Trees as an energy source are renewable? Growing a tree requires a large amount of nutrients. When trees (or corn/sugar cane/switch grass) are stripped and shipped off for fuel instead of being allowed to fall where it grew and release those nutrients back into the soil, there is a loss of potential energy where the tree is grown.
My point is that in the reasonable sense of the word "renewable," the work required to re-plant and nourish a tree allows you to, over time (and with mostly energy input from the sun), efficiently renew that resource. It might take a bunch of cow manure or other goodies to keep the soil useful, of course. But that's my point: "renewable" resources are those things that we can work to keep bringing back or putting in place. There is no such option or need when it comes to tides, wind, etc. The phrase may not be sufficiently detailed when it comes to trees, but it's just plain silly when it comes to wind.
And no, you can't say that the efforts required to "renew" the windmills when they wear out counts. You could say the same thing about coal mining equipment.
Oh, well, since "people" have noted it, that must meant that, despite the virtual impossibility of getting the PRC's notoriously kleptocratic, oppressive government to crack down on that country's use of producitivy-boosting tools that they didn't have to pay to develop or use, Microsoft must really not have cared that a giant economy with billions of people was, in substantial quantities, ripping them off. No doubt it just never crossed their minds to fret about it, since if they had noticed that, the PRC's fine, open-minded government would surely have stepped right up and done the right thing.
*eyes rolling back into useful position, more or less*
Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
I don't know which is worse... the use of the term "renewable" (from an energy/mass-there-is-only-so-much-of-it point of view) or the use of the term "renewable" when you're talking about wind. The tides aren't renewable. Geothermal isn't renewable. Solar isn't renewable. These are all forms of energy that are simply used.
Trees are renewable. Oil is renewable (um, if you're really patient). How can we expect to get people to think more critically about their use of energy when fundabental notions like "renewable" are tangled up and mis-applied by the very nerdy-smart-people that are supposed to know better? Why butcher the language and cave in to the warm-and-fuzziness of that term when simply calling it like it is would be more accurate, more educational, and better for shaping science-ready minds as they first really stop to think about such things?
I'm sorry, but I've never understood the joy some people find in deceiving children who come to them with honest questions. Those kids want to learn the truth and you tell them a lie for your own amusement while pretending to help them.
You're not a very subtle one, are you. The only "children" at whom my humor was aimed were the ones here on slashdot that can't spot a bit of satire when they see it. Lighten up a little bit. Of course I didn't say that to a kid - I said it to this audience to paint a rather pointed picture of the sort of cynicism that misses the opportunity of launching a spacecraft right over that kid's head to actually share the wonder of it. My bit of self-depracating jokery (since the joke could only be on me, right? for being that cynical?) was for the folks who appreciate the satire. Not the ones that aren't quick enough to pick up on it.
It's just like religion.
Again, if you can't tell, it's exactly the people that spread stuff like that (the religious types, to use your example) that I'm making fun of here. Don't you get it? Oh well.
One of the neighbor kids asked what was in the sky this morning, and I told him it was the government testing something they might need if Santa flies in too close to the DC-area controlled airspace. It's great to see those little minds so caught up in the emotion of learning something new.
I was actually the lead engineer on this project, and it's completely gone (or at least as far as my company is concerned). The publicity led to a number of private sector prediction markets, but it turns out that most companies, while they are enthusiastic about trying them out, don't want to pay much money for implementation.
Bummer. I can only imagine the number of quite cool projects that evaporate that way for one reason or another (and not always for a good reason!).
I am surprised it took them this long to implement as a similar project was implemented at select federal intelligence agencies through DARPA funding back in early 2002 to evaluate possible intelligence leads and threats to national security.
You may also recall that a particularly bad round of reporting on some related work (wherein people in the defense/intel world were "gambling" futures on which head of state, for example, would next come under attack from within, etc) resulted in headlines like "Government Officials Place Assassination Bets." They actually had to shut that one down because the media idiots got enough people to make congress creatures uncomfortable. I hope they just moved the research out of the bright lights and kept it up, but it just goes to show you that these slightly odd-seeming areas of research can be wildly misinterpreted by people who get all of their interpretation in 10-second sound bites. Um, or slashdot summaries.
They do not have that right, whether people are around or not. Animals kill each other all the time. Our pre-sentient ancestors killed them all the time, too. At some point, our cognitive skills evolved - quite probably exactly to improve the ability to hunt and make more effective use of limited physical speed and strength in the face of adversity (including hunger, territorial squabbles, etc). That evolution doesn't particularly change a day in the life of an arthritic antelope that's going to either wind up as protein for a tribe of humans, or protein for a pride of lions.
