-playing; 3. sexuality/sexual attractiveness -- , and then, so rarely question why in the world we accept that conjunction.

Hence, in our popular entertainment, we are fed a constant diet of stories about men who get to behave with deadly violence, and who are heroized for doing so, whether because that is their profession (e.g., law enforcement, the military), or because they are champions of justice ("green" or otherwise), exacting a just revenge.

Male fans of James Bond movies, wishing to identify with James Bond and living vicariously through his on-screen experiences, expect to see him not only excelling at destructiveness and enforcing justice, but also being sexually desirable.  Hence, both the actor's occasional shirtless state and the presence of the appreciative Bond-girls are all part of the big picture.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Check out the WSJ!

The ever-excellent Karen Dawn, of DawnWatch.com, praises an article on turkey-substitutes that appeared yesterday in (of all places!) the Wall Street Journal:

<<
Wall Street Journal subscribers will find the full, wonderfully positive article on line at:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122653028076622317.html

The following link makes the article available to non-subscribers for the next seven days.
http://tinyurl.com/5dr3nc
>>

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"plainly outweighs"

There is nothing "plain" or simple about it.  The Supremes' majority so mischaracterizes not one but two serious matters of controversy:

1. Does the welfare of human beings so far outweigh the welfare of non-human animals that even a very slight risk to the former justifies action that certainly will harm the latter?

2. Does one kind of good for human beings, viz. defense against whatever danger is presented by enemy submarines, so far outweigh another good for human beings, viz. harmonious and responsible fellowship with non-human living creatures, that providing for the former is justified, even if it means damaging the latter?
   

"tradition" -- bah humbug

Well done, SJE, Sophie, Raevynn and Schrmin.  (And Hi, SpaSh.)

SJE, you correctly pointed out what Tom Philpott failed to observe, that Lou Bendrick should have included the option to go turkey-less in his otherwise very interesting response.  Tom failed also to observe what SpaSh did, that there was no pro-vegan proselytizing going on, but the thread only got bent as though there were by a couple of others who seem in fact to have been reacting to private problems of their own.

Anyway, in this joyous season of renewed hope, the promise of change, and the expectation of a hypo-allergenic puppy from a shelter, we should certainly not hold ourselves to comply conservatively and thoughtlessly with any "tradition" that seems like the iron clench of an ancestral hand gripping our throat and refusing to descend into the mouldy grave.

Or, as Calvin Trillin once said, Wouldn't it be wonderful if our traditional Thanksgiving food were not turkey, but spaghetti alla carbonara.

And in the context of the 2008 election, one can easily imagine the otherwise bitter coal miners of Appalachia clinging gladly to that coal miners' tradition.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

just curious

Right, Wolverine.  It is just that the way you had worded your contrast of the two classes of eggs suggested to my free-associating mind that the emotional state of the mothers might be a significant factor.

In the case of salmon, there seems to be more than mere subjectivity going on.  The great majority of piscivores, I believe it is fair to say, declare that there is a world of difference between the meat of wild salmon, and that of farmed salmon -- and they by far prefer the former.  And it seems to be commonly accepted that the reason for the difference in taste is to be found in the different lifestyles and diets of the two kinds of fish, and NOT in their emotional health, however attractive that suggestion may be to some of us.

As for the role of connoisseurship in evaluating Early Music, the Beatles and the Stones are both supremely delightful bands; but their styles are so different that it is easily possible for a listener to prefer one to the other, without suggesting that that one is "better," and the other "worse."

Up there with the Beatles and the Stones, by the way, is Neil Young, whether with Crosby, Stills and Nash or solo.  On the other hand, the most over-rated band in music history is the Doors; and probably the second most over-rated is the Who.  IMHO  : )

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"People care" (?)

Right, BioD.  This is where Mueneeez's sanguine interpretation of the vote gets put to the test: If California voters really "care about their food supply," then presumably they will now be prepared to reward California suppliers in the marketplace.

My own more cynical interpretation is that the 63% majority did indeed feel they were doing something good by voting Yes for Proposition 2; but of them, probably a sizeable majority did not fully understand what they were voting for, and had not considered economic consequences.

As for Wolverine's interesting suggestion, is there in fact any scientific evidence that the eggs of happy-go-lucky chickens taste better than those of miserable, tortured chickens?  And if so, is the determining factor really the emotional state of the mama chicken?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

ballot propositions

Pathos, I am indeed very happy about the victory of Proposition 2, since it looks like that will cause the reduction in suffering of many calves, pigs, and especially chickens, first in California, and then possibly elsewhere in the US.

But my mood is hardly ecstatic.  For one thing, animal-rights/animal-welfare/animal-protection promoters were not on the same page, regarding Prop 2; not all supported it, with those who did not support it saying that it does not go far enough, and that those who did support it are fools, or feeble, or traitors.

It is always dismaying when activists indignantly denounce their allies for being insufficiently pure or committed.  E.g., in a recent newsletter, the Humane Farming Association has denounced Farm Sanctuary for approving a certain government action which HFA finds fault with.  Since I like FS very much, but also admire the more Western work of HFA, it is not at all edifying for me to observe one attacking the other.

The excellent Karen Dawn, in her wonderful recent book "Thanking the Monkey," seems to feel about this sort of thing much as I do, and appeals to all activists to put aside their bitter intramural vituperations.

Another worry that we may have regarding the victory of Prop 2 is that many Californians may exaggerate its positive effects.  It is true that the close confinement of animals in cages is a serious animal-welfare issue; and the elimination of those cages is a meaningful victory.  But it is only one of a number of such issues.  And consumers of California-raised meat and eggs would be wrong to conclude, simply, that those products will henceforth be "cruelty-free," and will be coming from "happy animals."

More generally, California's method (unique in the US, so far as I know) of allowing its legal code to be altered by means of propositions to be voted on in election booths in November, is an experiment in direct democracy that cannot be said to be altogether satisfactory.  The victory of Proposition 8, which apparently legitimizes the tyranny of the majority over a disliked minority, is an excellent example of how "the will of the people" has nothing to do with the working of justice.

A sad detail in the otherwise gloriously happy victory of Barack Obama is that increased turn-out of black and Latino voters in California, who went to the polls to vote for Obama, may have assured the terrificly unhappy victory of Proposition 8.  Whether it is true or not, as is widely believed, that African-Americans and Latinos are the most homophobic racial/ethnic groups in the US, it has certainly been reported that African-American and Latino pastors are claiming that their congregations put Proposition 8 over the top.On California OKs measure requiring more humane treatment of farm animals posted 1 year ago 7 Responses

"not exactly training"

DR raises an interesting question, regarding what would be adequate experience for anyone who is to head the EPA.

Obama's "short list" for Secretary of Treasury, as announced yesterday on CNN, includes Lawrence Summers, Jon Corzine, and a couple of CEOs of big financial institutions -- and NOT Paul Krugman.  Krugman perhaps would not want that job anyway; but it is certain that he has no executive experience.

Similarly, for the less urgent appointment of Secretary of Agriculture, Michael Pollan would be a great pick, except that there too, executive experience may be required.

But as for the EPA, one gathers that the career scientists and lawyers there would be keeping the basic work going well enough while RFK Jr. got caught up.  And the catching up would not take him all that long, since he has been observing the functioning of the EPA for a long time now.  Also, the career scientists and lawyers would probably be pleased to work for somebody who actually appreciates what they do, and encourages them to carry on, instead of stifling them, and redacting and suppressing their reports.

On the other hand, if there is in RFK Jr.'s background a pattern of hasty, alarmist remarks along the lines of the vaccinations-cause-autism business, then that might point to a certain fun-loving recklessness that we do not want to find in the head of the EPA.  Given our political and social culture, in which the statements of environmental scientists are regularly vilified and discredited, the head of the EPA will need to be prudent and scrupulously accurate when he announces policy decisions.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Hurray the animals!

Yes, this is very good news.

Unfortunately, on another important issue of extending justice, the muddled politics of California is painfully disappointing:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-gaymarriage5-2008 ...On California OKs measure requiring more humane treatment of farm animals posted 1 year ago 7 Responses

Anecdotally,

I lived with a Catholic priest on the Fort Peck Reservation, in northeastern Montana, fifteenish years ago.  It was well-known that I was vegetarian; and when a cattle rancher and his wife invited us over for dinner, she served a lovely vegetarian meal, in my honor.  The priest urged me through whispers to take some of the beef; but I honored the hostess's offering and took only the vegetable dishes, and it all went very well.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

In sha'a 'llah

Turtles are beautiful creatures of God, as well as great survivors.  Let us hope that these in particular can get beyond the thoughtless games of their foolish enemies.On Some 10,000 endangered-turtle eggs seized in Malaysia posted 1 year ago 1 Response

Krugman vs. Obama?

Paul Krugman often praised John Edwards' health care reform policy -- and had the courage to repeat that praise, even after Edwards' shocking, disgusting fall from grace this summer -- , with Hillary Clinton's plan coming a close second.  Barack Obama's, by contrast, impressed him rather less, to a large extent because it allowed too much wiggle-room for the purpose of negotiation.

And so, we may well wonder with what confidence Krugman is looking ahead toward an Obama presidency.  All of us should be confident that Obama understands Krugman's assessment of (this part of) America's problems, and is surely fully welcoming of Krugman's recommendations (as well as those of Jon, Erik and Amazing!).

What we do not yet know is how Obama will assess the financial limitations of government, even as he may fully agree with Krugman et al. that "green-collar stimulus" is an excellent direction for government at different levels to follow in the long-term recession.  Also, we do not yet know how courageous Obama will be in risking being charged with "socialism" by right-wing ideologues.

A lot seems to turn on whether the Senate Democrats get to sixty.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Good work, IFAW!

And good for E-bay, for seeing the light at last.

Of course, it is far from clear that the ban on selling elephant ivory products on E-bay will surely save the lives of some poachable elephants.

One remaining ethical difficulty is that ivory is undeniably a beautiful substance, and many beautiful sculptures have been made from it, by artists of many lands and peoples, working in very different traditions.  It is a pity that living artists, and collectors, are not ethically mature enough to be satisfied with using ivory from elephants who have died naturally, instead of demanding the killing of elephants to take their tusks.On EBay to ban sales of ivory on its website posted 1 year, 1 month ago 2 Responses

Palin's anti-wolf background

Since this is Wolf Awareness Week, that seems as good an occasion as any to consider afresh the recent history of aerial hunting of wolves in Alaska, as presented by Defenders of Wildlife:

http://www.defenders.org/programs_and_policy/policy_and_l ....

On the theme of Palin's rejection of science, there is linked a report by Defenders' man in Alaska on the slaughter of wolves, including a number of pups, carried out this past summer by state wildlife officials, apparently with no reckoning of professional methods and standards of "predator control."

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"Free Speech Rocks"!

Thanks very much, Karen.  Not having followed that case, I did not know about Oprah's admirable co-defendant, Howard Lyman.

Hopefully, in the American legal system there is by now enough precedent to make charges of libel, by reason of "defaming" a product, extremely difficult to prove in court.

George Bush #41 got the broccoli growers upset, didn't he, when he made it known that he did not like broccoli.  That is not at all the same as libel, and there was no possibility of a law suit; nevertheless, as a Republican politician, he felt some pressure to apologize to a sector of the business community.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"boring and annoying"

Yes, Russ, it is funny how we get relativistic, when we assess the virtues of wildlife near and far.  During my sojourns in the West, I always enjoyed observing magpies, which we do not have here in the East (something of a mystery; they are cosmopolitan, all across Eurasia, into Western North America, but are absent in Eastern North America), but Westerners do not seem to hold them in high regard.

On roadrunners: While I was living in Santa Fe, and occasionally driving thereabouts, I recall having seen roadrunners only fleetingly, and uncertainly, two or three times, as they dashed into the bushes off the road (which is something that the WB Roadrunner NEVER does: the rules are, he/she MUST stay on the road at all times).  My only clear, prolonged observation of a roadrunner in the wild was at the gorgeous Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, a ways south of Albuquerque on the Rio Grande.

Meanwhile, during this mild Fall, I continue to be blessed with good observations of birds at the campus in NJ where I teach: most recently, a Downy Woodpecker; a small group of Tufted Titmice; and, most fun of all, some Bay-Breasted Warblers, on their way south, who scattered through the trees beneath which I was sitting, apparently finding on the leaves tiny arthropods to eat.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

HI bad for animals and people alike?

Heifer International is generally disapproved of by animal welfare activists:

http://www.animalpeoplenews.org/07/1/livestockgiftchariti ....

I have no strong opinion one way or the other.  In their promotional literature, the Heifer International people make a point of telling us that they buy and distribute animals who have been traditionally raised in the country to which they are going; one of the criticisms brought against them would seem to put that in doubt.

Anyway, the Eastern European projects do not seem liable to that particular criticism.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

chickens in the city

As with living with any other kind of animal, there should not be a problem, so long as the animals are well cared for and treated kindly.

Unfortunately, chickens in the city all too often get into trouble:

http://farmsanctuary.org/rescue/rescues/2008/harlem_chick ....

Cf. also the not very promising description of the Yonkers store where chickens and other small animals are sold, slaughtered and butchered, in the article on the newly devised and controversial Hechsher Tzedek (Kosher certification of righteousness) in the last Sunday NY Times Magazine, the "Tom Philpott Issue":

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12kosher-t.htm ....

We are hearing more and more stories of animals kept in confinement in and around NYC, in shoddy surroundings, destined to be slaughtered.  This is NOT a good development.On From Peeps to Piehole posted 1 year, 1 month ago 1 Response

UICAD!

Happy Unofficial Cephalopod Awareness Day!

http://cephalopodcast.com/blog/2008/10/08/2nd-annual-unof ...

Unfortunately I seem to have misplaced my squid hat ...

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

clever birds

Usually any superstructure added to an ecosystem where terrestrial birds reside is bad for those birds, because the superstructure allows perches for raptors.  In this case, it seems that the wind turbines would be highly unsuitable to serve as perches.  So of course the pheasants are quite at peace.

Or if you will, "gruntled"(?).  I thought that "disgruntled" was one of those adjectives for which a corresponding prefixless mate, meaning the opposite, did not exist.  And in principle I was right.  BUT, the Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary has:

<<
grun-tle ... vt grun-tled; grun-tling ... [back formation fr. disgruntle] (1926): to put in a good humor (were gruntled with a good meal and good conversation -- W. P. Webb)
>>On Farmland birds don't seem to mind wind turbines, says study posted 1 year, 1 month ago 2 Responses

"we all stubbornly believe ... "

Well, not quite all, dear Pynnacle.  Not all of us adhere to 19th-century faith in progress, especially of the scientific/technological kind, nor to American can-do-ism.

But your general philosophical point is well-made and important.  "It's a jumbled mess that might never be put back together" unfortunately does not describe the Everglades alone.  It is just one instance of a Humpty-Dumpty-ism which it behooves all of us to take to heart.On Everglades restoration going slowly, poorly, federal report says posted 1 year, 1 month ago 2 Responses

Cynic

Sindark is right.  So long as concerns regarding environmental degradation and the health of human beings (and not the health of the captive animals as an end in itself) are solely what drives calls for regulating the meat industry; and so long as the credit crisis is celebrated by us anti-Big-Meat protesters as the only true-to-life circumstance by which Big Meat can be slowed down; then plainly we are still failing to understand our grave ethical responsibility in permitting the abuse of animals to continue.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

temper

It was obvious at several points that McCain was feeling indignant and bruised, and was struggling to keep his temper under control.  If Obama were a more skillful debater, he might have done more to provoke McCain, and get him to lose his temper outright.

Unfortunately, McCain's performance was probably judged to be quite satisfactory and encouraging by the people who are already disposed to vote for him, and maybe by some independents as well.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"permanently listed"

I strongly endorse Russ's excellent suggestion, that this thread be prominently displayed as an on-going adventure.

Nothing too new to report here in NYC and north Jersey.  I saw a cormorant on a piling in the river; they used to be more common here in Manhattan, but surely are still very numerous elsewhere in New York Harbor.

Canada geese continue to make frequent visits to the grassy islands created by intersecting highways, and entrances and exits.

At my parents' house in SE PA, I recently observed for the first time something that I had read about: a chipmunk was pillaging the nest of birds, in this case catbirds, which was located in a thick holly tree, with branches near the ground.  On the middle bar of the fence that runs next to the tree, the chipmunk was holding in its paws a white object, which I soon realized was an egg; on the top bar, the bereaved parent catbird was standing, its head cocked so as to look at the chipmunk -- not exactly full defense mode.  After some time, the chipmunk leaped again into the tree, perhaps in search of another egg.

