Contrary to myth, PETA does not want to confiscate animals who are well cared for and "set them free." What we want is for the population of dogs and cats to be reduced through spaying and neutering and for people to adopt animals (preferably two so that they can keep each other company when their human companions aren't home) from pounds or shelters--never from pet shops or breeders--thereby reducing suffering in the world.
It seems like what they are objecting to is not pet ownership but rather the breeding of cats and dogs for use as pets. This may be why "reputable breeders" are opposed to PETA. I don't think, though, that PETA's position on pet ownership can accurately be summarized as "PETA is against keeping pets."
Most people I know agree with some things PETA says (almost everyone agrees you shouldn't beat your dog) and disagree with other things they say (almost everyone involved with dogs believes that dogs find crates comforting, and as long as the dog isn't locked in the crate the majority of the time, there is nothing wrong with using one.) But a rational discussion about the merits of their various positions isn't served by using straw-man arguments and distorting what they are saying. Of course, they are asking for such treatment by being obnoxious in the first place, but that doesn't mean we all have to be that way when talking about the issues they bring up.
Thanks for the hyperlinks, by the way - they were educational!
The characterization of PETA and of animal rights groups in general being opposed to companion animals is something that has been made up by opposition groups. For example, here's a document where PETA encourages people to adopt dogs and cats:
Adopting a cat or dog from a shelter and providing a loving home is a small but powerful way to prevent... suffering. The most important thing that animal guardians can do is to spay or neuter their animals and avoid buying animals from breeders or pet stores, which contribute to the overpopulation crisis... If you have the time, energy, space, and money to care for a dog (or two), please visit your local animal shelter and adopt. Mixed-breed dogs are typically healthier and more even-tempered than purebred dogs, but if you're determined, you can usually find purebred dogs at shelters.
PETA, like most animal-rights groups, are opposed to exotic and non-domesticated pets, but there is a big difference between opposing the confinement of wild animals and opposing keeping dogs and cats, who actually like being with people, in the home. The latter is something that has been made up to discredit them. I challenge you to find any animal-rights organization who has a stated goal of "ending all interaction between humans and animals." I've never heard of such a thing, outside of right-wing talk radio.
The no-kill movement has some valid criticisms of PETA's position on the "euthanasia" of homeless animals (a position that it shares with most mainstream animal-protection organizations.) These criticisms are best outlined in Nathan Winograd's book Redemption.
Winograd, who has successfully helped a number of communities go no-kill, has earned the right to criticize the kill rates at PETA shelters. This stands in sharp contrast to right-wingers who don't care one bit about animals dying in shelters unless appearing to do so will help them score points against PETA, whom they hate because PETA makes them feel guilty about their own lifestyles.
PETA was founded by a former shelter manager and is stuck in some old ways of thinking on issues relating to animal shelters. They would do a better job of advocacy if they either shut down their shelters and focused on consumer issues, or joined the no-kill movement to reduce killing at shelters. The NAACP doesn't kill those they are fighting for, nor does B'nai B'rith. It makes no sense for PETA to participate in the killing of animals.
According to all publicly-available information, there are no known personnel overlaps between the ALF and PETA - the only connection between the two is that PETA has given money to people identified as ALF.
Of course, if you do happen to have any evidence that there are personnel overlaps with PETA, I would be very interested to read about it. Please provide some sources so we can find out if this is true.
Lawyers can do pro bono work on civil cases as well as criminal cases. For example, the Southern Poverty Law Center has provided pro bono representation to plaintiffs in a number of high-profile civil suits against white-supremacist organizations, such as this recent personal-injury case that's been in the news lately. The decision of whether or not to do so is up to the individual lawyer or organization.
You may be thinking of court-appointed (taxpayer-funded) counsel, which is different from pro bono (third-party funded) counsel. There is a sixth-amendment Constitutional right to court-appointed counsel for indigent defendants in criminal trials, but not in civil trials, although in certain cases one may be appointed for a civil trial.
When I read the words "my organization" in the original post, I heard them in a gravelly voice with an Italian accent... but maybe I've just been watching too many movies.
Soylent Green would help, but it would hardly be sufficient to keep up with the demand. A person only dies once, and at that time would yield only let's say a maximum of 100 lbs of human meat. Divided by a 75-year lifespan, that would only amount to 1.3 pounds of human meat per consuming person per year, assuming a stable population. If the population is growing, there would be more living people to eat the meat than there would be people dying to provide the meat, so the amount of human meat per year would be lower than that.