But "rights" assume some premises, or set of precepts from which they can be derived. You indicate that the source of rights is "not known," as if they exist, and we can say what they are, but we just don't know why. This is sophistry (or the sentiment of someone that presumes rights ordained supernaturally). I contend that they can be objectively derived from the very nature of our existence and our ability to have this conversation. Looking for some external "source" of pre-defined rights is absurd. They aren't like gravity or the weather. They are what we make of them, and they are based on a world view that does, or does not embrace reality. People who opt for magical thinking might as well roll the dice, and people that look at it more rationally will construct a moral framework that derives from existence, free will, and our capacity to think about, and talk about those very things.
the question of hunting animals that aren't threatening your life
So, this isn't really about hunting at all, for you, then, is it? Because whether I kill a wild deer, or eat a cow that's been raised expressly to be a burger, neither is threatening my life. But our bodies need the proteins that are supplied by meat, and certain fats are vital. You will probably contend that once we started to come up with grains and various dietary supplements that come closer to precluding the need for animal-based proteins and fats, that there's no need for using animals in that way. Leaving aside the issue of wildlife management for a moment, does the presence or absence of a particular new miracle family of plant-based meat replacements actually change your perception of animal rights? How does changing the nature of vegetables change the nature of the animals?
You're rather carefully saying you don't know about these things. But buried behind your frequent protestations of ignorance is the clear shape of an agenda, which you really should just spell out. Pleading ignorance about something as fundamental as the basis for your ethics doesn't really line up with the rest of your tone, I think.
Killing and/or eating people is generally considered wrong, killing and/or eating animals generally is not. The reasons why are not known.
It's not a big mystery! People don't want to be eaten, and have the intellectual capacity to form societies that create and pass along codes of behavior that allow those societies to thrive above and beyond simple hunter/gatherer existence. Our evolution as a species depended on cooperation along those lines, and our evolution as a collection of cultures has (with some notable exceptions) reinforced that. People who step outside the reasonable boundaries of those societies (and, say, murder people) waive their rights to the protection of that society. If you opt out, you really opt out.
See, a lot of people wouldn't get the whole Shrodinger's Fish In A Barrel reference. At least, I don't think so. You never know. Maybe it's a Heisenberg thing.
It is the general opinion that killing people is wrong and I'm sure we can agree, at the very least for the sake of argument, that it is. Why this is the case is not clear. Some people think it is a matter of religion. Some say it is a product of evolved instincts
You're making too much of this (and, in a lot of ways, too little). It's simple: there are two basic cases for killing someone. 1) Self defense. 2) Everything else.
When you choose to kill someone without the compelling reason (hint: #1), you are essentially saying that all bets are off. If you choose to kill someone - show the intent, act on it - for some objectively weak reason (meaning, it's not self-defense), then you are through your actions waiving your right to be safe from the same action by someone else. It's that simple. If you indicate that it's OK to kill for no valid reason, then you can BE killed for no valid reason. That's such a straightforward proposition that it pretty much goes without saying, but I'm saying it to refute your notion that we "don't know why" it's not OK to kill other people. Of course we do, and that's it. Case closed. People may also mention a few other theories (like, their imagined deity of choice says they shouldn't, or they think karma is real, etc), but in whatever hunk of innate rationality we all (most of us) carry around, it's clear that it's in our own reasoned self interest not to establish a social setting in which lethal hostility is tolerated.
A grizzly bear is not going to sign onto that social compact. Of course, neither will a gorilla. Which brings me to:
Then look at the canines and forward-pointing eyes of gorillas, which are herbivores
Sorry, omnivores. Just like you, me, dogs, baboons, etc. Gorillas are observed eating meat, and routinely feast on termites and other forms of protein.
then they are just as capable of being used for eating human meat, an act generally considered wrong
No, you were talking about killing people, not eating them. Most people would be very uncomfortable eating human meat because it's a little too close to home, mortality-wise. It's unseemly. Until you've been stuck in the Andes for three weeks after your plane crashes, etc. Starvation tends to light up the more primitive pieces of the brain, and all of our carnivore/omnivore mammal relatives will sometimes be canabalistic, though less so among the omnivores.
Did you just claim that there is no difference between the two and that there is also difference?
No. Let's boil it down:
1) There is no difference, ethically, between personally choosing to kill someone/something and choosing to pay someone else to do it for you.
2) There IS a difference between choosing to kill something (say, for a meal, where the death of that something is the purpose of the action) and the consumption of a good or service that, in the course of its production, included the accidental death of someone working on it (using your example).
Actually, I've always thought there was a strong demand for a Star Trek comedy. I'd much prefer those over an animated series with 6-minute episodes.