On arthropods: I recall reading the comment of an arachnologist, who said that wherever a human individual might be, in just about any location and climate, the chances are very good that there is at least one spider within fifteen feet.  That sounds believable; but presumably encounters with largish spiders crawling up one's leg are rather rare.

We are blessed with centipedes here, some of them over two inches long.  I happen to think they are remarkably beautiful, and always welcome them.  But I was not pleased, the other night, when I was trying to get back to sleep, but a centipede kept exploring round and round the bedroom, every now and again crawling on me and waking me up.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"regulation and oversight"

Yes, Tom, that is indeed what we should be agitating for.  Every aspect of the meat industry, from conception to slaughter, should be accessible and visible to consumers.

But meanwhile, it is also well done to encourage meat-eaters to buy meat that does not have a CAFO origin, as well as to go meatless once a week (at least), as Umbra Fisk recently recommended.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Poor chicken!

But in fact she suffered a fate which was precisely what victors in the ancient Olympic Games were advised to pray for: Win the big prize in sight of everyone, then return home in triumph, and finally die, as soon as possible -- because you will never be so happy again in your life, no matter how long you live.

I agree that the hawk is either a young Sharpie or a female Cooper's.  The proportions -- small head, long legs, long tail -- are right for Accipiter.  The shape of the tail ought to be diagnostic, but this one has fanned out its tail, so its "true" shape is hard to tell.

Its size also is hard to tell from this photo.  But inasmuch as it killed a chicken, that would favor its being a Cooper's.  Sibley says of the 11"-long Sharpie: "Hunts from concealed perch or in low patrolling flight; captures small [!] birds by surprise in lightning-quick strikes, using bushes and ground as cover.  Our smallest [!] accipiter ... "  And of the 16.5"-long Cooper's: "Feeds on small birds and mammals captured in surprise attack.  A medium-size accipiter; always larger than Sharp-shinned Hawk, but size difficult to judge."  Still, size might not matter; in Central Asia, eagles have been trained to kill wolves, mein Gott!

Two curious features:

1. Neither Sibley nor Peterson shows white on the scapulars, which is plainly visible in this photo.  But Donald L. Malick, illustrating both Sharpie and Cooper's in the National Geographic field guide, shows white on the scapulars in both.  Also, both eligible forms are identified as immature females.

2. The most distal dark stripe on the tail does not seem so broad as the next one in, something which none of my illustrations shows.  But that could be the effect, again, of the spreading of the tail.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

wisdom from Botswana; stovepiping

In Alexander McCall Smith's luminous, heart-warming mystery series, "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency," which takes place in Gaborone, Botswana, and other places thereabouts, in the third volume, "Morality for Beautiful Girls," we read (pp. 12-13) this conversation, between the detective, Mma Ramotswe, and her secretary and assistant, Mma Makutsi ("Mma" being the equivalent of "Ms.").  Mma Makutsi has been reading an old issue of National Geographic, about Richard Leakey and his work in paleoanthropology:

<<
"Is that Dr. Leakey?" [asks Mma Ramotswe, pointing to a photo in the magazine]

Mma Makutsi nodded.  "Yes, Mma," she said, "that is him.  He is holding a skull which belonged to a very early person.  This person lived a long time ago and is very late."

Mma Ramotswe found herself being drawn in.  "And this very late person," she said.  "Who was he?"

"The magazine says that he was a person when there were very few people about," explained Mma Makutsi.  "We all lived in East Africa then."

"Everybody?"

"Yes.  Everybody.  My people.  Your people.  All people.  We all came from the same small group of ancestors.  Dr Leakey has proved that."

Mma Ramotswe was thoughtful.  "So we are all brothers and sisters, in a sense?"

"We are," said Mma Makutsi.  "We are all the same people.  Eskimos, Russians, Nigerians.  They are the same as us.  Same blood.  Same DNA."

"DNA?," asked Mma Ramotswe.  "What is that?"

"It is something which God used to make people," explained Mma Makutsi.  "We are all made up of DNA and water."

Mma Ramotswe considered the implications of these revelations for a moment.  She had no views on Eskimos and Russians, but Nigerians were a different matter.  But Mma Makutsi was right; she reflected: if universal brotherhood -- and sisterhood -- meant anything, it would have to embrace the Nigerians as well.

"If people knew this," she said, "if they knew that we were all from the same family, would they be kinder to one another, do you think?"

Mma Makutsi put down the magazine.  "I'm sure they would," she said.  "If they knew that, they they would find it very difficult to do unkind things to others.  They might even want to help them a bit more."
>>

Creationists have tended to reject the theory of evolution for a number of reasons.  Two anti-intellectual reasons are that (1) the theory of evolution ignores the existence and activity of God the Creator, and (2) a biblical religionist's acceptance of an extra-biblical source of authority which literally (and superficially) contradicts a biblical text is not permitted and would be sinful.

But there is another, which is more respectable, and even noble, however wrong-headed: (3) the theory of evolution is the foundation of an ethics that is no better than the Law of the Jungle, and would justify brutal selfishness, competitiveness, aggression, and the dismissal of altruism and charity as praiseworthy kinds of conduct.

Of course, as the brilliant Mma Makutsi recognizes, the evolution-based scientific story of life on Earth should actually stimulate a stronger sense of ethical cooperation and mutual regard.  (And although she is concerned here exclusively with humanity, I would extend the DNA-linked "family" to include all living creatures, the sentient members of which family deserve to receive from us some ethical regard -- which is why my sign-off message used to say, "Chickens are our cousins.")

Genesis, the first book of the Bible, also links all humanity through genealogies.  But we observe that, so far from uniting us in one happy family, it has only served to promote tribalism, of one kind or another.  In particular: ethics for Israelites is NOT the same as ethics for Gentiles; on the one hand, Israelites are required to keep a large code of commandments which are not enjoined on Gentiles; on the other, Israelites are NOT required to treat Gentiles with the same regard that they are to treat fellow-Israelites.  One of the most horrible legacies of the Bible is in fact the justification of the enslavement of African people by Europeans, on the basis of Noah's curse of his disrespectful son Ham, consigning Ham's descendants (viz. Africans) to be slaves to the descendants of his respectful brothers, Shem/Sem (ancestor of Asians) and Japhet (ancestor of Europeans).

Even that supposedly enlightened Israelite Jesus of Nazareth bespeaks that ancient prejudice: cf. Matthew 10.5s., his mission to the disciples, "These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, 'Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not; But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel"; and again, Matthew 15.22-24, his cold words to the (Gentile) Canaanite mother: "And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, 'Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David: my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.'  But he answered her not a word.  And his disciples came and besought him, saying, 'Send her away; for she crieth after us.'  But he answered and said, 'I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.'"

This prejudice persists in this country (to say nothing about racist Israeli animosity towards Arabs).  The defense by some prominent Orthodox Jews of the Brooklyn-based Rubashkin family, owners of the Agriprocessors kosher slaughterhouse in Iowa, who are accused of hideous mistreatment of their Gentile immigrant workers, mostly uneducated people from Guatemala, is a terrific disgrace.  Their implication could not be more clear: what happens to Gentiles does not matter at all, so long as we Jews get our kosher meat.  Fortunately, many other Jews, upholding more noble biblical and Jewish traditions, have been very critical of the Rubashkins, and have added stipulations regarding social justice to the criteria of what deserves to be called "kosher."

On Michelangelo's famous image on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, showing the near touch of the fingertips of God and Adam: This is conventionally called "The Creation of Adam," but that is not accurate.  Adam is already created, and animate; if anything, the image depicts the final step of the creation process, in which God bestows on Adam his immortal human soul, on top of the animal soul which is already allowing him to look up and raise his arm.

Sarah Palin, and Christians of her ilk (NOT Roman Catholics, needless to say), would of course reject the Michelangelo image as representing anything that they believe for at least three reasons: (1) it is an image, and "Bible-believing Christians" have nothing to do with images; (2) it depicts a classically ideally beautiful nude man, which is shameful; and (3) it has nothing to do with the account of the creation of the first man in Genesis 2, which describes Yahweh fashioning a body out of clay, then breathing life into it.

Still, the (universal?) Christian doctrine of the special creation by God of each individual's soul, or personhood, whether at birth or at conception, is a frightening example of "stovepiping."  It especially reinforces Protestant individualism: the only relationship which really matters is that between the individual and God; other relationships are more or less significant or negligible.

Ergo, the theory of evolution provides at least as solid a foundation for a praiseworthy ethics as does biblical anthropology.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

political skewing

The top 10 cities are in states that voted for Kerry in 2004.  Numbers 41 to 50 are in states that voted for Bush.

As for "knowledge base," whatever that means, Portland, Seattle and NYC are apparently all tied for first place.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"good meals"?!

I was initially tempted to think, "Just like a Republican, to consider a fish to be essentially no more than a good meal!"  But then, on reflexion, I acknowledged that there is surely many a Democrat, alas!, who feels similarly.

Of course, even though many fish do indeed end up as meals, for human beings and many other animals, they are essentially far more than that.  And we risk dehumanizing ourselves, if we fail to recognize that.

Thanks, Sammie, for your information and insight.  It is well known that coral reefs provide remarkably biodiverse ecosystems, so it should not be surprising if other stable vertical structures on the ocean floor, even if they are man-made, should be similar in that regard.

There remains the possibility, though, that adding a man-made structure even in a thinly populated or not highly diverse area will be destructive of a previously existent ecosystem.

As for environmental damage caused by new drilling operations, that has been our general experience, hasn't it.  I would like to believe the claim of the Chevron ad, that they know how to drill "intelligently, respectfully" now, requiring only a tiny "footprint," as Dick Cheney would assure us.  Whatever the environmental effect may be of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, we certainly must continue to believe that drilling in ANWR would be a hideous disaster, even if the operation were smaller than what has already taken place on the North Slope of Alaska.

Anyway, we would be pathetic fools, if we were to believe the oil companies, and other advocates of drilling, when they claim they have the best interests of the environment in mind, when in fact they gleefully engage in the terrificly destructive extraction of oil from oil sands in Alberta, and are hoping to get a crack at oil shales in this country.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Entschuldigen Sie mich, Herr Karsten,

I love the German language, but, as with everything else, I think it is important to discover the fun in using it.  No insult intended.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"students"!!!

There you are, Tom!  I have no idea what "righteousness" means anymore, even as I am totally agnostic regarding the dangerous term "sustainability."

But, why in the world should a high-school senior in well-watered Michigan or New Jersey want to apply to a college in Arizona, Mein Gott!, and take his/her showers in a country where water is hard to find, and basically stolen from elsewhere?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Ha!

Being Beaver Cleaver, one learns to cope ...

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"Desert rats"

Excellent posts, SpaSh and Pangolin.  It is always useful to quote "Ozymandias" every now and then again -- and in this case, let us remember that the huge Nile River has allowed the existence of a suite of populous civilizations, always close to the river itself, never at any distance in the desert.

I rather resent the charge of "snarkism," by the way.  (I think I was included in the "snark" bunch, following Russ.)  Idealism is a fine and glorious thing, so by all means let the clever, energetic folks at ASU do what they want to do, and God bless them.  And the land as "challenge" is a wholesome concept, I guess.  But why should the rest of us be strong-armed to celebrate, so early on?  Pangolin and SpaSh have written very nicely about the limitations of the region, limitations which were not recognized by Euro-American settlers in Arizona, and which seem not seriously acknowledged (at least so far in this thread) by the ASU project's defenders.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"listening better"?

How much better can I listen?  How much better can anyone listen?  Have we not heard enough from the likes of Saluki?

Anyway, my job is not to form a consensus and lead.  Perhaps that is the job of David Roberts.  My job is to speak up for the vulnerable, suffering creatures who have no voice.

Remember this, regarding that stalwart conservative hero Barry Goldwater (from the Wikipedia article on him):

<<
Goldwater boldly (and famously) declared in his acceptance speech at the 1964 Republican Convention: "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." This paraphrase of Cicero ...
>>

Marcus Tullius Cicero was out of the loop, once the fighting got rough between Marcus Antonius (Cleopatra's serious boyfriend) and Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus (the future first emperor, aka Augustus).  As punishment, his head and hands were displayed on the Rostra, in the Roman Forum.  Still, he had his moments of glory.  He kept philosophy alive in Western Europe; and he founded Western liberal-arts education.

As for Barry Goldwater: I have no complaint that somebody from the good German-Jewish family called Goldwasser should have changed his name to suit anglophone tastes; but settling in Arizona is WAY problematic.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"You just can't make stuff like this up"

And how, Amazing.  Why doesn't the Department of Homeland Security get Seluki to make a madrasa-tour of the tribal areas of Pakistan?!

Notate bene, my friends (to borrow a slightly over-used McCainism, but much more sincerely intended than was ever by him), that Seluki, whatever he/she/it/all-of-the-above is (Cylon impostor is my guess), has not come up with one simple answer to my simple request (which was actually put to RDMiller, Seluki having proven itself long ago beneath contempt), to tell us about some small instance of kindness that Sarah Palin feels toward animals, of any kind.

Seluki gives us misleading stuff such as this:

<<
Simply untrue.  There is no evidence that drilling ANWR will have any adverse effects on the wildlife population.
>>

Of course there is no "evidence" yet, silly!, because the drilling has not yet taken place.

The oil industry's videos showing solitary caribou in the vicinity of pipelines are misleading.  Caribou have herding instincts which drilling operations do not favor, even if some individuals may be able to cope.

Also, it is ill-educated to write about "wildlife population" in the singular.  Biodiversity-environmentalists are concerned about many species, especially mammals and birds, as well as many plants, in a number of different ecosystems.

Just like a friend of money-hungry Cheney-ally Palin to over-simplify!

<<
  This is a scare tactic akin to what was used to oppose the Alaska pipeline, and it also turend out to be 100% untrue.  You may picture the native peoples as happily living in igloos, but the truth is that they will be happy to have the good paying jobs that drilling in ANWR will provide for them.
>>

The Gwich'in spokeswoman and activist, Sarah James (an infinitely better pick for VP, IMHO, than her namesake), of Arctic Village, AK, on the southern border of ANWR, has not very long ago already told Grist, and Grist readers, that drilling in ANWR will be disastrous for her people.

See also Peter Mathiessen's essay in Subhankar Banerjee's excellent book of photos of ANWR, and essays about it, "Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land."  We must never forget that GOP leaders suppressed the show of Banerjee's photographs in the Smithsonian, in early 2003, while discussion of drilling in ANWR was taking place on the Senate floor (well, the show went on, but the captions were gutted, and the space was moved to a little-visited downstairs corridor).

<<
Also, the footprint of the drilling area is about 2000 acres in an area of several million acres.  To keep that footprint small Palin has insured that the oil companies will use horizontal drilling tequniques to cover more area than their above ground access.
>>

You know, I hope this is true, seeing that we defenders are probably going to lose.

Still, consider the Exxon/Valdez, and remember that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong; and when it does, lots and lots of vulnerable creatures suffer and die, and there is nothing to be done about it.

And anyway, there is nothing "patriotic" or "America-loving" about Alaskan oil.  It goes to
East Asia, where the market is.  And all the bully-bully-ness of John Mccain and Sarah Palin cannot change that, unless they want to morph into Joseph Stalin and Leonid[itska] Brezhnev[ska] -- not a good move for members of the GOP.

<<
Her support of hunting wolves from airplanes is not a support for a hunting technique, but rather a support for a predator control technique.  The wolves have simply become too numerous and too efficient in certain areas for caribou herds to survive.  Palin has supported a program that existed before she was governor to control only certain wolf populations in certain specific areas that serve as birthing grounds for the caribou.  In one case a population of 10,000 caribou was reduced to 600 by wolf predation.  The wildlife service found that the available food and the pregnancy rate among the female caribou was high.  But they also found that 99% of the newborn caribou did not make it through their first two weeks due to wolf predation.  Palin's program was designed to remove about 600 wolves out of an Alaskan population of about 11,000, and only to allow the caribou to recover.  Killing wolves is not that easy, and doing it from helicopters and airplanes was the only way to make the objective possible.  Even with that program they didn't reach their target numbers.
>>

As Amazing said: "You just can't make stuff like this up."

This description of a predator/prey relationship is totally unbelievable.  It is unworkable.  It does not happen.  If prey species and predator species exist in the same ecosystem, the predation rate can simply not be as high as is here claimed.  The ecosystem would have collapsed long ago.