Good point. Salad is one of the most un-filling things on the planet. I never bother with it myself. A "raw food" diet, consisting of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and sprouted or very-slowly-cooked grains is possible, but by every account it's a lot of work. People I've talked to who have done it or are doing it say it makes them feel very energetic, but it takes a lot of time to prepare the food, and they have to eat a ton. I don't have the patience for that. I often eat pasta-with-vegetables and rice-with-vegetables dishes (what Americans generally call "ethnic food" and the rest of the world generally calls "food," hearty soups, veggie burgers and dogs, and tofurkey-and-spinach sandwitches. I never spend more than a few minutes preparing a meal, and I never feel hungry or lack energy.
Most people seem to do best with between 10-20% of their calories from fat, 10-20% of their calories from protein, and the rest from carbs. Hunger is generally caused by one of two things: either not enough food, or a lack of some specific micronutrient that sends you into cravings to try to fill that need. So to avoid feeling hungry, you need enough macronutrients (fat, protein, and carbs) in the right proportion for your body (which of course will be different for a bodybuilder and a 98-pound mouse jockey) as well as all the necessary micronutrients, either from a variety of nutrient-rich foods, or from supplements. There's no reason not to take a multivitamin just to make sure you're getting everything you need, and vegetarians in particular need to make sure they get enough B vitamins, which come from bacteria that are found plentifully in red meat, but are harder to find in the plant world.
I'm guessing that your classmates probably didn't eat enough, or eat well enough. I've been vegetarian for 20 years, and I'm a 195-pound endurance athlete (long-distance runner/cyclist.) There are less calories (and a lot less fat) in meat substitutes, so if you don't up your intake, you could lose weight. For some people, that's a good thing, and for others, it's a bad thing. There's nothing magical about animal foods, though - there are no necessary nutrients that are found in meat that can't be found in plant foods. As stated in this press release...
It is the position of the American Dietetic Association and Dietitians of Canada that appropriately planned vegetarian diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate and provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases.
Now of course, if you don't eat enough, or eat nothing but junk food, you're going to be in trouble... but that's true no matter if you're vegetarian or not. If you take a standard meat-eater's diet and cut the meat out of it, you probably aren't going to be left with enough to live on. But if you follow sound nutritional principles and eat more vegetables, you'll probably be better off.
BTW, there are two things that most doctors will tell almost everyone they need more of: water, and vegetables. Drink as much water as you can, and eat a good variety of as many nutritious vegetables as you can, and your health will improve. This is true whether or not you eat meat. And if you're going to go vegetarian, don't just cut the meat out of your diet... start eating more things that are good for you instead.
I'm not sure, but since that same God made humans taste like chicken, I'm assuming that he likes to tempt us with things we shouldn't eat. There's a story about a magical apple that supports this theory...
Another positive byproduct of eliminating corn subsidies is that people will stop wasting time making vehicles run on ethanol from corn that took as much petroleum to produce than the ethanol can displace.... google "ethanol subsidies" for some figures on this.
If we didn't breed the cattle, they wouldn't be there, and therefore they wouldn't be eating the grain (a term I use in a generic sense. I'm fully aware that corn is the specific grain they are fed in America.)
What I'm advocating is that people cut down on or eliminate their meat consumption, which will cause fewer beef cattle to be bred, which will cause this inefficient use of grain, water, petroleum, and land to decrease and eventually end through the natural forces of the market.
At the same time, we'll eliminate one of the two major causes of heart disease, which happens to be the #1 killer of Americans.
If you want more vegetables, there are plenty of scientific ways to make that happen on any quality of land, not necessarily requiring soil. You can grow tomatoes in hydroponic greenhouses in the desert like this company does, for example.
The reality is that we don't have enough planet for everyone to be a meat-eater, at least not in the American sense. For every 100 pounds of grain protein you give to cattle as feed, you only get back 10 pounds of protein as meat. So although American cattle typically spend their lives in a feedlot rather than on arable land, the fact still remains that that land must be used to grow grain to feed the cattle. We could support roughly 10 times more people with the same amount of arable land if everyone was vegetarian.
Nothing says "get out of my way" like having a snake in your emblem... it's even better than a Jaguar or a Dodge Ram in that department. The only thing that could beat it would be an emblem featuring Trogdor the Burninator!
Please re-evaluate your use of the word "trolling" in the post above.
Honestly expressing an opinion which is unpopular or which is contrary to your opinion is not trolling.