I don't know. If you've ever seen the "Wrath Of Farakhan" sketch with Jim Carey as Kirk, it's pretty much all sewn up, right there. You can't beat that.
With regard to their feelings you clearly have developed strong opinions. However, as I mentioned, they are just opinions.
Driven, as I've mentioned, by as many or more hours observing and interacting with said creatures than many a grad-student biologist. I come by my very considered opinions honestly, and have reinforced (as well as fine-tuned) many such notions through the years. They are just opinions in the same sense that yours are just opinions, but perhaps we could evaluate the actual hands-on, decades-long basis for those opinions, yours vs. mine? You're speaking in terms of not taking any chances that perhaps that Mourning Dove is one synapse away from forming abstract thoughts and a self-aware perspective on its place in the world. I'm not worried about taking that chance because my observations indicate that those birds operate on a very high-speed collection of instincts and impulses, and that in the short year or two that they live, don't appear to form or contribute to any sort of culture or unique group dynamics in the way that a sentient being would. They just don't have the cognitive horsepower for it, and nothing in their behavior indicates any hint thereof. Anthropomorphizing them out of queasiness doesn't change that.
Are you of the opinion that you're protecting animals from a violent end by killing them?
Don't put words in my mouth. I asked you to consider how violently many wild animals die, at the hands of other wild animals. If you're comfortable putting, say, cottontail rabbits on the same moral plane as humans, then whatever urge you have to stop one set of humans from killing another in (pick a place: let's say, Darfur... or, down the street from you, if you knew that some gang was going to kill a neighbor of yours for his DVD player) should likewise transfer to the protection of the morally equal herbivores that are going to be torn apart, limb from limb, by a less sweet animal. You can't have it both ways - if the animals are your moral equivalent, then they are at war, and are so in a way bloodier, more capricious, and more widespread than any human conflict. Where's your outrage? We could focus our considerable energies on providing meat eating predators with an alternative food so that they don't have to rip the thoats out of baby rabbits. If you're prepared to err on the side of assigning to such animals a moral framework, then you have to do it for the predators, too. Be sure not to notice your own forward-looking eyes and pointy canine teeth when you look in the mirror, by the way. That muddies the waters a bit.
You are applying a different standard to them than you are to us. I'm not claiming that doing so is wrong. I'm claiming it is not known whether it is wrong or not.
No, you're claiming that we have to err on the side of it being wrong. The logical extrapolation for your position is to also err on the side of presuming evil volition on the part of, say, a bobcat that captures a tree squirrel, plays with it for a bit, terrorizes it into a state of shock, finally kills it with a chomp, and then leaves it like a trophy (intact) out on a rock in the sun since, actually, it's not even the least bit hungry. How can you sleep at night knowing that happens? Or, are you able to err on the different side of your moral fault line when something like that is the issue?
If we have a responsibility to actively preserve the lives of all those with rights to the best of our ability then our obvious failure to do so would clearly indicate we are all mass murderers.
You're conflating things. I'm not saying we have that responsibility, I'm saying that if you hold that position, and also extend human equivalency to animals, you've got a lot of work to do. Regardless, the real issue you're avoiding with that line of thought is this: it's not that you're not acting to stop a death when you pay someone else to do something that involves killing an animal - you're causing it to happen. "Murde
Let's assume that all hunters are like you and kill their prey painlessly.
No, not all are (or ever can be, as an absolute). But I'm only speaking for myself, and within reason, for all of those that I know to share the same ethos.
There is still the fact that they kill them, and it's probably fair to say a lot them enjoy it.
I can tell that you've never been hunting. Only a broken person takes actual pleasure in the death of the animal. Again, I know nobody like that. I don't know anyone that enjoys inflicting pain, and I don't know anybody that actually derives pleasure from watching an animal die. Being willing to personally cause that death (rather than having someone else do it for you at a nice, clean distance, and wrap it up in plastic for you), and understanding the reasons for doing it, and enjoying the larger activity, is not the same as getting some thrill out of the act of pulling the trigger. I usually face that moment with some trepidation - typically, out of concern that I don't have a good, immediately lethal shot. I have let countless freezers full of delicious meat walk right by my because I didn't know I had exactly the right angle, or because the wind that moment made me question my math, etc. Only once have I ever injured a deer, rather than have it fall over dead where it was standing... and I sprinted to the spot to finish the job in a matter of seconds. It's something I don't like, and preventing a recurrence of those 30 seconds is a chief goal, and drives many of my decisions in the field.