And so, the description is plainly a fiction.

Please tell me, somebody, that at some point in her life, Sarah Palin took in an orphaned caribou lamb, and nursed it with a baby bottle.  I would really love to hear such a story.

But by the same token, I dread to hear that later, once the young caribou was fattened up, SP released it in her mastiff pit, as a kind of entertainment-plus-dinner for her carnivorous carcharodontic allies.

<<
"she has been conscientiously involved in the protest against the Environmental Protection Agency for listing the polar bear as an endangered species."

Which is exactly the right thing to do since polar bears are not endangered and Alaskan land usage can be severly limited by that kind of law, even though the land usage has no effect on the polar bear population.  A better approach is to limit the number of polar bear hunting liscenses to a sustainable number, or to even reduce them to zero if necessary.
>>

But, but, but, polar bears ARE endangered; and "Alaskan land usage" should of course be limited, for the sake of human beings and of wildlife (not just the bears) alike.

However, OK, I think we can all agree that discouraging trophy-hunting is a great and good thing, although it does not seem to be a high priority in Alaska state governance.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

byebye caribou; byebye Gwich'in

Doesn't FORCING the oil companies to "drill here, drill now," and then distribute the oil solely to US consumers, sound a lot like good ol' Soviet-style "collectivism"?

God bless that saintly Karl Marx!  He saves the day again!

On Boone Pickens and "alternative sources": Was it not clear already back in 1970 to anybody with a brain, and a bit of native cynicism, that NOTHING was going to happen with solar, wind, etc., at least with regard to "scaling them up" (to use DR's expression in his conversation with nose-picking Jim DiPeso), unless and until the oil-masters could find a way to make some profit out of those alternative sources?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Skunks and cars

Ha!  Poor critters ...

Skunks most certainly believe in the existence of cars.  They just have no traditional wisdom regarding cars.  And they have no prayers which are effective in defending them against cars.

Do skunks have guardian angels?  Yes.

Do those guardian angels do the skunks much good?  Well, often enough, but not always.

If we run over a skunk on the road, will we meet it again in Heaven when we die?  Yes, absolutely, and you will become inseparable pals.  And the stink will become positively celestial, even divine.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

but "language" is not reality

OK, Mad Mac, I know what you are saying, and I do not expect to be able to convince Sarah Palin, or her way-silly Republican cheering throng, or the idiotic selfish idiot jerks who fly to Alaska and want to do trophy-hunting.

And I know very well that the use of that horribly mysterious word "dominion" in the creation account in Genesis Chapter One has wrought a great deal of conflict amongst interpreters.

Nevertheless, I am NOT a moral relativist.

I.e., difficult situations in life allow of different reactions and different interpretations, often depending on the respective cultural background of the respective moral agent.  But that does not mean that any possible reaction, or any possible interpretation, is as valid as any other.  What it DOES mean is that time, a lot of time, and a lot of patience, and a lot of work, and a lot of tolerance, are all necessary, meanwhile, until we figure out what is what.

E.g.: Consider what was done regularly and religiously in Mesoamerica, most recently in Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire/tribute system.  Lots of cute guys were rounded up from opposing armies; they were treated nicely for a bit; then they were dragged to the top of a pyramid, and horribly disfigured priests would ram an obsidian knife into their chests, and pull out their hearts, and kick the still beautiful, still twitching bodies down the steps of the pyramid.

And later that same day, those fine limbs would be on the menus of the finest restaurants in (the future) Mexico City.

(I do not know if they sexually stimulated their naked victims, strapped belly up on the altar, until they reached the moment of orgasm, and only then, as the victims started to ejaculate, brought down the obsidian knife.  But that would not strike me as unexpected.  Plus, it would have really turned on their too-long-sexless Spanish captives.  Plus, it would have been something which the historian-friars would not have wanted to describe in detail.  What were their guardian angels thinking, as they looked on?  What was Saint Joseph thinking, patron of a happy death?)

So there you are: Just because some people think it is OK, even people from a great and ancient culture, numbering many hundreds of thousands if not millions, does that mean it is REALLY OK?

There is no such thing as moral relativism.

And, so far as caribou-slaughter goes: Well, when the Gwich'in hunters do it, that is unfortunate, but it is a hugely important part of their cultural tradition, and their real way of sustaining themselves.

When Euro-Americans kill a caribou for food, e.g. as Rick Bass did (or tried to do) when he visited the Gwich'in, that is also unfortunate, but deserving praise for being a better (relatively less cruel) way to bring in a meat supply than by relying on the commercial meat industry, which is unspeakably cruel to captive animals.

When Euro-Americans (or anybody else for that matter) kill a caribou, or any other animal, for a trophy, that is not just unfortunate, but positively despicable.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"Why listen to him?"

Good question, Bob Wallace.  Newt has genuine scientific curiosity, e.g. in paleontology, which makes me wonder if he is genuinely a creationist.  But this "Drill Now" book makes me doubt that, after all.

Notice that Newt received a very courteous applause, before and after he spoke, from presumably a hostile audience.

If, say, Al Gore had been a guest on an analogous right-leaning show, e.g. a Fox show, or something hosted by a Rush Limbaugh clone, would the audience have been so gracious?  Would they not have feared the disapproval of their pastors, had they clapped?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"Saxib"??

You are way out in front of the pack, Mad Mac.  Of course, I am still further ahead -- ha ha -- , being the sole representative in the Gristmill community (I believe) of the teensy "I cry for fish" minority (peek, if you dare, at the extraordinarily dispiriting and unpleasant "Palin Around" thread, dominated by the painfully logodiarrhaeic Saluki).  Still, you are on the right side; you grasp the basic considerations, unlike many carnivores.
Movesii has done a lot of work, and has given us a lot of good information.  But I am not sure why M. wishes to narrow the discussion with the expression "the real issue."  And certainly we could use a good working definition of "socially responsible."  In the context of a charged-up GOP base, gladly swallowing John McCain's simplistic equation of "service" as "enlisting in a branch of the military," as well as his perverse, nay bizarrissimo, description of the Democrats, and not the Republicans, as the "Me First" party, we could use some clarification in this case too.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

excellent point

about Bristol's "decision," i.e. her choice.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

lipstick

Yes, "Dick Cheney with lipstick" seeems to have been replaced by "pit bull with lipstick."

Yesterday this was sent to me, with the introduction that Jon Stewart once again shows himself to be the most reliable news source:

http://ccinsider.comedycentral.com/cc_insider/2008/09/jon ...

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"totally depressed"

Hard to avoid that conclusion, JR.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

howl-o-rama!

One of Jack Cafferty's correspondents just referred to Sarah Palin as "Dick Cheney with lipstick."

Definitely a bon mot worth treasuring.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

well, there you are

Thanks, Green Granny; and thanks, rhino-horned Whiskerfish.

That so many Americans should apparently be willing to listen to Sarah Palin's environmental nonsense is both embarrassing and frightening.

Whiskerfish,
please tell me one thing about Africa and/or African wildlife, of grave environmental importance, that I can pass on to my honorary godson, who knows a great deal about African animals, and was recently in South Africa and Botswana, and earlier in Kenya and Tanzania.

He is a great kid.  And he loves all the animals.  So please tell me something, something hopeful.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"I can't stand John McCain"

Right, Senator Harry Reid, John McCain once upon a time "served" this country, but he is no longer up to doing us any service at present.

Quite the contrary, he is a grave danger.

God knows why Sarah Palin thinks bringing "small-town values" to DC would improve anything, when small towns in the US can be about as vile, stifling and murderous as any society known to mankind.  And the Republicans' constant refusal to acknowledge any virtue in the US's big cities -- which is where it's at, basically -- is creepy.

Sarah Palin should be forced to watch "The Handmaid's Tale."

By the same token, Barack Obama and other Democrats have not said nearly enough about urban issues.

It should be recognized that our cities are not to be dismissed as problematic sinks.  Our cities are the glorious pillars of our republic and our civilization.

And inasmuch as that republic and that civilization are pretty crappy, our hope for reform and improvement also comes from within those very cities -- NOT from Wassilla, Alaska, Mein Gott!

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

trophy-hunting; fishing

Actually, mon cher petit Jean-autrefois-des-Marins, some of the world's most progressive thinkers live in New Jersey and Connecticut.  Which is not to say that I deny your assertions, only that I would not normally associate trophy-hunting with those places.  It is certainly true that there are few people here in the NYC metropolitan region who would appreciate a display of animal-remains, aka "trophies," collected by trophy-hunters.

You are right-on about fishing, and the pain inflicted by even the most conservation-oriented fishermen.  Thanks for pointing that out.  Very few people have consideration for the suffering of fish.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Che disgrazia!

Rudy is an embarrassment.  It is time for him to retire to Paraguay.

More people live in my block than in Wassilla, Alaska.  And more people live on the Upper West Side than in all of Alaska.  So Rudy's praise of Palin is cheerleading at its cheapest.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Herr Reingold

Go for it, WiscIdea.  Herr Siegfried!  Herr Wotan!  Herr Nibelung!

What I cannot stand is the use by conservatives (such as George Will) of the all-purpose word "collective," and its derivative "collectivist," as somehow evil and diabolic: much as they did with "liberal" a couple of decades ago.

We members of ancient Mediterranean religions, such as Judaism, Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Roman Catholicism, admire collectivism a great deal, and are offended and disgusted by Republicans' constant regular on-going anti-religious super-sneering attack on what we consider to be a principal virtue, as our Lord affirmed: loving a neighbor as one's self.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Korean Air!

See if you can spot Sarah Palin's dazzling cameo in that weird, too-cool-to-be-true, BW TV ad, for Korean Airlines.  Hint: high hair, big dark glasses.

Is that global experience, or what?!

At least one American is celebrating: Tina Fey.  The Hollywood producers back on Friday locked her up to play Palin in the movie -- or only after offering her billions.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

energy, GW, plus health care

This is a good post, DR.  And I look forward to your promised future post on being an "issue" journalist.

Meanwhile: We ought to be able to judge our potential leaders' positions on any new difficult matter, from observing what they say about any particular present one.  So far as health care goes -- which, granted, is neither Grist's nor your area of interest -- , Barack Obama has been talking nice, but his intentions remain a question mark.

Even after John Edwards's downfall, Paul Krugman (and a few others) have courageously remembered his excellent work toward a truly inclusive health care policy.  And Hillary's met Edwards's challenge, and was just as good.

But with Obama, we get the feeling that he understands the problem, and he likes the idea in principle, but all he can promise is "we will see what we can do."

And that is the way he comes across on energy policy and global warming.

These are all humanitarian issues, after all, and they all go together.

(To say nothing of the poor animals, which is a whole other story.  Obama pandered to animal-torturers in southern Illinois, crying, "Don't worry, there are no vegetarians here!," according to Suzanne Malveaux's "Obama Revealed" documentary on CNN.)

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

yes, let's "overcome homosexuality"!

For Jesus!  : (

Thanks, WiscIdea, for the Time reference.  My husband, a librarian, who flies off the handle at all sorts of little things, hauls out the big guns when librarians' protectorship of freedom of speech and information is threatened by people in power.

Also, I saw Campbell Brown's brief interview with that feeble and defensive Palin spokesman, and feel exactly as you about how it went, as well as about the McCain campaign's bizarre reaction.

Wolverine,
good for you, for calling a spade a spade.  Barack Obama got a lot of grief for calling (some) rural voters "bitter," and observing that they "cling" to authoritarian religion, and gun rights, and xenophobia, as a kind of defense mechanism.  The way the Hillaryites and the GOP spun it, it sounded insulting; but in fact, he was being sympathetic, and he was right.

That "bitter" defense mechanism is visibly in play in this very thread, when MReinbold brandishes that famous anti-"elitist" expression, "flyover country" -- which irks me to no end, as someone who has spent much more time visiting the Plains states and Rocky Mountain states, living in Montana and New Mexico, and spending much much more time there than ever in California, for example, and never having visited Seattle and DR and BioD.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Fens; owls; ghosts

I would not swear to it, but I think the opening episode of Dickens's "Great Expectations," in which Pip meets the escaped convict, and, whether through terror or pity, brings him food, and tools to break his shackle, with terrific consequences later on, is supposed to take place in the Fens.  Anyway the scene is definitely some remote seaside wetland.

Cf. also Ralph Vaughan Williams's moody fantasia of 1904, "In the Fen Country."  That is what the musicians in the band on board the Titanic wanted to play, though they were directed to play "Nearer My God to Thee," and obediently did so.

On Barred Owls vs. Spotted Owls: The Barred Owls are indeed well established in the eastern US, but they are also well established across Canada's boreal forest, all the way to the Alaskan panhandle.  Those that are moving into the traditional range of the Spotted Owls are moving southward from British Columbia, not westward from the Mississippi valley.

On the term "invasive": Is that term used accurately of wild animals and plants that happen to be expanding their ranges purely through "natural" conditions and circumstances, without conscious human assistance?  A good argument could be made that that is an OK usage; but it is possible that, technically, some specifically human agency is required.

On "ghosts": Another ecological term which it is vitally important to define.  Kit Stolz does well to quote Robert MacFarlane on that.

We need always to ask ourselves if conservation efforts on behalf of any species are inevitably going to be futile, because the species' ecosystem has changed in some crucial way.  But it is not easy to answer that.  Are Spotted Owls "ghosts" now?  Are Africa's rhinos and cheetahs "ghosts," as some suggest?  Perhaps; but that is hardly obvious to everyone.  And meanwhile, the ethical guideline should be Dum spiro, spero -- So long as I am breathing, I have hope.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"innate hatred for wolves"

Cf. Barry Lopez's classic "Of Wolves and Men," and the more recent, "Vicious: Wolves and Men in America," by Jon T. Coleman, historian at Notre Dame University, which serves as a powerful, detailed supplement to Lopez's book.

Elimination of "competitive" predators, e.g. raptors, big cats, and sharks, has always been justified, encouraged and perpetrated by human beings.

But wolves have been put in a category of their own.  More than any others, they have figured as embodiments of evil, as diabolical agents, as symbols of Satan.  Killing wolves has seemed not just economically prudent, but morally desirable, and even biblically enjoined.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"Alaskan trivia"; "laser tag"

Excellent point, Pangolin.  Alaskan oil goes to East Asia, not to the Lower 48.  Drilling "off-shore," or in ANWR, or in the Arctic Ocean, will do nothing to change the fact-of-life, that Big Oil's interest is in supplying lucrative markets, NOT in helping American commuters, or American home-owners who use oil for heating.

Cute idea, Wiscidea.  You could make a delightful home video of Dear Ol' Dad, busting his dear ol' heart, as he pushed through that snow drift while being pursued in a snowmobile.  The head nurse in the emergency room had the celebratory cocktail, in his place.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Thanks, DR,

that video is powerful, and disturbing.  "Hunting animals from aircraft has no place at this time" is certainly true.  But that is true, in general, of cruelty to animals, of all kinds.

Our own Erik Hoffner some time ago recommended an excellent novel about social realities in northern Alaska, "Ordinary Wolves," in which hunting of wolves from airplanes and snowmobiles is a recurring motif, and the hunting and killing of all animals figure in the background in an important way.

Alaska should never have been granted statehood.  As it is, the Alaskans boast that they are the ultimate frontiersmen, when in fact they are subsidized by us taxpayers in the Lower 48, and in a hideously disproportionate way by us New Yorkers.  Alaska should be kicked out of the union.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

barcoding

DNA and barcodes are two areas of total mystery for weak-minded dinosaurs such as myself.  Nevertheless I implicitly trust that the Fish (and other) Barcode of Life people are doing good work.

E.O. Wilson has suggested that barcoding can be used more simply, by amateurs doing biodiversity censuses within a particular ecosystem.  Presumably that has to do with filling out the Encyclopedia of Life, for which DNA information is not essential, though ideally that will come later.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Vandana Shiva

is a heroine of ours.  She should offer some insight into the social-justice, rich-vs.-poor aspects of Slow Food and buying local.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Yes, this is very good.

Thanks, DR, for recommending this.  My husband does not allow me to watch the convention live, so I have only just now watched the videos of the speeches of Bill Clinton and Joe Biden.  And I would not have searched out John Kerry's fine speech, but for your recommendation.

Kerry and Biden both made a point of praising McCain's war record, and acknowledging him as a friend.  And both made a significant "Freudian slip," saying "Bush" when they meant "McCain."  Presumably this "flip-flop" theme will persist in the next couple of months; and hopefully it will have some effect on "independents" who have generally liked McCain.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Oh, who cares anymore?!