Honestly expressing an opinion or fact which is objectively wrong is not trolling.
Trolling has been defined as "To deliberately post false or controversial messages to gain attention for the sake of gaining attention."
Posting a message on Slashdot that says that the next Apple will run Windows is trolling. Posting a message that McCain is gay on a right-wing discussion board is trolling. Posting a message that Honda hasn't made a good car in decades on a Honda discussion board is trolling.
Referring to taxes on cigarettes and alcohol as "vice taxes," on the other hand, is common usage. GP was clearly not trolling, no matter what his opinions and/or your opinions on the subject of taxing cigarettes and alcohol may be. It's not about correctness or popularity, but rather about intent. Let's keep the word "troll" a clear, distinct, and useful concept instead of bending it into "someone who disagrees with me about something."
For me, they always get the movie the day after I mail it, and I always get the movie the day after they mail it. Also, for me, streaming video to the PC in my bedroom works flawlessly and on the 22" widescreen LCD monitor there is very little difference in quality between the streaming video and a DVD.
My sister, however, lives out in the country, so it takes a week for a disc to get to her and her Internet access is so slow that streaming video doesn't work well.
So in both cases, how much you get out of Netflix will depend on where you live and the speed of your Internet connection. I have no complaints about the selection and service, though. Thanks to Netflix I've canceled my cable TV and never need to go to the video store, and I have access to all the movies and (once released on DVD) TV shows I can handle.
I'm sorry to hear that the Nintendo cartridge damaged the car you drove over it... Next time you may want to use something other than a lowrider for that purpose.
Unlike letters to members of Congress from lobbyists, amicus briefs are generally not sent with a check stapled to them.
This means that they are not really a problem the way lobbying Congress is a problem, because amicus briefs contain nothing to influence a judge other than the merit of their arguments (and maybe a bit of the perceived prestige of whoever wrote them.)
For an interesting (though quite disturbing, for a couple of reasons) read related to this discussion, check out Andrea Dworkin, the radical feminist whose major thesis is, if I understand her correctly, that "straight male = sick woman raping motherfucker."
You can force it to check mail using POP3 on demand; they just buried the feature in the UI.
Here's where it is: Click Settings in the upper-right, then click the Accounts tab, then in the "Get mail from other accounts" section, then finally click the "check mail now" link to the right of the name of the account you want to check. Then it will immediately check for messages using that POP3 account.
I also like using isopropyl alcohol (the stuff they sell at the drugstore as rubbing alcohol) for cleaning keyboards and telephones, but not just for its disinfectant properties... it quickly gets rid of the grime that makes white and gray keys look disgusting.
The only downside is that I've run across a couple brands of keyboard where it will take off the lettering, so you might want to test it on the "pause/break" key (or your own least favorite key) first to make sure it won't do that. Some people think blank keyboards are great for forcing you to touch-type, but others don't want to be challenged that way:-).
Slashdot Mirror
It seems like what they are objecting to is not pet ownership but rather the breeding of cats and dogs for use as pets. This may be why "reputable breeders" are opposed to PETA. I don't think, though, that PETA's position on pet ownership can accurately be summarized as "PETA is against keeping pets."
Most people I know agree with some things PETA says (almost everyone agrees you shouldn't beat your dog) and disagree with other things they say (almost everyone involved with dogs believes that dogs find crates comforting, and as long as the dog isn't locked in the crate the majority of the time, there is nothing wrong with using one.) But a rational discussion about the merits of their various positions isn't served by using straw-man arguments and distorting what they are saying. Of course, they are asking for such treatment by being obnoxious in the first place, but that doesn't mean we all have to be that way when talking about the issues they bring up.
Thanks for the hyperlinks, by the way - they were educational!
PETA, like most animal-rights groups, are opposed to exotic and non-domesticated pets, but there is a big difference between opposing the confinement of wild animals and opposing keeping dogs and cats, who actually like being with people, in the home. The latter is something that has been made up to discredit them. I challenge you to find any animal-rights organization who has a stated goal of "ending all interaction between humans and animals." I've never heard of such a thing, outside of right-wing talk radio.
The no-kill movement has some valid criticisms of PETA's position on the "euthanasia" of homeless animals (a position that it shares with most mainstream animal-protection organizations.) These criticisms are best outlined in Nathan Winograd's book Redemption.
Winograd, who has successfully helped a number of communities go no-kill, has earned the right to criticize the kill rates at PETA shelters. This stands in sharp contrast to right-wingers who don't care one bit about animals dying in shelters unless appearing to do so will help them score points against PETA, whom they hate because PETA makes them feel guilty about their own lifestyles.
