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Easter Humor
sohp writes "The longest running Internet cartoon of all, Dave Farley's Dr. Fun, has this laugher on some tasty case mods for the Easter season." cojoco sends in a webpage covering the secret dangers of bunnies, and we here at Slashdot would like to make a public service announcement that humans have a responsibility to care for their pets even if they chew through computer cords. linuxwrangler writes "It's Easter and the 50th anniversary of the Marshmallow Peep. The fine folks at Peep Research have found them to cooperative test subjects. People with too much time on their hands (tm) have braved copyright complaints to create "Lord of the Peeps, FOTP" and we can't forget NASA's brave peep-o-nauts. Happy easter."
One of the hats I wear is volunteer for the House Rabbit Society (Michigan chapter). We get hundreds of calls every year from people who get a rabbit for whatever reason -- gift from girl/boyfriend, Easter gift, parents bought to teach kids "responsibility," or like this case, someone who took a stray into his home instead of calling his local animal control facility.
Probably 95% of these calls are dump calls. People get sick of an animal and want to "get rid of" it -- and yes, those are the exact words they use, almost every time, "get rid of."
Most of those are just people who don't know how to take care of the damn thing. For cripe's sakes, people, when you get an animal, go buy a book and read it. Rabbits are not dogs or cats. For starters, they chew. And maybe I'm just in a bad mood but how much of a genius do you have to be to turn a chewing animal loose in your home without protecting your precious computer cables? Baby gates, plexiglass and cable wrap -- this is not rocket science.
How much of a genius, to not realize that an animal that chews through a power cord will very possibly kill itself?
And how much of a humanitarian, to blame the animal for your own fuckup, and dump it on a shelter?
(If you have a rabbit, by the way, we recommend the House Rabbit Handbook because it's simply the best guide out there.)
Happy Easter Everyone.
Try this one too...
http://www.poddys.com/jokes/east_006.htm
Twix
...the most dangerous rabbit of all
"Anybody who tells me I can't use a program because it's not open source, go suck on rms. I'm not interested." (LT 2004)
Shouts out to all my peeps in tha house! ... Sorry
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
Note the glowing red eyes!
Bunnies aren't just cute like everybody supposes! They've got them hoppy legs and twitchy little noses! And what's with all the carrots? What do they need such good eyesight for anyway?
(blatantly ripped off from Buffy)
I stole this Sig
Is Doctor Fun the oldest comic on the Internet?
No. That would be "Where the Buffalo Roam" by Hans Bjordahl. "Where the Buffalo Roam" started in 1991, and had its own Usenet group long before Doctor Fun came along, and is still running on the web.
Bunnies aren't just cute like everybody supposes
They got them hoppy legs and twitchy little noses
And what's with all the carrots?
What do they need such good eyesight for anyway?
Bunnies, bunnies, it must be bunnies
For the complete lyrics and MIDI files
Reminds me when i brought in some peeps and we put them in the vaccum chamber in the chem lab. They started to grow a bit like we hypothesised(like the marshmallows in the jar in the foodsaver vaclock II infomercial) but then i guess all the air pockets in the marchmallow collapsed and we ended up with paper thin little blobs of purple sugar. Tasted the same, but not so chewey.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I don't know about you guys, but the annual fight to the death involving my mother, aunt, and grandmother over how the stuffing should be prepared is just about all the Easter humour I can handle. =\
Happy Jesus on a stick day!
Bugs are just features that have been fixed.
Let's remember what Easter is all about...Bunnies. It's got nothing to do with God coming to earth in the form of a man to pay the ultimate sacrifice for our sins. Let's dress this holiday up just like we dress up every other Christian holiday and turn something sacred into a great way to sell Cadbury Eggs.
However, as far as "forcing beliefs" on people - you are a bit of a jackass, aren't you? Do you honestly think that you celebrating the easter bunny forces MY beliefs on YOU? How 'bout when they teach my children about Santa Claus in the public schools? Who is having beliefs forced on them?
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
So far, I have not seen any non-religious ethical system that can answer the latter two questions. Humanism tries, but fails: why should I care about the good of humanity? And, in case you haven't noticed lately, the secularization of human services under the banner of government has not given the wonderful results promised. (Go down to the 'hood sometime and see all the parentless children if you don't believe me. They were there before, they are there now. But there may be more now. "The poor will be with you always.")
As a Christian, I can answer these last two questions, but probably not in the way you expect. My answers are as follows:
- What to do? What God tells me to.
- Why? Because I love God, because he is good and just. Yes, I really feel that way. (And yes, I'm familiar with the gazillion old testament examples that you might feel inclined to cite.)
- How? With his power, and with the assurance that if I sacrifice my welfare in this life, I need not worry because I can look forward to something better in the next.
Christian ethics call for a profoundly unworldly viewpoint -- one that says "money doesn't matter, stuff doesn't matter, heaven knows that war on iraq doesn't matter: only God matters" -- and this viewpoint will ALWAYS be unpopular. When Christian ethics becomes trite, as in the formulation you gave in your post, is when it is watered down in an attempt to make it practical for people who *don't* love God more than their own life. Is it really surprising that it fails in such cases?"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
And how much of a humanitarian, to blame the animal for your own fuckup, and dump it on a shelter?
Okay, I know this will probably offend some people, but...what's the deal here? Really and honestly, if you get a chicken or a duck or a rabbit or whatever, there are people running around who are saying that if you aren't sure you can take care of it, you shouldn't get the thing. What do they have to support their argument? What's *wrong* with getting an animal, deciding that you don't like it, and having it put down?
It isn't on "humanitarian" grounds, as jamie's pointing out, since a humanitarian specificaly values *human* welfare.
Some sort of general ban on killing animals? I kill bugs, like the ants that like to get into my room all the time, and don't have the slightest problem with it. Most people don't. What's the mysterious dividing line between rabbits and ants? They both sense pain, etc, etc.
Some sort of pratical issue? We ban murder in most societies because allowing murder produces severe negative social effects on the society. If you allow it, people get desperate and attack other people back, and the society devolves into violence. Killing a rabbit -- there isn't much of a social impact there. Hitchcock's The Birds was a fantasy -- the critters aren't going to be able to do anything back to you.
The only reason I can think of that we have shelters for rabbits, but not for spiders, is that rabbits and fuzzy animals trigger a deep irrational "It's cute!" response -- the same sort of thing that drives PETA. Then we develop a moral system using these basic, irrational reactions as axioms that we then use to *justify* the reactions and our actions. "But it's *wrong* to keep a rabbit and then let it die!" *Why*, I ask?
Finally, if jamie and PETA and friends succeed, and people run out and buy N - M rabbits one year instead of N rabbits...then what? You have M rabbits that don't even have a chance at *life*. Yeah, maybe those rabbits would have ended up spending their last moments working on an electrical cord...but I'm still glad that *I* exist, even if I happen to die next week getting run over by a car.
May we never see th