What the F***!

In the most respected opinion polls, Obama and McCain are now running even, each at 47%.

That is not at all good.

Obama is still ahead in electoral votes, but not by a strong margin.

God!, what a disaster!  This is one of the only consolations of being old, that we will not have to see this disaster play out for very long.

It is all up to you young whipper-snappers, see ...

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Anti-animalists need to adapt

Evolution does not work like that.

The sudden changes imposed by global warming on Arctic ecosystems are catastrophic.  This is not a question of (good ol' Republican) "survival of the fittest, and God damn the rest."

Consider Hiroshima, August 6, 1945.  Of all the people incinerated near Ground Zero, were some "better adapted" to withstanding the effects of the explosion of an atomic bomb, and the subsequent release of radioactivity?  If so, did it matter at all?

Arctic animals are experiencing an 8/6/45 event, extending over just a few generations.  Expecting the "fitter" of them to survive, endure and pull through is grotesquely unrealistic and ignorant.On Polar bears in open water prompt more worries about climate change posted 1 year, 3 months ago 18 Responses

fundamentalist Xianity => craziness

FYI, Paleocon, I happen to be a believing, practising, baptized, Bible-reading Christian -- but not of the fundamentalist or evangelical ilk.  I love Charles Darwin; and, IMHO, the theory of evolution as he articulated it is one of the greatest, truest and most elegant thoughts ever thunk by a human being.

And it sincerely pains me that, for many long decades now, lots and lots of fundamentalist/evangelical Christians persist in idiotically believing that the logical conclusion of the theory of evolution is the utter abolition of all moral values.  (Cf. the story on the biology classroom in Florida, on the front page of Sunday's NY Times.)  That is pure craziness -- as well as profoundly offensive to us friends of Darwin and promoters of evolution.On Polar bears in open water prompt more worries about climate change posted 1 year, 3 months ago 18 Responses

"full of manure"

In Anthony Minghella's magnificent Civil War epic, "Cold Mountain," which we recently watched afresh (and much of which takes place out in Tom Philpott country, or not far away), the tough, hard-working, no-nonsense character Ruby, played by Rene'e Zellweger, comments about her shiftless, ne'er-do-well father: "That man is so full of manure that if you put him on the ground and throw some dirt on him, another one like him will grow."

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Hurray the Darwin-proto-tetrapod!

Why are the Jesus-fish-medallion-sporting crowd NOT upset by all the injustices and inequities committed by pious, church-loving Christians?

Anyone who goes out onto the street wearing or sporting an explicitly Christian symbol should be prepared to answer a lot of serious questions.On Polar bears in open water prompt more worries about climate change posted 1 year, 3 months ago 18 Responses

Dear Wolverine may have missed

but not by much.  My understanding is that the Polynesians of Easter Island destroyed their environment, not because they practised agriculture -- after all, lots of Polynesians on many other islands also practise agriculture, and they have not destroyed their environments -- , but because they enslaved themselves morally to a deadly patriarchalist/hierarchalist game of intense political/social competitiveness, requiring the ambitious among them to chop down their forests in order to roll their famous great stone monuments into place.

Aggressive, self-regarding competitiveness has traditionally been considered by many (far too many) Americans as the mother of all virtues.  The truth is quite the contrary.

Another great friend of mine, MadMac, also misses, when he states that hunter-gatherer societies do not create "meaningful art."  We human beings have always created art, in every condition and situation.  We cannot help it, it is what we are.

Thanks to Vakibs for bringing up the important subject of art -- though I doubt Wolverine ever has intended to be so thoroughly inhumane as to want to suppress it.

More puzzling is why George has seen fit to erect the new-fangled Frenchified term "sapience," over against good-ol' "wisdom": sapientia is just the Latin translation of Greek sophia and Hebrew hochmah, all of which are conventionally translated in English as "wisdom" (French sagesse, Spanish sabiduri'a).

"Wisdom" and "courage" are surely not so relativistically loosey-goosey as Vakibs suggests.  But he is right to say that the way we identify specific examples of those virtues is suspect and tendentious.

Cf. the use in current public American discourse of the related term "hero," to mean anyone in military "service" (another questionable term) risking getting shot up in Iraq, in order to "defend our freedom."

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

the Old Dominion

I hope the pundits are right, as well as Howard Dean, and Barack Obama's people, that Virginia may very likely go blue this election.

But that still seems a daunting prospect, what with the Ancient Appalachians in the southwest, the shoot-'em-up military types in the southeast, and the Proud Sons of the South in the middle.

Even in the face of Grist's probing and carefully analytical questions, Mark Warner makes plain that he has the electoral realities of his state at the top of his mind.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

the coolness of blackness

I was wondering when this would start to sink in.

Of course, both all those people who are black, and all those people who measure 6'7", deserve rights, and have our heart-felt affection as brethren, n'est-ce pas?

By the way, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science used to have a not-un-breath-taking tableau in their atrium, showing a charged-up tyrannosaur forcefully ending an argument with a resistant ceratopian.  Hopefully you will have a chance to wander in time a bit.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Oh well, nice knowing you.

Consider other Arctic animals too: harp seals, ringed seals, walruses, beluga whales, narwhals ....

If drilling for oil means the painful death of countless Arctic sentient creatures, then I hope I never benefit a drop from all that selfish drilling.On Polar bears in open water prompt more worries about climate change posted 1 year, 3 months ago 18 Responses

"white people back to Europe"!

Absolutely!  Orvieto!  Gubbio!  Cortona!  Verona!

Just get me the bus schedule, the bags are packed!On Border-fence design exacerbated flooding along U.S.-Mexico border posted 1 year, 3 months ago 9 Responses

Delaware chickens: Frank Perdue

It is not easy to see much of a connexion between Joe Biden and one of his state's larger employers, the late Frank Perdue's Perdue Farms/Perdue Poultry (it may be true, as I read somewhere, that Delaware has the highest chicken-to-human-being ratio in the US).  Perdue seems to have contributed mostly to Republicans, and never to Biden:

http://www.newsmeat.com/ceo_political_donations/Frank_Per ....

Still, Biden may have felt no inclination to do anything about regulating chicken CAFOs, for much the same reason that Obama of Illinois has tried to say nice things now and again about coal.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

oh, right, much better

The first reference is in Nicomachean Ethics, Book 2, Chapter 6; but the fuller discussion is toward the end of Chapter 7, which is translated thus by J.A.K. Thomson:

<<
Then there is 'righteous indignation' [nemesis].  This is felt by any one who strikes the mean between 'envy' [phthonos] and 'malice' [epichairekakia, literally "rejoicing at misfortune"; substituting a "k" for the "ch" should not strictly be permissible, because kairos, meaning "time" or "occasion," is totally different from chairein, meaning "to rejoice"], by which last word I mean a pleased feeling at the misfortunes of other people [which suggests that Aristotle coined it, and it was not already in common usage, as the other two words were].  These are emotions concerned with the pains and pleasures we feel at the fortunes of our neighbours.  The man who feels righteous indignation is pained by undeserved good fortune; but the envious man goes beyond that and is pained at anybody's success.  The malicious man, on the other hand, is so far from being pained by the misfortunes of another that he is actually tickled by them.
>>

Aristotle's actual text is not quite so full, in fact; Thomson supplied some words to complete the sense.  Another translator, the venerable David Ross, added this footnote:

<<
Aristotle must mean that while the envious man is pained at the good fortune of others, whether deserved or not, the spiteful [Thomson's "malicious"] man is pleased at the bad fortune of others, whether deserved or not.  But if he had stated this in full, he would have seen that there is no real opposition.
>>

It would be interesting if the German writer who first coined "Schadenfreude" was trying directly and consciously to translate "epichairekakia."

Anyway, what Joseph Romm, and other writers of great wisdom and mastery of the virtues, who throw around the term "Schadenfreude," might ask themselves in light of this is: Why should they be possibly accusing themselves (and us their friends and allies) of the rather disgraceful vice of Schadenfreude, when in fact what they feel is Nemesis, righteous indignation, which is far more honorable, and for which no apology needs to be made?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Entschuldigen Sie mich!

FYI, MadMac, BMW is currently running an ad on US TV, with the basic message, "We in our country know what sky-high fuel prices are like, and that is why we make spectacularly fuel-efficient cars -- which you would be well-advised to buy."  The accompanying imagery features roadway conditions in Germany (allegedly): weary depressed commuters on bicycles and in trains; infrequent cars, whose presence prompts shock; a fuel pump price of over eight euros per litre.

I have never been to Germany, and have no idea what driving conditions there are like, really.  (And of course I do not doubt your account.)  In Italy, I have observed plenty of congestion -- but i do not know how much ancient urban planning, and the attitudes of contemporary Italian drivers, contribute.

Many Italians believe that German drivers visiting their country are so tight-assed and rules-bound that they will intentionally ram with their own car the car of someone whom they perceive to be breaking a traffic law.

On the subject of how Germans and Italians feel toward one another, an Italian wit recently observed: "The Germans love the Italians, but they do not admire them; the Italians admire the Germans, but they do not love them."

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Moi aussi, je suis obtuse.

Well, as an expression of what Obama's candidacy means for a lot of his supporters, this must surely be very beautiful.  It is more thoughtful, in alluding to major themes and ideals in American history, than that fluffy "Yes We Can" thing of last winter, based on Obama's Iowa victory speech.

Whether it will appeal to "the average Joe and Jane in Iowa" is indeed far from certain.  But let us not be too confident in our stereotypes.  Lots of Iowans thought Obama was way cool back in January.  They loved being visited, on Obama's behalf, by Oprah.  And this weekend it is worthwhile to recall that on the eve of the caucuses, many of the still undecided participants reported being very fond of candidates not in the top tier, such as Joe Biden.

And as for the so-called "white blue-collar lunchbucket voters," of Scranton, PA, and elsewhere in the Appalachian states, who voted for Hillary in the primaries, there is no reason why they should see this video, if we assume (stereotyping again!) that this is the sort of thing that would turn them off.  Anyway, they are in Joe Biden's portfolio now.

The choice of images is good, but not excellent.  E.g., to illustrate immigration, some contemporary shots should have been included among the old ones.

It would be democratic in the best sense of the word, to include a list of the participants' names.  Most faces I did not recognize, and I doubt I am alone.  To my great surprise, I think I glimpsed some left-wing dinosaurs: Joan Baez?; the Smothers Brothers?

As much as I love Whoopi Goldberg, her endorsement can be dangerous.  Recall that in the spring of 2004, her vaguely obscene jokes at the expense of George W. Bush, at a Democratic fund-raiser in NYC, probably turned many voters against John Kerry.

Anyway, I do not see how this video may be likely to change the minds of many people regarding Obama, one way or the other, at this point.

On another matter, not entirely unimportant: We may wonder whether "prayer" means anything more substantial, to both the performers of this song and those who hear it and like it, than does "God" in DR's loosely wielded exclamation, "OMFG."

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

excavating to new lows

Actually, as we see, all sorts of delightful creativity keeps getting inspired all the time, even as resources get narrower and the jellyfish multiply, such as BioD's "Never blog while drinking" -- ha!, quelle blague!  As another wit once said: "Friends do not let friends drink and blog."

Never having watched "Seinfeld," I much appreciate Amazing's quote from Elaine.  "Draining a little more water out of the pool" is a gorgeously grotesque image.  No wonder Bill Gates is paying Seinfeld $10^7 to counterattack against that way-cool-and-cute kid Justin Long.

What a thrill, to think that Elaine might have uttered that comment in a Greek diner just around the corner from where I live!

Anyway:

1. Herr Joseph Romm, who shares the same baptismal first name with the current Bishop of Rome, aka the Pope, Herr Kardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Beier/Bavaria, might be interested to know that German nouns are regularly capitalized: Schadenfreude.

2. Drunk or not (and I do not think he was -- and if he was, good for him!), notre bon ami Jonas makes an interesting, vaguely revisionist suggestion, that popular American morality is founded in the value system of Protestant German farmers.  Could be true!  After the old story, that American morality is founded in the constipated sub-Augustinian ethics of English Puritans in New England, Jonas's idea is much more accommodating of the historical reality, the reception of many European immigrants from Southern (e.g. my folks) and Eastern Europe.

3. He probably should not press the "Protestant" part, though.  There were lots of German-speaking immigrants from Catholic regions, e.g. Bavaria and Austria, such as (in unusual circumstances, to be sure) the current governor of Ka-lee-faw-nee-a (the land of Sutter's Mill!, where a Swiss-German immigrant perhaps caused a greater event in North American history than any caused by any other German, i.e. the California Gold Rush of 1848).

4. Also in defense of Monsieur Jonas's theory is the fact that in a recent survey, when a sizeable sample of American respondents were asked to identify all the ethnic groups of their ancestors, "German" was the group most often identified (and NOT English, Scottish or Irish).  Many of these people with German ancestry do not have German surnames, presumably; and we should not stereotypically accuse a prominent unhappy figure with a German surname such as Donald Rumsfeld of innate German wickedness, any more than Alberto Gonzales's pathetic term as Attorney General should redound to the dishonor of Latinos.

5. Anyway, it might be pointed out that more noteworthy, and magnificently praiseworthy, German-Americans are all over the place, opinion-wise.  Just within our own Gristmill community, we include the excellent John Schneider (aka Amazing Dr X), Erik Hoffner and Kit Stolz, to say nothing of Joseph Romm himself (demselbst).

But Monsieur Jonas also made the interesting assertion, which has more than a grain of truth in it, that "If they could buy a personal tank, Americans would buy it."

Well?  Is that not so?  Are not many Americans like that?  Are they not obsessed with looking very tough, speaking to no one, even as thay are at heart very frightened?

And if Americans of that ilk do not want to buy personal tanks themselves, do they not consider it a grave threat to the republic, that sales of such vehicles should be carefully restricted? -- the "freedom" of our options as consumers being the principal expression of our patriotic Americanness. : (

Nevertheless, unspeakable conservatives of one kind or another will continue to say that marijuana, cocaine and heroin -- three illegal substances of very different natures -- should all be absolutely illegal, and that people associated with the sale and/or possession of those substances should be punished.

Why in the world do conservatives oppose the legalization of marijuana, cocaine and heroin?  That is totally inconsistent with the way they think, otherwise, regarding free markets.  Not only has the totally unnecessary and greatly unexplained opposition to those substances done no good, and in fact has done terrific social evil; but also, it has destroyed a fairly decent marketing opportunity, amounting to billions perhaps, along the lines of the way alcoholic beverages and tobacco products are sold.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Then there are the French

and their commitment to building nukes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/world/europe/17francenu ....

Americans are strangely confused about the French.  Whoever called them "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" has no historical memory, that way back in the 1st century BCE, the Gauls gave Julius Caesar a long bloody struggle before submitting; then, starting with Charlemagne and his Peers, most notably Roland, up through Napoleon a thousand years later, the French were probably the most consistently warlike and destabilizing of all European nations.  Even their saintly and much admired King Louis IX, after whom Saint Louis, MO, is named, was a crusader and imperialist.

Of course, whether bloodthirstiness, and being good with a blade, are true signs of manliness, I leave to Mad Mac to decide ...

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Hunger, Thirst, Guilt ...

Hey Wolverine baby,
You are absolutely right.  But in my case, we are talking about a once-a-year thing, max.

The real issue is not eating, so much as peeing.  And making sure Little Dog has enough water.

As an ex-trucker, you have terrific experience, which we lack.  Meanwhile, it is indeed true that whenever we pull into a McDonald's or Burger King lot, I fantasize a colossal Max von Sydow, in a black floor-length cowl, holding a scythe.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"fretting"

As much as I like my ever-so-rare filet-o-fish, or Burger King's fish sandwich, when I am on the road, nevertheless, we should remember:

1.  there is NO humane death for fish, so far as they are caught and dragged to death nowadays, most of them allowed simply to panic and suffocate;

2.  there is no responsible application of "sustainable" to any fishery; some fisheries are much better than others, right now; but nobody knows enough to tell you anything reliable about the way things will look in five years.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

CSAs

Amazing,
the CSA that supports the farmers who sell at our local farmers' market is in fact over-booked; in fact there is a waiting list for new subscribers.  Bad news in a way for us, who are not subscribers (though Michael does not at all mind shopping in person); but good news for the farmers.