With birds, it's less of an issue. I only shoot gamebirds on the wing, and when you use the right gun, the right bird shot, and choose your opportunities wisely, that bird falls dead like a stone out of the air. Out of hundreds that have been on my dinner table, I've only had to take an extra step to dispatch perhaps two of them. Many, many more than I've ever killed have just gone flying on by because I knew I shouldn't pull the trigger. My dogs are trained to have a soft mouth, and if they catch a bird by themselves in the field, they bring it to me, intact and very alive, without so much as a puncture wound. They're not supposed to touch them (just point them!) but it can happen if one jumps up from cover right in front of their noses... and if it's not a keeper (for example, a hen pheasant is never killed), then off it goes, back into the cornfield. Other wise, I may kill it quickly by hand, like every farmer has killed chickens for thousands of years. It's certainly a lot quicker than dying in the talons of a hawk or in the jaws of a fox or coyote... and no pheasant makes it past two or three years old in the wild, ever - and not because of old age. Predators kill most of them before they're a year old. Some human predation claims a tiny percentage of that number, and under very careful population management guidelines.
However this hinges on whether animals have rights and feelings as humans do.
I'm comfortable saying that the animals I hunt don't have the same capacity for abstract dread that you and I have. Meaning, they're not imagining, as they walk along, all of the ways in which an armed primate might turn them into a meal, picturing their demise in dark, poetic ways, and thus living in some state of constant fear. They live in a state of constant alertness (since there are many risks and predators for them to worry about), and that is their way of life - whether we're in the picture or not). If we didn't have the capacity to civilize and modify our surroundings, we'd live exactly the same way (in a constant state of vigilence). But does a pheasant - which flushes from hedgerows at the approach of all manner of sounds, footsteps, smells, etc. - "feel," as you do, some grief-in-advance at the prospect of its own demise? As it's making its hundredth flush-from-cover that week (because a jackrabbit spooked it, or a goat thumped a nearby log, whatever), is it experiencing the same (or even v
Word to the wise. I'm here to tell you that you only need to do this once to appreciate the benefit of a good barrel when fish shooting.
Actually, shooting a high-powered rifle, while looking down at close range, into standing water is... a really bad idea. Presuming that you really ARE talking about an "elephant gun," the amount of energy being released is really quite astounding. Depending on the round you're using, you could be delivering over 8,900 foot pounds of muzzle energy. With that projectile doing 2,000 feet per second into a barrel of water right in front of you, some interesting things are going to happen. Supersonic hunks of metal of that size tend to create some interesting cavitation effects in enclosed bodies of liquid (especially when enclosed by wooden slats!).
I thought cows went happily to their these days, ever since that autistic woman redesigned the slaughterhouses.
I've read that book. It's interesting, if a little anthropomorpic at times (in the act of putting herself in the animals' hooves, she sometimes, I think, projects a little too much). That said, we have a lot in common with cows - we're all in the Large Mammals group, and her influence on slaughterhouse design is important... but also probably nowhere close to being adopted throughout the beed producing world (say, Argentina, for example). But there's no question that when doing things a little differently can reduce the stress/fear in the animals, it's crazy not to do it.
Damn dude. I was with you until this last ignorant sentence where you commit the same crime that the person you are replying to committed.
Yes, you're right. I meant to indicate that people who don't hunt, and say "I never could!" or "how awful!" etc... I'm sure you know the type, and probably know what I mean. But that was a little careless of me. Of course, in practical terms, a great deal of the meat I eat is killed by someone else for me. It's not whether someone else does it, or the ratio, it's whether you can see yourself doing it. I think it's important for people who aren't too squeamish to eat meat and wear animal skins around to understand what death is all about, as a precurser to those products. And people who THINK they understand, but don't ever want to see it (let alone DO it) are the folks about whom I'm complaining. Sorry I didn't make that clearer - it was shortsighted.
To be perfectly fair, not all people who don't kill their own food are cowards or shrill, hypocritical asses.
You're right, of course. I should say that people who say they never would/could are more in that camp. My apologies, because that was a bit too much of a generalization.
How can you be a well-informed consumer when half the groups that claim to be able to give you reasonable information are paid husks of marketing companies?
Half?
Well, never mind whether that's even close to accurate. The solution is simple: let the market itself sort that out. One solution has been around for decades: Consumer Reports.
And, moderation systems with adequate oversight will evolve to support communities (like here) where reputation can be worth something. But we've all developed our own sense of who we trust for insight or advice. Is it really necessary to pass laws on this subject?
You know who used fake grassroots movements to promote themselves? The Soviets under Stalin,
Yup, it's a favorite among the professional activist types, too. They go to a lot of trouble to try to create the illusion that everyone holding the nicely lettered signs at the anti-globalization protest appears to have just shown up on their own.