PETA was founded by a former shelter manager and is stuck in some old ways of thinking on issues relating to animal shelters. They would do a better job of advocacy if they either shut down their shelters and focused on consumer issues, or joined the no-kill movement to reduce killing at shelters. The NAACP doesn't kill those they are fighting for, nor does B'nai B'rith. It makes no sense for PETA to participate in the killing of animals.
According to all publicly-available information, there are no known personnel overlaps between the ALF and PETA - the only connection between the two is that PETA has given money to people identified as ALF.
Of course, if you do happen to have any evidence that there are personnel overlaps with PETA, I would be very interested to read about it. Please provide some sources so we can find out if this is true.
Lawyers can do pro bono work on civil cases as well as criminal cases. For example, the Southern Poverty Law Center has provided pro bono representation to plaintiffs in a number of high-profile civil suits against white-supremacist organizations, such as this recent personal-injury case that's been in the news lately. The decision of whether or not to do so is up to the individual lawyer or organization.
You may be thinking of court-appointed (taxpayer-funded) counsel, which is different from pro bono (third-party funded) counsel. There is a sixth-amendment Constitutional right to court-appointed counsel for indigent defendants in criminal trials, but not in civil trials, although in certain cases one may be appointed for a civil trial.
When I read the words "my organization" in the original post, I heard them in a gravelly voice with an Italian accent... but maybe I've just been watching too many movies.
You can have my abstinence-only education textbook when you pry it from my cold dead fingers!
:-)
Soylent Green would help, but it would hardly be sufficient to keep up with the demand. A person only dies once, and at that time would yield only let's say a maximum of 100 lbs of human meat. Divided by a 75-year lifespan, that would only amount to 1.3 pounds of human meat per consuming person per year, assuming a stable population. If the population is growing, there would be more living people to eat the meat than there would be people dying to provide the meat, so the amount of human meat per year would be lower than that.
Good point. Salad is one of the most un-filling things on the planet. I never bother with it myself. A "raw food" diet, consisting of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and sprouted or very-slowly-cooked grains is possible, but by every account it's a lot of work. People I've talked to who have done it or are doing it say it makes them feel very energetic, but it takes a lot of time to prepare the food, and they have to eat a ton. I don't have the patience for that. I often eat pasta-with-vegetables and rice-with-vegetables dishes (what Americans generally call "ethnic food" and the rest of the world generally calls "food," hearty soups, veggie burgers and dogs, and tofurkey-and-spinach sandwitches. I never spend more than a few minutes preparing a meal, and I never feel hungry or lack energy.
Most people seem to do best with between 10-20% of their calories from fat, 10-20% of their calories from protein, and the rest from carbs. Hunger is generally caused by one of two things: either not enough food, or a lack of some specific micronutrient that sends you into cravings to try to fill that need. So to avoid feeling hungry, you need enough macronutrients (fat, protein, and carbs) in the right proportion for your body (which of course will be different for a bodybuilder and a 98-pound mouse jockey) as well as all the necessary micronutrients, either from a variety of nutrient-rich foods, or from supplements. There's no reason not to take a multivitamin just to make sure you're getting everything you need, and vegetarians in particular need to make sure they get enough B vitamins, which come from bacteria that are found plentifully in red meat, but are harder to find in the plant world.
Now of course, if you don't eat enough, or eat nothing but junk food, you're going to be in trouble... but that's true no matter if you're vegetarian or not. If you take a standard meat-eater's diet and cut the meat out of it, you probably aren't going to be left with enough to live on. But if you follow sound nutritional principles and eat more vegetables, you'll probably be better off.
BTW, there are two things that most doctors will tell almost everyone they need more of: water, and vegetables. Drink as much water as you can, and eat a good variety of as many nutritious vegetables as you can, and your health will improve. This is true whether or not you eat meat. And if you're going to go vegetarian, don't just cut the meat out of your diet... start eating more things that are good for you instead.
I'm not sure, but since that same God made humans taste like chicken, I'm assuming that he likes to tempt us with things we shouldn't eat. There's a story about a magical apple that supports this theory...
:-)
Another positive byproduct of eliminating corn subsidies is that people will stop wasting time making vehicles run on ethanol from corn that took as much petroleum to produce than the ethanol can displace.... google "ethanol subsidies" for some figures on this.