One would expect the Upper West Side of Manhattan to be one of the several neighborhoods in the country that are most into CSAs.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

current "hostilities"

That sort of makes my point, Wolverine: the tribes need to stand as one against the various Euro-American interests.  But Euro-Americans are not totally clueless, and can sometimes get traditional rivalries going.

My understanding is that not too long before the Spanish arrived in the Southwest, the Dine' (Athabascan-speaking Navajo and Apache) moved into the region and made life miserable for the various Pueblo Indians (stable, partly agricultural, architecture-building).  The fields and gardens of the Hopi were in the flat lands beneath First, Second and Third Mesas; so were their residences.  But they moved up ontop of those mesas after the Dine' arrived.

The Pueblo Indians were not push-overs, and the Navajo seem to recall some suffering at their hands, in reverse.  The art-historical/archeological term "Anasazi," nowadays out of favor, referring to the masonry-building civilization contemporary with the Romanesque and Early Gothic periods in Europe, is a Navajo word meaning either "people of the past who were our enemies," or "the ancestors of our enemies."  "Ancestral Puebloan" is the preferred term (unfortunately rather long and cumbersome).

Possibly the "misunderstanding" between the Hopi and the Navajo over the settlement and development of the part of Black Mesa that occupies the northwestern part of the Hopi reservation has something to do with whatever quarrel Peabody Coal instigated.  But Indians' memories are long.

Internal tribal disputes between "traditionals" and "progressives" are a fascinating subject.  I would love to know more about that.  It does not surprise me at all that "traditionals," despite their long memories, should recognize that the wise course now is to ally themselves with "ancient enemies."On Crow Tribe strikes $7 billion deal for coal-to-liquids plant on reservation posted 1 year, 3 months ago 7 Responses

Chavez; John Edwards

Chavez is a "leftist"?  In his heart of hearts?  No, I do not think so.  He is a power-hungry opportunist, who has found a source of power in being a populist, articulating the underprivileged classes' (quite justifiable) resentment of the wealthy, cultivating widespread animosity against the US and especially its business interests (also justifiable), and developing all this in a socialist-sounding program.  But he is certainly not a true, sincere "leftist."

A sincere "leftist" of a certain ilk (none of us, though, I think) might indeed go to Havana and kiss Fidel Castro in his hospital bed.  But why in the world would a leftist go to Tehran and make friends with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

The problem (one of the many problems actually) that conservatives have is assuming that US liberals, who are far from united or monochrome, are somehow all-of-a-piece with socialist/Marxist/communist dictators, such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel, etc.

Mad Mac, I join you in deploring the thoughtless association, made by some of us on the left, of conservative values or ideology of one kind or another with "inherent evil."  But what inspires the liberal perspective, at its best, is a much grander vision of universal liberty, prosperity and creativity than anything that conservatives seem to see, the ways of flourishing that conservatives in positions of power and influence have historically limited to "their own kind," and stifled in others.  The "anger," or tendency to vilify, on the part of liberals, is really a quite natural defensive reaction to the awful feeling of being bound and suffocated, by conservatives.

On John Edwards: The writers of Grist/Gristmill have quite appropriately not said anything about that jerk's self-destruction.  But since I have supported him since 2003 (which support ended Friday!!!), and voted for him three times, and sent him now and again a bit of money (which apparently went into the purse of that floozy with the camera -- who, not to be cruel, is no Marilyn Monroe), let me mention here that I do not know if I have ever felt so mocked, betrayed and stomach-punched.

A writer for Huffington Post brought back in this connexion the "Say it ain't so, Joe!" story, about Shoeless Joe Jackson and his involvement in the 1919 World Series scandal.  But the Edwards story is far beyond that.  And as angry as I am about the infidelity, I am almost as angry about the pathetic, hapless, grotesque way in which he allowed the story to break.  Bill Clinton would have done much much better.

NEVERTHELESS, Edwards made some mighty fine speeches, and he said some very true things, which need saying and repeating and acting on.  He would like Jim Goodman's Waterloo reference, "victory over empire," even as he said (way back in 2003) that he likes I.F. Stone's (a sincere liberal if ever there was one!) "The Trial of Socrates," in which the usually heroized Socrates is presented an enemy of democracy, an anti-liberal (and a proto-Platonist?), and so deserving of his condemnation.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"fuel-efficient vehicles"

of course can mean a number of different things.  Obama would perhaps say it is not up to the US president (i.e., himself) to say what the "next generation" should be, specifically, only to promote its successful birth: "Let a hundred flowers bloom; let the hundred schools of thought contend."

In the accompanying shot, was that a Prius being built?  In a cartoon that I recently saw, as a kind of parody of the classic eco-prankster bumper sticker to be surreptitiously stuck onto an SUV, "I'm destroying the planet!  Ask me how!," a Prius is shown bearing the bumper sticker, "I'm destroying the planet too!, only not so fast."

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"noise" "disturbing the life"

Excellent observations and cautions, Wolverine, as always.

But "noise" is just one of the several ways in which trans-oceanic shipping is harmful to marine animals.

"Disturbing" is surprisingly understated for you!  : )

"The life" should be more personalized.  We are talking about real, individual sentient organisms.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Daniel Larson

Typical man: exposing el cuerpazo, for full appreciation, while maintaining always an impenetrable shield over the window to the soul.On From Pole to Paris posted 1 year, 3 months ago 1 Response

"bad idea"

It is astounding that the networking is such, that as soon as corn got really expensive, cattle-CAFO-ists knew at once to go knocking on the back door of the candy manufacturers, to ask for their collected crumbs.

One wonders if veterinarians/veterinary nutritionists were at any point consulted on how a diet of M&M husks might affect the health and well-being of cattle -- not that anyone particularly cares about the health and well-being of cattle, apparently, except for the handful of us marginalized flakes, seeing that the cattle are just machines, designed to grow big and be slaughtered in a matter of months.

And if the veterinarians have indeed signed off on this, one wonders if their professional code of ethics means anything at all.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"friendly way to eat meat"?

What frightens me about human beings even more than their blood-thirstiness is their thoughtlessness.

Killing animals for meat is always a serious, ethically fraught business.  There is nothing "friendly" about it.  Assuming that human beings MUST eat the flesh of non-human animals, and that that justifies their regularly taking the lives of non-human animals -- plus, mocking anyone who might protest -- is an example of terrific thoughtlessness.

Surely the nation of Peter Singer can see that the solution to relying on unsustainable herds of cattle and sheep is NOT to start rounding up kangaroos for the abattoirs, en masse.On Aussies should fight climate change by eating kangaroo, says study posted 1 year, 3 months ago 8 Responses

different approaches

Just to be clear, opponents of CAFOs do not all use the same arguments.  The anthropocentric arguments highlighted in this post by Ariane Lotti are fine, even excellent, so far as they go.  But we promoters of animal rights do not think they get to the heart of the matter, however much we may applaud them (as I for one do).

Even if CAFOs caused no environmental damage whatsoever, and smelled like roses, and got their neighbors smilingly to congratulate themselves over and over again that yes, thanks to CAFOs, the quality of their lives has been improving, nevertheless it would still be true that they are evil institutions which ought to be abolished.

O SpaSh:
At the Thanksgiving feast, the question is asked at countless tables, "Would you like the thigh or the breast?"  In another context, a similar question is asked: "Are you a leg-man or a breast-man?"  ("Another context" can even mean within the minds of certain anxious greenhorns.)  So is it not high time to bring these two kinds of connoisseurship, which are after all so similar, together?

Anyway, good for PermieWriter to emphasize the "humane" aspect of voting for Prop 2.  PW is no doubt right to foresee that its victory will be just a beginning.  Still, that counts for a great deal, at this stage of our moral evolution.

As I wrote elsewhere, Californians are fortunate to be able to strike blows for both animal rights and gay rights in November.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

cynicism time

Seeing that 77% of respondents to the poll that Kolbert cited said that gasoline prices will affect how they vote in November, Obama will not be able to be any more honest than McCain, should it occur to him to quote that sentence about "hard truths."

Toward the end, she says, "Recent history suggests that Presidential campaigns don't reward integrity; the candidate who refuses to compromise his principles is unlikely to have a chance to act on them."  Was presidential politics always like that?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Deborah Solomon

is:

1. certainly not to be identified with the NY Times Magazine, even if that is where her interviews appear;

2. one of the least swoonable journalists working;

3. a weasel, ever awaiting her chance to leap at an unprotected throat.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"condescending attitude"?

So far as I can tell, most members of the Gristmill community cannot be so simply pigeon-holed, dear Mad Mac.  Our styles of activism, and our levels of understanding, commitment, and engagement, are in fact quite diverse.

Most of us may indeed represent one or another "liberal circle of thought."  But the typical conservative rebuke, that we are "America-haters," is simply false and unfair.  In fact it is noteworthy that most of us offer consistently constructive criticism, and maintain a sincere hope of being able to engage American voters/consumers, sooner or later.

As for John-former-Marine, he knows DC and the military as well as anybody in Gristmill.  All the same, be advised that he likes to josh.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"Crazy ...

... for thinkin' that my love could hold you ...
well I'm crazy for tryin'
and crazy for cryin'
and crazy for lo-ovin' you."

You make an excellent observation, GonzoDon.  But for one reason or another, your elephant is not only radioactive, she is hooked up to the Third Rail.

Which is why I am doubtful about the environmentalist talk of conservative Christian folks, such as Pope Benedict XVI, and Richard Cizik.  I have no doubt at all about the good intentions of those two gentlemen, and I am glad that they have said what they said -- for what it is worth.

Nevertheless, certainly the conservative Catholics, such as the Pope, are not going to want to include artificial birth control in their new-founded environmentalist gospel: yet another reason why "pro-life" as a battle-slogan, and as a name for a supposedly sophisticated ethics, is hideously hypocritical.

I do not know enough about Cizik, and the evangelicals of his stripe, to say if they too are religiously committed to an opposition to artificial birth control.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

the Hillaryites

Maureen Dowd has a lovely commentary on Obama's woes, seen through the lens of "Pride and Prejudice":

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/opinion/03dowd.html?_r= ...

Could it really be true, that the Hillary-supporters so love Hillary for admitting to having some difficulty controlling her weight, that they cannot possibly forgive a slender Obama?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Amen, Amazing.

Very well put, both those notes, to Wolverine and to Ron.

Rules are rules, I guess, and DR certainly has the right to enforce the code of etiquette that he has the job of administering.  Nevertheless, many of us are surely well acquainted with Wolverine by now, and we know where he is coming from, and we know his take-no-prisoners style, and (switching metaphors yet again) we know his preference for painting wit a broad brush.  So there is nothing especially new or shocking, that in one of his piques he started throwing around accusations that a large class of people are "Nazis," etc.  It comes across, to many of us Wolverine-fans at least, as rather more humorous than offensive.  Does he really deserve to be bounced?

On the other hand, Ron is indeed a gentleman, and most of us no doubt appreciate his always useful comments.  It would be very nice of Wolverine, were he now to say something nuanced and apologetic.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Proposition 2

See also the recent piece by Nicholas Kristof, who grew up on a farm in Oregon, about the potentially very important vote in California:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/31/opinion/31kristof.html

So it seems that Californians will have the opportunity to strike a blow for animal rights as well as for gay rights this November.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

fluff?

Right, John fM, and TJWDraws, and Prometheus: There is absolutely NO reason why this guy's re-conversion back to carnivory from veganism should be a moral example to anyone, because he plainly never had a good idea what veganism was about in the first place.

"Healthy diet" is a totally anthropocentric end, not to say selfish.

Beautiful long comment, John fM.  Thanks for pointing out the idiocy of the concern for economics, if everyone were to go vegan, which Jason Scorse also has done well to mock.

It may very well be defensible that non-human animals should be slain for the purpose of feeding human animals.  But if so (and I am far from convinced), we should NEVER treat the slaughter of non-human animals as a casual, inevitable event.

The morality of killing non-human animals ought always to be recognized as a big issue among environmentalists.  That this Boston pig-slaughterer has been given a free pass is surprising and disappointing.

At least my friend Roz tries to bring important moral terms such as "sacrifice" into the discussion.

Cf. also the disclaimer at the end credits of many movies: "No animals were harmed in the making of this film."  Fine.  But that does not mean at all that all the people working on that movie did not lunch on the flesh of chickens, pigs, cows, fish, and God knows who else, in the course of making that movie.On Getting to the meat of the matter with Boston chef Jamie Bissonnette posted 1 year, 4 months ago 21 Responses

"We are getting off topic but ... "

Actually, it is the Gristmill editor who is perhaps "off topic," and who risks self-marginalization, in the name of environmentalist purity.  But that judgment may be premature.

Would DR like to ask Van Jones the question that Tom Brokaw asked of Barack Obama?

Hey Amazing, nice comment!  HBO is beyond our budget, though, to say nothing of our schedule.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

watch those turns though

For some weird physical reason, which no doubt Archimedes, or some other clever lad way back then who was good with his conjugations and declensions, already figured out, you need to turn really generously and patiently on a tricycle.  So if your idea of coolness involves speed, then trikes are out.

On the other hand, just hang an image of Avalokiteshvara from the handle-bars, or Dionysus with tigers if that is more your style, and you have nothing to worry about.On Umbra on adult tricycles posted 1 year, 4 months ago 16 Responses

"Pazzaria"!; Brokaw, Obama, race

Yes, Mad Mac, we are all mad; or at least those of us who seek wisdom (i.e. are philosophoi) are cultivators of madness.

Thanks very much for your historical comments on the famous Pizza Margherita, surely one of the greatest culinary artefacts in history, malgrado l'opinione amara ed invidiosa del mio sempre amatissimo cugino Ser Wolverine.

On pizza/foccaccia, and Italian antiquities: Cf. Aeneid 7, and the Trojans "eating their tables," i.e. the flat bread on which their vegetables were spread, during their initial picnic by the Tiber, as a fulfillment of the prophecy that that is how they would know when they had arrived.

On cheese as "baby food": No.  Milk is baby food, and milk is way yucky.  But cheese is a work of art, and requires the contributions of all kinds of (very small) living creatures whom we usually do not encounter face-to-face in every-day life, and whom therefore we do not usually have the opportunity to thank properly.

On Al Gore missing an opportunity on "Meet the Press": Well, so what?  Barack Obama himself was jittery and giggly, sitting across from Tom Brokaw.

Brokaw asked Obama a very good question, which I wish had been picked up subsequently, regarding two poll responses, by African-Americans, a large majority showing they believe racism is alive and well in America, and also that judicial sentences are weighed to the disadvantage of black defendants.  Does Obama go along (asked Brokaw) with the African-American majority?

I myself entirely agree with the African-American majority (to the disappointment of my friend Mad Mac, but perhaps in accord with my friends Amazing and Wolverine).  But, more importantly, it would be nice to get a full, honest answer out of Obama.

Perhaps DR can arrange a private meeting of Gristmillites with Obama, when we can ask him such touchy questions ...

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"biting hand"

Sorry, John Bailo, "Ameriphobe" is too much.  Some of us just ask good old America to be as good as good old America claims to be.  Or do you have a problem with truth and honesty?

But you conservatives would not understand that.

Thanks to cousin Wolverine, and KataKanadian, and AnotherID.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

thanks, Amazing; cats and dogs

Do the Aldo Leopold, in the Fall, in honor of a great American hero!  Meanwhile, break a leg for Grand Island Trail!

Wolves and bears know enough to run away from us smelly primates.  Mountain lions are different, though.  Be careful!On Endangered-species protections reinstated for gray wolves posted 1 year, 4 months ago 17 Responses

"counterproductive riff on CCS"

Right, I have a question about that: Why is Al Gore so confident that the technology for carbon sequestration for coal is already ready?  Would that it were so!; but is it?

Another question I might have asked of Al is, Do you think it would be a good idea for President Barack Obama to appoint Arnold Schwarzenegger as his Energy Czar?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Right, Wolverine.

And yet, most ironically, wolves are responsible for only a very teensy fraction of ranchers' losses.  They have much more to fear from dogs on the loose than from wolves.

Amazing,
that website does not want to give me maps, in spite of the fact that they boast about their maps, so I do not know exactly where you mean.