I think the solution to cheesy advertising will always be to have smarter consumers. And when someone actally perpetrates fraud, make it very very public.
how mind blowing it would have been if the sub-surface radar showed roads or infrastructure of a previous existance... It would have turned the way funding is for space all around, as well as change text books all over the world.
I believe it's canals you're thinking of. And cool, gazing intelligence that travels in lighting bolts, etc. But that would still be good for funding!
Oh gosh darn it all to heck.
Here I am at work not having read those books for a while.
Remind me, if you will, which side the cows were on?
Go evil cows!!! ( I have a really nice steak in the fridge;-)
You're in luck! The closest thing in the books were Minotaurs, which are half-bull, half-man. And C.S. Lewis had them in the Witch's camp. So, other than that little half-man detail, I think you're good on that steak. Medium-rare, I suggest. Perhaps a nice glass of Cabernet? Maybe a little wild rice on the side (gotta have that fiber).
Slashdot Mirror
Trees as an energy source are renewable? Growing a tree requires a large amount of nutrients. When trees (or corn/sugar cane/switch grass) are stripped and shipped off for fuel instead of being allowed to fall where it grew and release those nutrients back into the soil, there is a loss of potential energy where the tree is grown.
My point is that in the reasonable sense of the word "renewable," the work required to re-plant and nourish a tree allows you to, over time (and with mostly energy input from the sun), efficiently renew that resource. It might take a bunch of cow manure or other goodies to keep the soil useful, of course. But that's my point: "renewable" resources are those things that we can work to keep bringing back or putting in place. There is no such option or need when it comes to tides, wind, etc. The phrase may not be sufficiently detailed when it comes to trees, but it's just plain silly when it comes to wind.
And no, you can't say that the efforts required to "renew" the windmills when they wear out counts. You could say the same thing about coal mining equipment.
For over a decade people have noted
Oh, well, since "people" have noted it, that must meant that, despite the virtual impossibility of getting the PRC's notoriously kleptocratic, oppressive government to crack down on that country's use of producitivy-boosting tools that they didn't have to pay to develop or use, Microsoft must really not have cared that a giant economy with billions of people was, in substantial quantities, ripping them off. No doubt it just never crossed their minds to fret about it, since if they had noticed that, the PRC's fine, open-minded government would surely have stepped right up and done the right thing.
*eyes rolling back into useful position, more or less*
Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
I don't know which is worse... the use of the term "renewable" (from an energy/mass-there-is-only-so-much-of-it point of view) or the use of the term "renewable" when you're talking about wind. The tides aren't renewable. Geothermal isn't renewable. Solar isn't renewable. These are all forms of energy that are simply used.
Trees are renewable. Oil is renewable (um, if you're really patient). How can we expect to get people to think more critically about their use of energy when fundabental notions like "renewable" are tangled up and mis-applied by the very nerdy-smart-people that are supposed to know better? Why butcher the language and cave in to the warm-and-fuzziness of that term when simply calling it like it is would be more accurate, more educational, and better for shaping science-ready minds as they first really stop to think about such things?
Crap is renewable, by the way.
what? by your tone of irony you're implying my faith in NORAD Santa has been misplaced all these years??!!
No! No no no. It seems I'm mistaken, and that is every bit completely true.
I'm sorry, but I've never understood the joy some people find in deceiving children who come to them with honest questions. Those kids want to learn the truth and you tell them a lie for your own amusement while pretending to help them.
You're not a very subtle one, are you. The only "children" at whom my humor was aimed were the ones here on slashdot that can't spot a bit of satire when they see it. Lighten up a little bit. Of course I didn't say that to a kid - I said it to this audience to paint a rather pointed picture of the sort of cynicism that misses the opportunity of launching a spacecraft right over that kid's head to actually share the wonder of it. My bit of self-depracating jokery (since the joke could only be on me, right? for being that cynical?) was for the folks who appreciate the satire. Not the ones that aren't quick enough to pick up on it.
It's just like religion.
Again, if you can't tell, it's exactly the people that spread stuff like that (the religious types, to use your example) that I'm making fun of here. Don't you get it? Oh well.
...so your saying, it only works with catfish? :)
Quantum catfish. They're bottom-quark feeders.
*smacks self in head to stop this, now!*
One of the neighbor kids asked what was in the sky this morning, and I told him it was the government testing something they might need if Santa flies in too close to the DC-area controlled airspace. It's great to see those little minds so caught up in the emotion of learning something new.
I was actually the lead engineer on this project, and it's completely gone (or at least as far as my company is concerned). The publicity led to a number of private sector prediction markets, but it turns out that most companies, while they are enthusiastic about trying them out, don't want to pay much money for implementation.