If we didn't breed the cattle, they wouldn't be there, and therefore they wouldn't be eating the grain (a term I use in a generic sense. I'm fully aware that corn is the specific grain they are fed in America.)
What I'm advocating is that people cut down on or eliminate their meat consumption, which will cause fewer beef cattle to be bred, which will cause this inefficient use of grain, water, petroleum, and land to decrease and eventually end through the natural forces of the market.
At the same time, we'll eliminate one of the two major causes of heart disease, which happens to be the #1 killer of Americans.
If you want more vegetables, there are plenty of scientific ways to make that happen on any quality of land, not necessarily requiring soil. You can grow tomatoes in hydroponic greenhouses in the desert like this company does, for example.
The reality is that we don't have enough planet for everyone to be a meat-eater, at least not in the American sense. For every 100 pounds of grain protein you give to cattle as feed, you only get back 10 pounds of protein as meat. So although American cattle typically spend their lives in a feedlot rather than on arable land, the fact still remains that that land must be used to grow grain to feed the cattle. We could support roughly 10 times more people with the same amount of arable land if everyone was vegetarian.
After watching the movie The Fantastic Four with my young son, he asked if we could watch Fantastic Three next...
Nothing says "get out of my way" like having a snake in your emblem... it's even better than a Jaguar or a Dodge Ram in that department. The only thing that could beat it would be an emblem featuring Trogdor the Burninator!
Please re-evaluate your use of the word "trolling" in the post above.
Honestly expressing an opinion which is unpopular or which is contrary to your opinion is not trolling.
Honestly expressing an opinion or fact which is objectively wrong is not trolling.
Trolling has been defined as "To deliberately post false or controversial messages to gain attention for the sake of gaining attention."
Posting a message on Slashdot that says that the next Apple will run Windows is trolling. Posting a message that McCain is gay on a right-wing discussion board is trolling. Posting a message that Honda hasn't made a good car in decades on a Honda discussion board is trolling.
Referring to taxes on cigarettes and alcohol as "vice taxes," on the other hand, is common usage. GP was clearly not trolling, no matter what his opinions and/or your opinions on the subject of taxing cigarettes and alcohol may be. It's not about correctness or popularity, but rather about intent. Let's keep the word "troll" a clear, distinct, and useful concept instead of bending it into "someone who disagrees with me about something."
It does depend a lot on where you live...
For me, they always get the movie the day after I mail it, and I always get the movie the day after they mail it. Also, for me, streaming video to the PC in my bedroom works flawlessly and on the 22" widescreen LCD monitor there is very little difference in quality between the streaming video and a DVD.
My sister, however, lives out in the country, so it takes a week for a disc to get to her and her Internet access is so slow that streaming video doesn't work well.
So in both cases, how much you get out of Netflix will depend on where you live and the speed of your Internet connection. I have no complaints about the selection and service, though. Thanks to Netflix I've canceled my cable TV and never need to go to the video store, and I have access to all the movies and (once released on DVD) TV shows I can handle.
I'm sorry to hear that the Nintendo cartridge damaged the car you drove over it... Next time you may want to use something other than a lowrider for that purpose.
Unlike letters to members of Congress from lobbyists, amicus briefs are generally not sent with a check stapled to them.
This means that they are not really a problem the way lobbying Congress is a problem, because amicus briefs contain nothing to influence a judge other than the merit of their arguments (and maybe a bit of the perceived prestige of whoever wrote them.)
FYI, traffic court is a criminal court, not a civil court.
For an interesting (though quite disturbing, for a couple of reasons) read related to this discussion, check out Andrea Dworkin, the radical feminist whose major thesis is, if I understand her correctly, that "straight male = sick woman raping motherfucker."
You must have kittens...
You can force it to check mail using POP3 on demand; they just buried the feature in the UI.
Here's where it is: Click Settings in the upper-right, then click the Accounts tab, then in the "Get mail from other accounts" section, then finally click the "check mail now" link to the right of the name of the account you want to check. Then it will immediately check for messages using that POP3 account.
I also like using isopropyl alcohol (the stuff they sell at the drugstore as rubbing alcohol) for cleaning keyboards and telephones, but not just for its disinfectant properties... it quickly gets rid of the grime that makes white and gray keys look disgusting.
:-).
The only downside is that I've run across a couple brands of keyboard where it will take off the lettering, so you might want to test it on the "pause/break" key (or your own least favorite key) first to make sure it won't do that. Some people think blank keyboards are great for forcing you to touch-type, but others don't want to be challenged that way