But why do you say "next year"?  You do not think you could be ready for this September?On Endangered-species protections reinstated for gray wolves posted 1 year, 4 months ago 17 Responses

"publicity stunt"

You may be right about that, JavaEarth.  It is suggested that talking a good environmentalist talk is just the way for the Pope to get his foot in the kids' door, so to speak; and once they let him in, he will hit them with all that nonsensical and tyrannical sexual-ethics business.On Pope talks to youth about consumption, environmental degradation posted 1 year, 4 months ago 7 Responses

Could be, MAD MAC

Camus has a big following, but he is no hero of mine.  That is, not that I dislike him, but I have read too little by him.  I read "L'Etranger" in a French lit class in high school, and barely remember it.

Still, we should ALWAYS avoid stereotypes.  Camus is not to be lumped with Jean-Paul Sartre, another great French existentialist, who was once very fashionable but nowadays is increasingly loathed.

Anyway, it is a rather pathetic characteristic of the American body politic (wow, look at all those Greek derivatives!), that Barack Obama and his people have to be afraid that a too friendly reception of him in Europe will render him more questionable and alien in "Middle America."

Some of us, who deplore the state of education in geography, world history and foreign languages in this country, remember bitterly that during the 2004 campaign, John Kerry, who knows French well, having studied as a child at a school in Switzerland, could not dare to reveal that he speaks French.On If you're going to eat meat, you can't shy away from the whole beast posted 1 year, 4 months ago 41 Responses

Another derivative in English

from the same Greek verb, "kauo," meaning "burn," is "holocaust," meaning something entirely burnt, with reference to certain sacrifices commanded in Torah, especially Leviticus.

Needless to say, the term "Holocaust" has assumed a special significance, referring to the collection and confinement of European Jews by the German Nazis and their allies, and especially the unspeakably brutal murder of around 6 million of those Jewish captives.  I am sorry to have to admit, though, that I do not know why the biblical religous term "holocaust" ended up being used in that way.

Meanwhile, we might also spare a moment to remember all the animals, the countless animals, who have been sacrificed in proper religious rituals, in various traditions, Mesopotamian, biblical, Greek, Roman, Vedic, and so forth.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"painless"

Well, the poet may so say, that committing suicide is painless.  But we do not know, really, do we.  Few tend to return to tell us.

In a recent NY Times Magazine, in an article on suicide, a man who tried to kill himself by jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge, but survived, said, "After I let go, and my hands left the railing, I asked myself: Oh no!  What have I done?!  Why in the world did I do that?!"  And now, he is a counselor, for depressed, suicidal patients.

Cf. Sylvia Plath, famous suicide:

<<
Dying is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I have a call.
>>

What I do not understand about Albert Camus is, why our sadness, and aloneness, were inadequate for establishing "meaning" to human existence.On If you're going to eat meat, you can't shy away from the whole beast posted 1 year, 4 months ago 41 Responses

selfish vs. self-centered?

Small difference; they amount to much the same.

Shintaro Ishihara's statement is excellent.  Future archeologists and historians will say of the US, and of American "civilization" in general, that nobody was so good as we are, at foolishly cultivating the denial of death.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"guy oops person"

"Guy" works for either gender nowadays, we are told.

Banana Republican,
not enough can be said about the suffering of exploited animals.  No apology is ever needed, for raising the issue of the thoughtless cruelty that human exploiters inflict on helpless sentient animals.

Meanwhile, pointing up the deficiencies of PETA, with regard to exploitation of women or any other issue, is certainly justified.  You go, girl!

But as I have written before, my complaint is with regard to the unjust misbalance, regarding animal-related subjects, of Gristmill's editorial policy.

By all means, BR, write away!  Regardless of sex, gender and orientation!

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

passing over from life to death

It's an itsy bit ticklish for me to read through this thread, because Roz, John former Marine, and MAD MAC are all friends of mine, and they are all over the place on this issue.

At heart I agree mostly with John (no surprise there!).  But I admire Roz for what she is attempting here.  In her online column, she has always been very respectful of us vegetarians/vegans, and she deserves our thanks for that.

She is absolutely right to suggest (implicitly) that at this stage of our moral evolution, we must constantly encourage people to understand what they are doing, eating-wise, always to look, to feel, to learn, to think.  She has all along been doing terrific work.

The great majority of people are anthropocentrists, and have opinions similar to those of MAD MAC and Ruth117 (whom I have not had the pleasure of meeting before).  They should realize that they are far and away in the (backwards-seeking, prejudiced) majority, and so should not get too hepped up in slamming the (teensy, forwards-looking) minority.  Still, to quote a recent American president, "Bring it on!"  That is how martyrs are made.  And as the great Asian martyr, Saint Ignatius of Antioch, said, "The blood of martyrs is the seed of saints."

(Mon petit cher Jean, autrefois Marin,
comme tu sais, nous allons bientot en l'Arcadie!  C'est a dire, nous allons d'abord a la ville de Quebec, qui celebre cette annee son quatrecentieme anniversaire; depuis, a la Gaspesie; depuis, a la cote du nord de NB; depuis, a PEI!, "Anne of Green Gables" country!, ou nous voulons visiter les villages arcadiens a l'ouest; depuis, a Halifax, pour visiter la "vieille dame" -- a real piece of work, dont je te parlerai peut-etre a l'avenir.  On an earlier visit to la Nouvelle Ecosse, we had visited the Acadian Coast, too too briefly, from Annapolis Royal down to Yarmouth, and made a point of returning some day.  The only thing that was off-putting was the gold star stuck up in the corner of the French Republican tricolor, bizarrely unhistorical.  The lady in the church at Saint-Bernard was very sweet.  Bon, tu seras dans mes pensees, et je regrette que tu ne pourras pas nous rencontrer.  Saluts affectueux!)On If you're going to eat meat, you can't shy away from the whole beast posted 1 year, 4 months ago 41 Responses

Or how about:

http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/AsiaTrail/News/Pfoalsbo ...

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

genetic engineering

BioD,
the evolution of dogs is a fascinating subject, very complicated and very controversial.

What is the species of my own lap-dog, Little White?  Is it Canis familiaris, as I long believed?  Or, as some other experts say nowadays, recognizing the impossibility of truly distinguishing the genomes of wolves and dogs, is it Canis lupus familiaris? -- i.e., Little White is basically a wolf!  (And indeed, one of the names I give her is Pleistocene Carnivore.)

There was, once upon a time, a very subtle and difficult initial intercourse, between the less fearful, more friendly (or cynically, more opportunistic), more domesticable wolves (Canis lupus), and the human beings who, as human beings tend to do, were producing a lot of garbage.  So, one thing led to another ...

But knowledgeable breeding, selecting for traits in dogs, seems to be a fairly modern thing.  Charles Darwin himself was fascinated by the breeding of doves, and that is an important part of his "On the Origin of Species."  If you want to call that "genetic engineering," well, fine.

"Engineering" and "mechanicization" work fine, to a point, even with manipulable little animals.  But that does not represent a good relationship between human beings and the other members of the community of living creatures which environmentalists recognize as the principal treasure on Earth that they are dedicated to preserving.

In one story, a T. rex may destroy a visitors' center, and render a resort unvisitable: good.  But what is the lesson learned?  If it is only a matter of "genetic engineering," then the engineers can move in and re-wire the wiring, so to speak.  But then, when we return and see the tweaked T-rex, would we not have a case if we complained that this was just Disneyland?

We need to understand that mechanistic, practical, hard-ware-ish/soft-ware-ish thinking is great, to some extent.  But when we apply it by way of exploitation to living creatures, we are doing an injustice, both to those other living creatures, and to ourselves.

We are better than this.  We can try harder.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Well ...

As a progressive Catholic, feeling more and more marginalized and heterodox precisely because of the conservative forces empowered by Ratzinger/Benedict, both during John Paul II's papacy and now during his own, I am not at all disposed to defend him.

But really, Wolfy, you have to get over that very tired 16th-century-Protestant anti-papal rant.  A lot of money is surely spent to maintaining the various buildings and countless artworks and manuscripts contained in the Vatican -- and these are part of the patrimony of all humanity.  Retro-Protestant and post-Protestant squawkers may indeed question the justifiability of those expenses.  But, while the pope lives comfortably, I doubt his personal budget amounts to anything like even a million dollars, let alone "millions."

By the way, the "head" of the Roman Catholic Church is NOT the pope.  Only ignorant Protestants, and ignorant journalists, say that.  The head of the Church is none other than Jesus Christ.

Wolverine,
it is indeed true that the official Church doctrine condemns both artificial birth control and abortion.  And since historically most Catholics belonged to agrarian societies, Catholic preachers tended always to encourage procreation and large families.

It is also true that generally, and more radically, Church doctrine has been excruciatingly anthropocentric.  "Pro-life" is disgraceful hypocrisy: non-human life has little or no value.

I am glad that the Pope has been saying some pro-environmentalist things lately.  But I wonder how effective they may be.  The Pope himself cannot say too much about how to "reduce consumption," for example.  More importantly, all the pastors in all the pulpits around the world are much more important than the Pope, regarding this sort of radical shift in emphasis.  And there is no sign that those pastors are at once going to come aboard the Pope's new green machine.

To be sure, many progressive Christians, including Catholics, have already been doing some noble environmentalist things.  Some heroes in this regard, it may pain the retro-Protestants to know, are in fact members of religious orders, i.e. communities of nuns and monks.On Pope talks to youth about consumption, environmental degradation posted 1 year, 4 months ago 7 Responses

"argument from authority"

Right, SpaSh.  But Wolverine is my cousin, I like him, and I value and appreciate what he writes here, even if I do not always agree with him.

In an earlier longish comment of mine posted to this thread, which infuriatingly got lost in the ether (as happens rather often, in my Gristmill experience), I wrote on that very subject, how Native Americans should not be taken as positive moral examples regarding the respectful treatment of animals.  Consider: Makah whaling; buffalo jumps; Mesoamerican Chihuahuivory.  We may hope that the Andean peoples treat their llamas well, but who knows?

It is indeed true that Native Americans (in the large sense of course, from the Arctic to Tierra del Fuego) have assigned great spiritual value to even small, apparently negligible animals, such as BioD's daughter's lizard.  And that is a great lesson that they may teach us.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Right, JavaEarth

That is a good comment.  These performers are volunteers, and presumably can stop the performance whenever they are pleased to.

Also, the not researched but powerful impression I get is that the majority of people committed to the animal rights movement, including membership in PETA, are women.  One might be forgiven for assuming that women are the best judges of when women are being exploited.

Still, as an animal-rights promoter myself, I am sad that the best-known animal-rights organization, PETA, has won for itself such a bad name.  In this recent op-ed, on Spain's granting certain rights to apes, PETA's tactics are described as often "boneheaded":

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/14/opinion/14mon4.html

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"harassment"

There is no one whom I would sooner trust, to bring kids to encounter wildlife, and to teach them about wild ecosystems, than BioD.  Whatever happens to the weakening of such diapsids as lizards, crocs and chickens when they are turned upside down, we can be sure that BioD never abuses them in their time of vulnerability.

BioD is a treasure, and I love him greatly.  As seriously boring as he may be, puttering around with his e-bike throughout most of the year ( : ) ), he is nevertheless doing beautiful work, to make the world a better place, by working with these kids.

Hey BioD, what happened to the kid who is the animal prodigy?  You did not mention him in your post, though he was your star last year.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

human-being-off-switch

As I said, people from this camp are annoying.

Many human beings have a curious characteristic of their own: They go totally morally comatose, once they discover they can easily get other animals into their control, and can exploit them as mechanistic resources.

With all respect to Permie Writer, the "computer analogy" is chilling and unsatisfactory.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"globalism against environmentalism"

But it is not really all that global, when the rich people calling the shots from one continent have no clear idea what destructive things the project that they are commanding in another part of the world is actually accomplishing.

This is a fascinating story, and a good interview.  God bless the Zoo Lady, and her animals!On An interview with author Bruce Barcott posted 1 year, 4 months ago 2 Responses

serendipity?; synchronicity?; conspiracy?

"Deflater House" is a simply astonishing pun that should not pass unnoted, while our own DR happens to be away doing the wine-women-and-song stuff in Austria.  V.s.:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_FledermausOn Umbra on air mattresses posted 1 year, 4 months ago 9 Responses

a recent visit with E.O. Wilson

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/science/15wils.html?8dp ...

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

nice timing

Yesterday, the 14th, was of course Bastille Day, when many of the French (one hopes) were thinking more seriously than usual about what France's mission civilisatrice should be nowadays, in Europe, the Mediterranean and around the world.On Greenpeacers climb Eiffel Tower in anti-nuclear protest posted 1 year, 4 months ago 6 Responses

"too low a bar"

A number of days have passed since last I had a chance to look at Gristmill.  The latest comments in this thread are quite interesting -- no surprise there!

Thank you for your concern, dear Wolverine.  Deo volente, I am strong enough to get through another day.

You are certainly right about how we should not "set the bar too low," regarding "sustainability."  The ideal, so far as eating or otherwise exploiting animals goes, is that the great majority of human beings will learn to live on vegetarian diets.  Meanwhile, and more practically, we who think more deeply about these things must help our contemporaries begin to think as well, in this first age of our history in which we confront the limits and frailties of the biosphere.

"Symbiosis" is indeed a lovely concept.  How pretty, those pictures of clownfish swimming safely amidst the waving arms of anemones!  How thrilling, when the brave and dedicated spur-winged plover does its serious dental work in the gaping mouth of the tranquil Nile crocodile!  (A paleo-sci-fi writer speculated a while ago that certain Late-Cretaceous pterosaurs had the same arrangement with T. rex.)  I only fear that certain human beings will inevitably want to think in economic terms, and whine selfishly, "I want what's coming to me!"

Amazing,
I look forward to seeing your video, in a few hours, when it is civilly acceptable to turn on my speakers.

Mad Mac,
of course it is justifiable to kill in self-defense.  But that is not the only option.  There may be cases in which allowing oneself to be killed by an assailant is morally finer, if supererogatory.

We are not entitled to anything, including our own lives.  We are naturally inclined to act for our self-preservation; and doing so is in principle justifiable.  But that does not mean we are simply entitled to take the lives of animals, in order to eat their flesh, say, or to perform medical experiments on their bodies, for the sake of our self-preservation.  Whether or not such activities are justified, they are certainly more complicated than what can be reduced to simple human entitlement.

SpaSh,
God forbid that I should tell you what to say or what not to say!  I only meant to remind you that in our contracts, it is ethical that every single word be clearly understood by all parties, in the same way.  It strikes me that "sustainability" and "sustainable" are slippery words, which sound soothing, hopeful and admirable, but cannot always be pinned down as meaning something definite -- hence, prime candidates for abuse for the purpose of deception, whether of another or of oneself.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

ummm...

Well, E.O. Wilson is a hero of mine, but this is kind of vague.  Good enough for half a minute, surely.

Anyway it is noteworthy that the virtues he points out, presumably in scientists whom he admires, are also the virtues of admirable people who are artists, religionists and philosophers as well.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

history

Cf. also, generally, "The Unnatural History of the Sea," by Callum Roberts, an excellent introduction to exploitative attitudes of Europeans and Euro-Americans toward aquatic animals.

He does not have too much to say about salmon, but an early report on page 55 about salmon in northern Atlantic waters (by a New Brunswick-based source) is illustrative.

As for what a "state biologist" should do:  Well, it never hurts to start with a little prayer, to the Creator of us all, including the fish.  But right, if funds are an issue (and I do not know that that is the case here!), and if biologists think that some animals can indeed be saved with a bit of help, while other animals are going to be iffy even with help, then they may very well be justified to pull the plug.

Hopefully, there will be a few bucks to make a good record of the last remaining Atlantic salmon, before they are consigned to extinction.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

well, the visuals count too

The T. Boone Pickens ad shows many seconds of happy wind turbines, and a number of solar panels.  That ought to be enough to nudge some people to start thinking new good thoughts about renewables, no matter what the voice-over may be saying about natural gas.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"Who's hotter?"

you may ask, on your knees, by your bed, hands folded, intensely wondering.

Beyonce is one option on the menu ...

All the same, let's give it up for the journalists who gave us this story:

<<    
Group Asks for Divine Intervention to Ease Oil Prices
By Allison Aldrich and Keriann Hopkins
>>

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"I would hope"

Nice, Wolverine.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Elitism and Spotted Biodiversivists

[What was all that hoo-ha about, anyway, with the Jurassic editors and the "damn 60s reference"?  Curious readers need to know!]

Gar,
excellent post.

Rowan,
excellent comment.

BioD,
excellent whatever.  Of course, NOBODY uses "gay" to mean "happy" anymore.

Quite the reverse -- and you should be on top of this: "gay" seems bigotedly to have come to mean "weird" and "way uncool."