Bummer. I can only imagine the number of quite cool projects that evaporate that way for one reason or another (and not always for a good reason!).
I am surprised it took them this long to implement as a similar project was implemented at select federal intelligence agencies through DARPA funding back in early 2002 to evaluate possible intelligence leads and threats to national security.
You may also recall that a particularly bad round of reporting on some related work (wherein people in the defense/intel world were "gambling" futures on which head of state, for example, would next come under attack from within, etc) resulted in headlines like "Government Officials Place Assassination Bets." They actually had to shut that one down because the media idiots got enough people to make congress creatures uncomfortable. I hope they just moved the research out of the bright lights and kept it up, but it just goes to show you that these slightly odd-seeming areas of research can be wildly misinterpreted by people who get all of their interpretation in 10-second sound bites. Um, or slashdot summaries.
I do consume animal products as I am not sure whether it is wrong or not to do so.
I'm trying to reconcile that statement with your earlier one: "I take the safe option and neither hunt nor consciously consume animal products."
It's possible that I'm now misunderstanding your entire point, here.
that they do not have the right not to be killed
They do not have that right, whether people are around or not. Animals kill each other all the time. Our pre-sentient ancestors killed them all the time, too. At some point, our cognitive skills evolved - quite probably exactly to improve the ability to hunt and make more effective use of limited physical speed and strength in the face of adversity (including hunger, territorial squabbles, etc). That evolution doesn't particularly change a day in the life of an arthritic antelope that's going to either wind up as protein for a tribe of humans, or protein for a pride of lions.
But "rights" assume some premises, or set of precepts from which they can be derived. You indicate that the source of rights is "not known," as if they exist, and we can say what they are, but we just don't know why. This is sophistry (or the sentiment of someone that presumes rights ordained supernaturally). I contend that they can be objectively derived from the very nature of our existence and our ability to have this conversation. Looking for some external "source" of pre-defined rights is absurd. They aren't like gravity or the weather. They are what we make of them, and they are based on a world view that does, or does not embrace reality. People who opt for magical thinking might as well roll the dice, and people that look at it more rationally will construct a moral framework that derives from existence, free will, and our capacity to think about, and talk about those very things.
the question of hunting animals that aren't threatening your life
So, this isn't really about hunting at all, for you, then, is it? Because whether I kill a wild deer, or eat a cow that's been raised expressly to be a burger, neither is threatening my life. But our bodies need the proteins that are supplied by meat, and certain fats are vital. You will probably contend that once we started to come up with grains and various dietary supplements that come closer to precluding the need for animal-based proteins and fats, that there's no need for using animals in that way. Leaving aside the issue of wildlife management for a moment, does the presence or absence of a particular new miracle family of plant-based meat replacements actually change your perception of animal rights? How does changing the nature of vegetables change the nature of the animals?
You're rather carefully saying you don't know about these things. But buried behind your frequent protestations of ignorance is the clear shape of an agenda, which you really should just spell out. Pleading ignorance about something as fundamental as the basis for your ethics doesn't really line up with the rest of your tone, I think.
Killing and/or eating people is generally considered wrong, killing and/or eating animals generally is not. The reasons why are not known.
It's not a big mystery! People don't want to be eaten, and have the intellectual capacity to form societies that create and pass along codes of behavior that allow those societies to thrive above and beyond simple hunter/gatherer existence. Our evolution as a species depended on cooperation along those lines, and our evolution as a collection of cultures has (with some notable exceptions) reinforced that. People who step outside the reasonable boundaries of those societies (and, say, murder people) waive their rights to the protection of that society. If you opt out, you really opt out.
Who are you, Shroedinger?
See, a lot of people wouldn't get the whole Shrodinger's Fish In A Barrel reference. At least, I don't think so. You never know. Maybe it's a Heisenberg thing.
It is the general opinion that killing people is wrong and I'm sure we can agree, at the very least for the sake of argument, that it is. Why this is the case is not clear. Some people think it is a matter of religion. Some say it is a product of evolved instincts
You're making too much of this (and, in a lot of ways, too little). It's simple: there are two basic cases for killing someone. 1) Self defense. 2) Everything else.
When you choose to kill someone without the compelling reason (hint: #1), you are essentially saying that all bets are off. If you choose to kill someone - show the intent, act on it - for some objectively weak reason (meaning, it's not self-defense), then you are through your actions waiving your right to be safe from the same action by someone else. It's that simple. If you indicate that it's OK to kill for no valid reason, then you can BE killed for no valid reason. That's such a straightforward proposition that it pretty much goes without saying, but I'm saying it to refute your notion that we "don't know why" it's not OK to kill other people. Of course we do, and that's it. Case closed. People may also mention a few other theories (like, their imagined deity of choice says they shouldn't, or they think karma is real, etc), but in whatever hunk of innate rationality we all (most of us) carry around, it's clear that it's in our own reasoned self interest not to establish a social setting in which lethal hostility is tolerated.
A grizzly bear is not going to sign onto that social compact. Of course, neither will a gorilla. Which brings me to:
Then look at the canines and forward-pointing eyes of gorillas, which are herbivores
Sorry, omnivores. Just like you, me, dogs, baboons, etc. Gorillas are observed eating meat, and routinely feast on termites and other forms of protein.
then they are just as capable of being used for eating human meat, an act generally considered wrong
No, you were talking about killing people, not eating them. Most people would be very uncomfortable eating human meat because it's a little too close to home, mortality-wise. It's unseemly. Until you've been stuck in the Andes for three weeks after your plane crashes, etc. Starvation tends to light up the more primitive pieces of the brain, and all of our carnivore/omnivore mammal relatives will sometimes be canabalistic, though less so among the omnivores.
Did you just claim that there is no difference between the two and that there is also difference?
No. Let's boil it down:
1) There is no difference, ethically, between personally choosing to kill someone/something and choosing to pay someone else to do it for you.
2) There IS a difference between choosing to kill something (say, for a meal, where the death of that something is the purpose of the action) and the consumption of a good or service that, in the course of its production, included the accidental death of someone working on it (using your example).
Actually, I've always thought there was a strong demand for a Star Trek comedy. I'd much prefer those over an animated series with 6-minute episodes.
I don't know. If you've ever seen the "Wrath Of Farakhan" sketch with Jim Carey as Kirk, it's pretty much all sewn up, right there. You can't beat that.
With regard to their feelings you clearly have developed strong opinions. However, as I mentioned, they are just opinions.
Driven, as I've mentioned, by as many or more hours observing and interacting with said creatures than many a grad-student biologist. I come by my very considered opinions honestly, and have reinforced (as well as fine-tuned) many such notions through the years. They are just opinions in the same sense that yours are just opinions, but perhaps we could evaluate the actual hands-on, decades-long basis for those opinions, yours vs. mine? You're speaking in terms of not taking any chances that perhaps that Mourning Dove is one synapse away from forming abstract thoughts and a self-aware perspective on its place in the world. I'm not worried about taking that chance because my observations indicate that those birds operate on a very high-speed collection of instincts and impulses, and that in the short year or two that they live, don't appear to form or contribute to any sort of culture or unique group dynamics in the way that a sentient being would. They just don't have the cognitive horsepower for it, and nothing in their behavior indicates any hint thereof. Anthropomorphizing them out of queasiness doesn't change that.
Are you of the opinion that you're protecting animals from a violent end by killing them?
Don't put words in my mouth. I asked you to consider how violently many wild animals die, at the hands of other wild animals. If you're comfortable putting, say, cottontail rabbits on the same moral plane as humans, then whatever urge you have to stop one set of humans from killing another in (pick a place: let's say, Darfur... or, down the street from you, if you knew that some gang was going to kill a neighbor of yours for his DVD player) should likewise transfer to the protection of the morally equal herbivores that are going to be torn apart, limb from limb, by a less sweet animal. You can't have it both ways - if the animals are your moral equivalent, then they are at war, and are so in a way bloodier, more capricious, and more widespread than any human conflict. Where's your outrage? We could focus our considerable energies on providing meat eating predators with an alternative food so that they don't have to rip the thoats out of baby rabbits. If you're prepared to err on the side of assigning to such animals a moral framework, then you have to do it for the predators, too. Be sure not to notice your own forward-looking eyes and pointy canine teeth when you look in the mirror, by the way. That muddies the waters a bit.
You are applying a different standard to them than you are to us. I'm not claiming that doing so is wrong. I'm claiming it is not known whether it is wrong or not.
No, you're claiming that we have to err on the side of it being wrong. The logical extrapolation for your position is to also err on the side of presuming evil volition on the part of, say, a bobcat that captures a tree squirrel, plays with it for a bit, terrorizes it into a state of shock, finally kills it with a chomp, and then leaves it like a trophy (intact) out on a rock in the sun since, actually, it's not even the least bit hungry. How can you sleep at night knowing that happens? Or, are you able to err on the different side of your moral fault line when something like that is the issue?
If we have a responsibility to actively preserve the lives of all those with rights to the best of our ability then our obvious failure to do so would clearly indicate we are all mass murderers.