Let us all work on correcting that.

As for prejudice against the term "environmentalist": It is all David Roberts's fault, for being such a savage snap-dragon.  : )

Or: Henceforth, let us be nice to people.  To everybody.  Let us be the most humane people imaginable.  And let us display our environmentalist credentials proudly.

Here in NYC, my husband has a green shopping bag, from somewhere.  I have a bag from Defenders of Wildlife, with a wolf design on it, with a pin with a right whale design from Provincetown Center of Coastal Studies.  When one wears such gear, one feels a responsibility to be especially kind, to everyone.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

excellent questions, Sammie!

1. If in fact all the escaped salmon are Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar), then one would not expect that they should be able to reproduce with the various Pacific Ocean species.

2. The crustaceans called "sea lice" seem to flourish especially in the CAFO situation.  Now that the salmon are swimming free, let us hope that the sea lice are less of a problem for the general populations of wild Pacific salmon.

3. Suzannah of Oceana is surely there.  You just need to click the heels of your ruby slippers three times, in the right way.

"symbiotic"; "thrush"

The bird is, in Latin, turdus.  I.e., a robin, as we call the critters here in North America.

"Symbiotic" is terrific, Amazing, and indeed a good challenging heroic effort, so long as everyone involves know what we are talking about: the fundamental environmental value, that every Earthly creature fare well, and that we all "live together" well, walking in harmony, and beauty.

Thanks to the frequently quoted Navajo traditional prayer.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"intellectual superiority"?

This is not an intellectual issue at all, dear DR, when Blankley easily equates "patriotism" with the desire for "American advancement," which means "our economic expansion."

Whatever the American mind may be doing in reaction to such a concept, the American heart most certainly turns in anger against such an effort to co-opt and manipulate us.

Are we to believe that when the flag was raised on Iwo Jima, that was a victory for American business?  When the increasingly feckless Barack Obama (predictably so, some might add) is bullied into wearing a flag pin in his lapel, is this too a victory for American business?

God forbid!

To be clear: May God NOT damn America, or American business.  But there are (at least) two different strains in how Americans interpret what this republic is about, and according to which "American economic expansion" has decidedly different functions:

1. America is different from every other place, and separate, and in competition with everyone else; and the true patriot gleefully chants, "USA!  USA!  USA!  USA!," while the competitors fall behind in the dust.

2. America is not at all separate; it is a full participatory member of the community of nations; it is the moral leader, and the ideal, of the whole world; injustice, poverty, woes of all kinds afflict the hearts of all truly patriotic Americans, wherever those woes occur; the true American patriot desires happiness for fellow Americans and for others beyond our borders ALIKE.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Yo soy chorizo. Y tu, ?como te llamas?

I.e., "soy chorizo" is an expression you need to be careful with, with native Spanish speakers.

Ursa major nigra, aka BlackBear,
having no human kids of my own, I can only say:

1. Pip pip!  And, coraggio!  Keep them happy, healthy and well-fed -- however you can manage that -- ; and once they fly off, they will notice that they had conscientious grown-ups looking after them; and of course it is entirely up to them what they want to do with that information subsequently.

2. I am afraid I have not followed all along the issue about "changing a family's diet"; why suddenly should an adult-in-charge change the menu of children?; is the adult an over-night convert to veganism? -- way weird!  This deserves a fuller presentation.

3. On dairy foods, including eggs, as a bridge between carnivory and vegetarianism: Well, that has been done often enough, in spite of the horrible real situations of dairy cows and egg-laying hens.  Hopefully others with experience and patience can offer advice.

Our own beloved David Roberts, father of two bouncing boys, might be able to shed some light on this subject, himself having converted recently to something like vegetarianism.On How author Betsy Block convinced her finicky family to mend their dietary ways posted 1 year, 4 months ago 25 Responses

"staying out of trouble"?

J'espe`re que non!  Mais le trouble ne cherche pas ce vieillard faible, sans doute.

It is bad enough that ancient, balanced, stable farmlands, some of the richest in Europe, have been set to perform some unusual tasks.  We await Ron's later report; his report now is not encouraging.

Nor is any of this evading "the subject of Tom's post."  If the subject of Tom's post wants to do nothing with philosophical matters, then Tom's post fait le jeu de l'autriche, et se cache la tete.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Il faut cultiver notre jardin!!

And the garden may have some chickens and geese and turkeys and pigs and goats -- but be nice to them.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Oh, the Italians are thieves!

When we drove into Rome in 2000, the taxi-driver who drive us from the airport to our hotel near the Roman Forum was very sweet, pointing out the sights, but knowing that we were zonked from the overnight flight.  When we got to the hotel, the fare (he told us) was, I don't remember what, 50,000 lire perhaps, as they did those things before the Euros, or maybe more.  So, I produced a 100,000 lire note, and gave it to him -- and he, by magic, made it vanish, and replaced it with a 10,000 lire note upwards in his hand, and said sweetly, "O Signore, you were mistaken, you gave me only this much."

At the time, we were too exhausted and confused to do anything.  But in retrospect, we are very very very miserable that we let that bastard get away with what he did.  With just an itsy-bit more of information, I would have learned that our hotel people would have set things very right with that bastard taxi-driver, if only I had the sense to appeal to them.

I.e., one of Michael's bags was lost in flight; it might regularly have taken a while to locate and correctly redirect; the hotel people got it to us with impressive promptness, like that evening.

Which just goes to show: When power, corruption, capitalism, and good-heartedness are all flowing in the same direction, why, take advantage of it, for at least a bit!

God knows where that thief of a taxi-driver is now.

Meanwhile, the pizza-restaurants outside our hotel, and outside the Roman Forum, have provided us with some of our happiest culinary memories from anywhere.On Three guidebooks for a dream vacation at your dining-room table posted 1 year, 4 months ago 4 Responses

Houston: Energy City

As a movie-theater projectionist back in the mid-1970s, I had the not especially great good fortune to show "Roller Ball."  As with all movies, that meant that some parts of the movie I saw over and over again, and other parts I never saw, because I was doing some chore such as rewinding or threading or preparing the arc lights.  Therefore I never had a clear idea of what is supposed to happen in "Roller Ball."

I remember the powerful scene when the elegantly dressed young women are shooting trees and converting them to giant torches.  I do not at all remember the bit about losing the 14th century from the computer library.  (Bye bye, Dante!  Farewell, Chaucer!)

But I gather that in this dystopic future, each of the great cities of the world is now governed by one or another of a small number of globalized industries.  Houston, James Caan's city, belongs to Energy; Chicago is a food city; New York belongs to either transportation or communications, I forget which.

And there should be no surprise that recent governmental decisions, from all three branches, which are so obviously favorable to big corporations, over against the interests of private citizens and the environment, should inspire such a story as "Roller Ball."  That is how dystopic science fiction works, after all: take something sinister in the present real world, make it bigger, and create hell.

Of course, the decision to limit Exxon's punitive damages so radically is consistent with the US government's pro-corporate bias with origins in the 19th century.

As for the argument of the majority of the Justices, that in maritime law, there is a strong precedent that punitive damages tend not to be larger than compensatory damages, well, I do not know what to make of that.  But I agree with Wolverine, that in this case, following that precedent seems to defeat the very purpose of punitive damages.  The court's decision should have sent the message to corporations, that they are NEVER going to be able to afford being so destructively neglectful in the future.  Instead, they got the message that all they have to do is allow for possible punitive damages in any project's budget.

As for the actual members of the Supreme Court, we see that a future President Obama has the real chance to mess things up for decades to come, if he is not smart.  The three Justices who apparently are ready to retire, Baeder-Ginsburg, Souter and Stevens, are all on the liberal side, often if not always opposing Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito.  With Obama in the White House, the former three will feel all the more comfortable about retiring.  But then, he has to do his part, and choose suitable liberal replacements.On Supreme Court slashes Exxon's punitive damages for Valdez oil spill posted 1 year, 4 months ago 6 Responses

Viva la liberta`!

Excellent post, Tom, on a very important issue regarding peace, justice and humanity in this republic.

"Who picked YOUR food?," asks the sign of a demonstrator shown in the Immokalee site.  We might go on to ask, "Who killed your food?," "Who brought your food to you?," "Who prepared your food for you?"  Also: "Who built your house?"  "Who made your furniture?"  "Who is sending you electric power?"  Etc.

Our decadence can be measured to be increasing, the more our ignorance of such things regarding the basic circumstances of our lives also increases.  Taking those things for granted is not a good sign.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

cows and environmentalism

Guade00's rhetorical question is brilliant.

One might note that Meredith Niles wrote a nearly 50-line essay, in seven paragraphs, about milk production, without once (so far as I can see) using the word "cow."

No, not once.

Whatever could Meredith have been thinking?

Environmentalism is for the cows.  When we say (or believe) that we human beings come first, and the cows, etc., are a negligible afterthought, then how are we not as irrationally speciesist (selfishly cruel, really) as the anthropocentrist religionists whom many of us love to mock and dismiss?

In fact, it seems that dairy cows are perhaps the most numerous among our several extremely abused captive vertebrates, at this stage in human history.  Aside from the close confinement that most of them suffer, as well as the over-frequent abusive manipulation of their bodies, we should add that the forced separation of mothers from new-born calves counts as well as a serious ethical issue.

How in the world can the continued abuse of these fellow sentient creatures ever be "sustainable"?

It is troubling, even a bit frightening, that Meredith Niles can write a serious environmentalist article on the dairy industry, with reference solely to GHG emissions, and with no reference whatsoever to our close cousins, in chains, in pain, the cows.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

the eye of the beholder?

What we all "probably know" should probably not be taken for granted.

But yes indeed, the honorable Senator is right: Money is a powerfully motivating force, and can overwhelm other values.

The ethical issue that I am most interested in is human involvement in the exploitation and abuse of animals, with no consideration of the animals' suffering, all for the sake of money or profit.

But the several ethical and aesthetic compromises that go into approving oil rigs in the landscape/seascape are pretty much the same sort of thing.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"unmiscorrected"

Is the flogging of the anti-Euclidean intern in question on YouTube yet?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"slipped to a low spot"?!

A low spot indeed!  It just goes to show, when it comes to the sea, all kinds of things can unexpectedly go wrong, because we simply do not know what is what, and cannot anticipate.  The concept of "sustainable fishery" is a fraud.On 30,000 farmed salmon escape off B.C. coast, endangering wild stocks posted 1 year, 4 months ago 12 Responses

Puglie!

What a lovely experience you must have had, Tom, at that agriturismo place!

My husband has lately become infatuated with Pugliese recipes, and is very successful with them.

If ever we can afford to return to Italy, I shall recommend a southern itinerary, from the Bay of Naples down to Bari.  But who knows if that sort of thing will ever be possible again ...

On "sustainable seafood": As I have written often before, I do not believe that "sustainable" is appropriately applied to seafood.  No doubt the Monterey Bay Aquarium experts, and other marine conservationists who publish similar guides to seafood, give seafood-eaters excellent advice, by indicating which fish and invertebrates are threatened by their fisheries, and which seem plentiful, and are not caught in excessive numbers.  Nevertheless there is too much uncertainty, about too many things -- the life cycles of the marine animals themselves, the nature of their ecosystems, ever-changing practices of the fishing industry, ever-growing levels of pollution, and the complicated effects of global warming -- , to be able to apply "sustainable" to any fishery for more than a few years into the future.On Three guidebooks for a dream vacation at your dining-room table posted 1 year, 4 months ago 4 Responses

Well put, MAD MAC.

You are a cynic after my own heart.  Growing old has always been a burdensome cross; in this age, it is especially hard to watch so much of the Earth's beauty wither, and so many of its living creatures suffer, on account of what we ourselves have done.

More academically (and irrelevantly?), Rock is right to deplore that business about 100% certitude regarding any future event, such as seasonal temperatures in one or another region at one or another latitude.  The future, which exists only conceptually, not really, is not the sort of thing about which anyone can claim 100% certitude.

On the other hand, the same dear Rock is quite wrong to assert that "we all know" that God does not exist.  If such knowledge comes with the Gristmill registration starter kit, well, I seem to have missed it.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

HSUS video; Grist's culpability (?)

Thanks, JavaEarth, for the link to that video.  I too had recently seen it, and had it in mind.  The shot of the cow on the ground, lashed by a hind leg to a tractor and being dragged, is surely about as pathetic and revolting as a video can get.

To Russell:
Grist is certainly not shilling for Monsanto.  They can explain what happened, if they wish, but my guess is they know their readers well enough to assume that we will not take the claim of the study seriously.

(There is, by the way, a vertebrate paleontologist named Dale Russell, who last I know was associated with the National Museum of Natural History in Ottawa.  He is the one who, back in the late 1970s, came up with the idea that had the non-avian dinosaurs not gone extinct 65 million years ago, a very intelligent dinosaur such as the small theropod Saurornithoides might have become ancestral to a lineage of hominid-like descendants, i.e. fully upright, with tail absent and opposable thumbs.  The renowned dino sculptor Stephen Czerkas created a full-sized interpretation of what such a being might have looked like.  The idea bore much fruit in science fiction, where many alien races are presented as intelligent reptiles.)On More use of growth hormones would boost sustainability of dairy industry, says study posted 1 year, 4 months ago 19 Responses

travel

It is an interesting ethical problem of anthropology and history, that human beings love to travel to far-off places, e.g. Antarctica, and that the freedom to travel is included among the conditions of a "good life," or human flourishing -- on the one hand; but on the other, human traveling has introduced all kinds of ills into the world.

If environmentalists (for the sake of mitigating global warming) and wildlife conservationists and animal-welfarists (for the sake of the penguins) were to urge everyone to stop traveling to Antarctica, would that not raise a hue-and-cry of reaction, as being a highly inhumane anti-intellectual recommendation?  : (On Penguin declines don't bode well for the rest of us posted 1 year, 5 months ago 8 Responses

"forests on trains"

OK, Amazing, that sounds good.  I do not know what produces the colors in colored chalk, but presumably the colors could be produced in a non-toxic, non-polluting way.

Stencils can easily be made in bio-degradable materials.  And I have no idea what the artist in the video has in mind, which justifies his using a metal.

Botanical subject matter is always good and satisfying.  Still, the artist wants to create something spectacular.  I would love to work on spectacularly huge reproductions of Audubon's prints of birds, amidst native flora.

Also, ephemerality is a gorgeous concept, which does not appeal to all artists.  Many of us have a classical Roman concept of needing to build things in marble.  But those Tibetan monks, and Navajo sages, who painstakingly draw complicated images with colored sands, for the sake of a single ceremony, and then afterwards insist that the images be swept away, are artistic heroes of mine.

So, fly-by-night images of chalk are just what we need, say I.

Here in NYC, we have an artist, who I think is from eastern Europe, who draws big reproductions of details from Italian Renaissance paintings on sidewalks, in colored chalk, with a preference for Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel.  He applies a fixative (an environmental issue?), and the completed image lasts a couple of months.  I first came upon him several years ago down in Greenwich Village, on 7th Avenue, where he was doing the Delphic Sibyl outside a Duane Reade.  But lately, he has been working in our neighborhood.  This past winter, he did Jesus Christ the Judge, with the Virgin Mary at his side, from Michelangelo's "Last Judgement," maybe five meters from the door of the liquor store that we frequent; I was always careful to step aside.  That one has now worn away.  But more recently, a few blocks down, he has done a portrait of Hillary Clinton, and next to it one of Barack Obama, which he has not yet finished.

By the way, DR, I forgot to point out before that the correct spelling of the Italian loan-word, the masculine plural passive participle from a variant of the verb meaning "to scratch," is "graffiti."  There is only a single "t" in Italian (and Latin) past participles formed this way.  Cf. the musical terms "cantata" (a piece which is sung), "legato" (notes which are bound together), "sostenuto" ("sustained," of a note which is held).

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"makes little states squirm"?

This ad is positively un-American.  If it were not for a few sweet Texans such as Sammie Wells, Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee (originally from Queens, NY), and the horticulturalists at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, I would say we should chuck the state out of the Union and say Good Riddance.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

very sad

This is a very sad episode in a terrible story.  I weep for the shame that the Makah must be feeling, and for the frustration and bitterness that the scofflaw whalers must have felt over the past couple of years -- even as I wept for their victim, dying in pain and terror last September.

Judge Arnold sounds like someone I would love to meet.  From the Seattle Times article:

<<
The judge made his displeasure plain from the bench, stating that while Sherman Alexie is his favorite author and his interest in tribal matters intense -- he referenced a personal library full of books about Indian affairs -- he could not sympathize with what the whalers had done.

"They decided to take the law into their own hands. They defied their own community and the laws of this country, which they well knew."
>>

Are the sentences too light?, as many in the animal welfare community seem to think.  From what I can tell, I think they are not.  The two defendants who got prison time are reported to have been shocked as their sentences were read, especially the one who got five months, after the prosecutors had asked for only 60 days; so already they have begun to learn a lesson -- whatever the lesson might be.

In general, when it comes to imprisonment, our justice system is horribly unsatisfactory.  Besides the fact that too many people are sentenced to prison for non-violent crimes, and besides the fact that a disproportionate number of them are poor people of color, the whole concept of imprisonment-as-punishment is seriously ethically flawed.  Whenever a society deems it suitable to sequester one of its members, the purpose should NOT be punishment (nor should it be "rehabilitation," an unfortunate and misleading term); it should be assisting the positive moral evolution of the prisoner.

These two whalers will be unlike most other imprisoned convicts in many ways.  Their experiences, values, and sense of self set them apart from mainstream Euro-American society.  There is no telling how they will react to their imprisonment; and it is not easy to predict that at the ends of their terms, they will emerge from prison better people.  The supervised probation, for all five of the whalers, if it is done consistently and thoughtfully, would seem to be a more promising way to go.On Makah tribe members sentenced for illegal whale hunt posted 1 year, 5 months ago 1 Response

very nice

As one who loves stencils, and who would love to print with stencils if I could figure out how to do it, I think this concept is brilliant, and wish Mr. Curtis all success.

Whether his projects will work as an environmentalist statement is hard to say.  As with much art, the methods do not look especially green.  I quit silk-screen print-making partly for that reason, even though the inks they use nowadays are much less toxic than before.

In this case, a fair amount of energy goes into making the aluminum (?) sheets, and then into cutting the stencils from them.  Then, a great deal of water is expended to cleanse the dirty surface exposed by the stencil when it is held in place.  Was there already a budgeted city project to cleanse the walls of that tunnel?  In that case, by cleansing them selectively, the artist is perhaps conserving water, since the entire surface does not have to be cleansed.

The botanical designs are pleasant, as one might expect: decorative, peaceful, illustrative of native plantlife.  But surely he will come up with something a bit more spectacular in time ...

By the way, an ancient analogue for this art form is Greek red-figure vase-painting.  The black glaze was first applied evenly all over the vase; then the painter -- who was more like a sculptor in a way -- would scrape away the black, and so create a detailed figure in a contrasting lighter color.  When the vase was fired, the black background came out looking smooth and glossy; by contrast, the exposed area, with the figures, came out a more or less bright red-orange, but not too glossy.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Right, BioD.

I never had any complaint about our CFLs, including the quality of their light.  I always suspected that all the folks who kvetched about their light were delicate and excruciatingly sensitive types, rather like the Princess in the fairy story who cannot get to sleep, though she is lying atop a tower of comfy mattresses, because beneath the lowest mattress a pea had been placed.

But then, one fine day, I bought two CFLs without examining them carefully beforehand.  Only later, when I got them home, did I notice they were labeled "cool white" -- and boy, what a painful difference, when I turned them on!  They quickly got relegated to little-frequented areas.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Mowat on the IWC

In his book "A Whale for the Killing," first published in 1972, with a slightly revised new edition in 2005, Farley Mowat writes (p. 42 of the Stackpole Books paperback):

<<
It is true that in 1946 an organization had been formed with the publicly stated intention of giving protection to the threatened species of whales and of regulating the hunt.  This was the International Whaling Commission, whose headquarters were (and remain) in Norway [no; but see below], which also happened to be headquarters for the world's most efficient whale killers.  But despite the employment of many good and dedicated men, the Commission was run for, and by, the whalers; and in such a manner that, instead of helping to preserve and conserve the vanishing whale stocks, it served as a cynical device to divert attention from the truth.  It served to mask the insatiable greed which lay behind the slaughter, by promulgating regulations which apppeared wise and humane but which, in fact, were useless ... and sometimes worse than that.
>>

Some readers would call that pretty cynical too; and yet it sounds quite credible.  The Wikipedia article by contrast seems to go along nicely with the "diversion of attention from the truth," however:

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

Note that according to that article, the headquarters are no longer in Norway, but in Cambridge, England.  And Norway has in fact withdrawn from the IWC.  In his survey of the history of whaling, Mowat makes much of the Norwegians' especially destructive role.  It was a Norwegian who invented the harpoon gun, for example; and they were the first to deploy whaling fleets, including a processing "mother ship" and very swift small chasers.

As for this meeting in Chile, we may note that the real scientific work that the IWC sponsors, such as studies of the effects of pollution and now global warming on whale populations, happen also to mean a dangerous delay in deciding on revised, improved regulations of whaling.On Whaling commission avoids controversial decisions posted 1 year, 5 months ago 2 Responses

Or as the haiku poet put it:

<<
A world of dew
Is a world of dew;
And yet ... and yet!
>>

One wishes this smokestack were much more ephemeral in fact than it seems to have been.  The sexagenarian's memory of his childhood reminded me of Paul Simon's lyric, from "My Little Town":

<<
My mom doing the laundry
Hanging our shirts
In the dirty breeze

And after it rains
Theres a rainbow
And all of the colors are black
>>

During the Republican National Convention, will the delegates ride out in minibuses to examine the ruins?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

class warfare!

That brief stop at the Hummer dealership is worth the price of admission.  That guy with the hand was NOT a paid actor: he is frantically fearful for his livelihood.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Moyers; "perceived centrist"

Bill Moyers is indeed a treasure.  But many have criticized his interviewing style (e.g., years ago, with Joseph Campbell, and while moderating the Genesis discussions, but he is pretty much the same in this current series) as being too cloying, altar-boyish, cheer-leaderish, even adulatory and worshipful: the polar opposite of the style of the late, sainted Tim Russert.  Charlie Rose -- when he gets around to finding the words with which to ask a question, which sometimes can seem to take forever -- rather resembles Moyers: be very friendly to your guest, be accommodating, be appreciative, and let the guest talk about what he/she wants to talk about; challenges should be relatively seldom, and in the nature of an underhand softball pitch.

On "perceived centrist": No doubt DR is right on that, but it seems the total situation is nowadays more complicated than ever before.  That is because of the disarray amongst Congressional Republicans.  Bush is toxic, McCain is not yet received as the natural Republican leader, nearly everybody up for re-election in November is frantic and terrified, so it is not clear to them where they must stand and where they may give ground.

Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins (both of Maine; the latter, campaigning this year, is being targeted by the DSCC, but unkindly and unfairly so, IMHO, because she has been very good; and also probably in vain, because she is popular in her state -- unless there is a pro-Obama anti-GOP tsunami) join none other than John McCain as Senatorial members of the Republicans for Environmental Protection.  So on the one hand, either of those women might work as the "perceived centrist" that DR has in mind.  On the other hand, most Republicans seem to think their centrist members from New England, along with all the REP, have already gone over to the other side; and in their eyes they do not count as "centrist" anymore.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Yes, thanks,

to MTVyFan, and LATenAC, and KMF.

Thanks also to the unacknowledged vegetarian South Asians who provided KMF with the salutation "Namaste."

Thanks especially to the rescuers of flood-endangered animals in Iowa, who do not seem to receive much recognition from KMF.

Well, at least we can rely on KMF to come up with duck-jokes.On Iowa's chefs and their farmer-suppliers get busy recovering from disaster posted 1 year, 5 months ago 15 Responses

hurray parking lot planet!

according to John Bailo's ethic, apparently.  Sure, let's keep human beings alive at all costs, and then let's force them to live in an impoverished world.

The Everglades are unique.  There is nothing like them on Earth.  Whatever Crist's motivation might be, a chance to restore them is a beautiful hope.

Bailo, on the other hand, loving the death of Edward G. Robinson in "Soylent Green," seems to recommend that, once the food runs out, we should look at movie screens of Everglades wildlife, while we lie on a hospital bed and are calmly euthanized.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Is our heart big enough, though,

to find room for the trout, too?

And for the pigs?:

http://www.farmsanctuary.org/actionalerts/alert_erf_pigs0 ...On Iowa's chefs and their farmer-suppliers get busy recovering from disaster posted 1 year, 5 months ago 15 Responses

"Sheesh!"

Or, after a gulp of Irish whiskey, "Sweet Jesus Christ crucified!"

Well, that is up in Ulster, in the Orange neighborhoods.  "Sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph!"

We must be careful to enunciate, dear Mat, when we are speaking from the heart, no?

Be not afraid.  In five minutes, your roof may collapse, and they may not find your body for weeks.

Which I think is why I love my new friend Mad Mac.  We do not agree on all kinds of things; nevertheless he has got terrific style.  So does agreement matter so much, so long as we like talking one with another?  We are on this Earth, in this existence, a very very short time, after all.

Anyway, HE used the word "carnivore" to describe himself, honestly and directly: he feeds on meat.  I.e., the flesh of killed animals who used to be as alive as you and he and I.  He apparently eats other stuff too; but he bravely refuses to do the cowardly two-step and hide behind the vanilla term "omnivore."  (And anyway, so-called "omnivores" are not truly "omnivores," unless they are, say, eating the scrapings off of walls, and the remains of what is excavated up from on top of and between pavement slabs; or, making salads out of autumn leaves -- yum!)

So, I shall lay down the law (all you free-spirited English-speakers, please pass and ignore):

1. If meat is regularly present in your diet, and if you consider a meal a true meal only if meat is a main item, then in fairness you should call yourself a "carnivore."

2. If you eat meat, occasionally, even often, but are perfectly satisfied with meatless meals, and do not consider a meal unsatisfactory if it does not contain some meat, then you may indeed refer to yourself by that vanilla-wafer word, "omnivore."

And to quote the most famous of all ancient Romans, Quod scripsi, scripsi.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

dictionary definitions

ATreyger, a natural scientist -- so we all understand he has his intellectual limitations -- , thinks that what he reads in a dictionary ends the issue about what a word might mean, and how a word ought to be used.

In this case, he clearly missed the very important information about the word's etymology.  "Humane" is obviously a variant of "human."  And we are justified to understand BOTH words to mean, "what is appropriate for human beings."

And so, AskAntik (who may or may not be naive/idealistic about what the people of Bhutan are up to, but he will find out in time) is entirely right to criticize the use of "humane," when it is applied to dead, slaughtered animals.

It may indeed be possible to slaughter animals with minimal pain.  But that does NOT make the act of slaughter "humane."  And we are lying to ourselves (as we so love doing, no?), if we think that the moral burden is lifted from our choice of "humane" meat in a food store or restaurant.

The ethical elephant in the room, which carnivorous human beings go delicately pirouetting around, is the huge question: Why do human beings think they come first?; or, why do human beings think their rights/interests/feelings count, when those of non-human animals do not?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Hesiodic digression

Ask anyone who is listening and paying attention how these names might be suggestive of something interesting and/or good:

1. Okeanos;

2. Kronos;

3. Prometheus;

4. Pandora;

5. Hope.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

mothers!!

I do not know if it was when I saw her reading "The Imitation of Christ," or when I saw her reading Edith Hamilton's "Mythology," that more messed me up ...

As it is, I do pretty well, staying awake, while she tells me about her latest book review at her local Barnes & Noble.

She never much liked books about the Third Reich, as I recall.  They depressed her awfully; and I can see why.

By the same token, must-reading for one and all is Christopher Isherwood's "Berlin Stories," inspiration for one of the greatest of all musical comico-whatevers, "Cabaret," by
Fred Ebb and John Kander.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"awesome"?

AREAD,
there is no such thing as a "sustainable fishery."  The well-known lists of recommended and not recommended seafood published by the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Blue Ocean Institute (and perhaps there are others) are a bit misleading in that regard.  At present, it does indeed happen (fortunately) that many fish and other marine animals are caught not in excess, and the same numbers of those animals can be counted on to be present and available for catching in the next few years.  But in fact we do not know enough about what affects marine ecosystems -- or about human demand -- to make solid predictions about "sustainability."  And in this age of global warming, marine ecosystems are even less certain.

LateNac,
eat what you want.  I am not pushing you to do anything you do not want to.  All I am saying is, embracing a dead animal, whose flesh you intend to feed upon, is not very classy.On Food Network star Alton Brown adds a pinch of sustainability to the pot posted 1 year, 5 months ago 27 Responses

sociality is not purity of intent

In Tenochtitlan, ca. 1500, no doubt the chili-tomato sauce in which the residents of an urban precinct dined upon haunches and limbs of Tlaxcalan captives was often quite poetic.  What a joyous experience for all of them!

Well, not for the captives; they had been dispatched shortly before, at the top of a pyramid.

What Erykah Badu seems to have in mind, by contrast, is an almost Jewish sense that eating the traditional foods of one's neighbors is dishonest, inauthentic and polluting.  "Purity of intent" means discovering a better way, and resolving to follow it.

Nice bean dish, Amazing.  It would go well with wholewheat couscous.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

necrophilia -- yuk!

"Yay AB" not!  Hugging dead vertebrates with gestures of affection is way weird.

Let us move on, to a better way of relating to sentient fellow-creatures, than exploiting them and eating them.

Meanwhile, AB is worth listening to, when it comes to threatening fishing fleets, among whom the Japanese are just one.  The Spanish (to my great sorrow, because I love Spain) are just as bad.On Food Network star Alton Brown adds a pinch of sustainability to the pot posted 1 year, 5 months ago 27 Responses

Obama's VP!

This is the beginning of what I have been praying for, here in NYC.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

" objective leaders"?

I always appreciate Steven Earl Salmony's contributions; and I hope he will have the energy to continue to make them, even if most of us do not respond to them directly.  SES expresses environmentalist values very nicely.

In this case, "objective leaders" must strike most of us an oxymoron, unless the Utopia outlined in Plato's Republic were to come to pass.  And even then ...

Cousin Wolverine makes an excellent point.  It is irrelevant, however scientifically interesting, that rise in sea levels is correlated with mass extinctions, and may sometimes cause them.

Much more important for us to consider -- nay, to take to heart -- right now, is the thoughtless, self-entitled exploitation of the planet, directly involving destruction of ecosystems, perpetrated by us human beings, and coolly set aside, sadly by even the less thoughtless of us, in the box labeled "habitat destruction."

Sea-level rise from anthropogenic global warming is just one species of habitat destruction.  And habitat destruction is just one species of human thoughtless exploitation of the Earth's community of living creatures.  And such exploitation is just one species of human selfish entitledness.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

the vegan diet should NOT be ascetic!

Karen Dawn, author of the Dawnwatch newsletter, was happy that Oprah promoted veganism (as well as gave attention to the horror of puppy mills), but was very unhappy that Oprah entered into her vegan regime as a kind of purification/purgation/ascetic regimen.

Karen is absolutely right that when we talk up veg*nism, we must emphasize that it is a new, joyful, fulfilling lifestyle; it is NOT a form of self-denial, penance and suffering.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Nice, JohnfM

How true, how true ...  That is an excellent observation, about eggs and dairy products in our current food system, and the totally unnecessary animal abuse that they entail.

I did not know that there are carnivores who point to Yahweh's preference of the shepherd Abel over the gardener Cain as a justification for their diet, and on the other hand as a condemnation of veg*nism.  But I am not at all surprised.  It just goes to show:

1. the Bible is no "Bible," i.e. no final authority on anything;

2. it must be read with a whole sea of salt;

3. "God" in the Bible is just a character, the creation of more or less ill-informed authors, and not at all the true God.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/06/18/veganic.farm.a ...

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"beating the drums"

Well, Mad Mac, that is not quite the metaphor that I would use.  The point is, NOT to communicate, "We want you meat-eaters to know that many people are angry with you," still less "We want you meat-eaters to know that many people, being angry with you, are threatening you with significant harm of one kind or another."  No no no.  That might be the implication of "beating the drums," but it is certainly nothing like what I intend.

And, as I think I said before, I quite accept that "most people just don't care."

But just because you say that, and just because it is true, RIGHT NOW, that does not at all mean that the story is over.

One of the brilliant things about people is that they talk with one another, and they get new ideas in their heads, and they decide they want to change.  I do not know if it is especially brilliant, on the other hand, to go about intentionally trying to get people to change.  Such efforts are extraordinarily arduous, most of the time (unless perhaps you are into advertising, and