You're conflating things. I'm not saying we have that responsibility, I'm saying that if you hold that position, and also extend human equivalency to animals, you've got a lot of work to do. Regardless, the real issue you're avoiding with that line of thought is this: it's not that you're not acting to stop a death when you pay someone else to do something that involves killing an animal - you're causing it to happen. "Murde
Let's assume that all hunters are like you and kill their prey painlessly.
... and I sprinted to the spot to finish the job in a matter of seconds. It's something I don't like, and preventing a recurrence of those 30 seconds is a chief goal, and drives many of my decisions in the field.
No, not all are (or ever can be, as an absolute). But I'm only speaking for myself, and within reason, for all of those that I know to share the same ethos.
There is still the fact that they kill them, and it's probably fair to say a lot them enjoy it.
I can tell that you've never been hunting. Only a broken person takes actual pleasure in the death of the animal. Again, I know nobody like that. I don't know anyone that enjoys inflicting pain, and I don't know anybody that actually derives pleasure from watching an animal die. Being willing to personally cause that death (rather than having someone else do it for you at a nice, clean distance, and wrap it up in plastic for you), and understanding the reasons for doing it, and enjoying the larger activity, is not the same as getting some thrill out of the act of pulling the trigger. I usually face that moment with some trepidation - typically, out of concern that I don't have a good, immediately lethal shot. I have let countless freezers full of delicious meat walk right by my because I didn't know I had exactly the right angle, or because the wind that moment made me question my math, etc. Only once have I ever injured a deer, rather than have it fall over dead where it was standing
With birds, it's less of an issue. I only shoot gamebirds on the wing, and when you use the right gun, the right bird shot, and choose your opportunities wisely, that bird falls dead like a stone out of the air. Out of hundreds that have been on my dinner table, I've only had to take an extra step to dispatch perhaps two of them. Many, many more than I've ever killed have just gone flying on by because I knew I shouldn't pull the trigger. My dogs are trained to have a soft mouth, and if they catch a bird by themselves in the field, they bring it to me, intact and very alive, without so much as a puncture wound. They're not supposed to touch them (just point them!) but it can happen if one jumps up from cover right in front of their noses... and if it's not a keeper (for example, a hen pheasant is never killed), then off it goes, back into the cornfield. Other wise, I may kill it quickly by hand, like every farmer has killed chickens for thousands of years. It's certainly a lot quicker than dying in the talons of a hawk or in the jaws of a fox or coyote... and no pheasant makes it past two or three years old in the wild, ever - and not because of old age. Predators kill most of them before they're a year old. Some human predation claims a tiny percentage of that number, and under very careful population management guidelines.
However this hinges on whether animals have rights and feelings as humans do.
I'm comfortable saying that the animals I hunt don't have the same capacity for abstract dread that you and I have. Meaning, they're not imagining, as they walk along, all of the ways in which an armed primate might turn them into a meal, picturing their demise in dark, poetic ways, and thus living in some state of constant fear. They live in a state of constant alertness (since there are many risks and predators for them to worry about), and that is their way of life - whether we're in the picture or not). If we didn't have the capacity to civilize and modify our surroundings, we'd live exactly the same way (in a constant state of vigilence). But does a pheasant - which flushes from hedgerows at the approach of all manner of sounds, footsteps, smells, etc. - "feel," as you do, some grief-in-advance at the prospect of its own demise? As it's making its hundredth flush-from-cover that week (because a jackrabbit spooked it, or a goat thumped a nearby log, whatever), is it experiencing the same (or even v
...so the fish is dead, right? :)
Well, I don't think you'd actually be able to FIND the fish, but for most people that would qualify as dead, even though it's really more like MIA.
Word to the wise. I'm here to tell you that you only need to do this once to appreciate the benefit of a good barrel when fish shooting.
... a really bad idea. Presuming that you really ARE talking about an "elephant gun," the amount of energy being released is really quite astounding. Depending on the round you're using, you could be delivering over 8,900 foot pounds of muzzle energy. With that projectile doing 2,000 feet per second into a barrel of water right in front of you, some interesting things are going to happen. Supersonic hunks of metal of that size tend to create some interesting cavitation effects in enclosed bodies of liquid (especially when enclosed by wooden slats!).
Actually, shooting a high-powered rifle, while looking down at close range, into standing water is
I thought cows went happily to their these days, ever since that autistic woman redesigned the slaughterhouses.
I've read that book. It's interesting, if a little anthropomorpic at times (in the act of putting herself in the animals' hooves, she sometimes, I think, projects a little too much). That said, we have a lot in common with cows - we're all in the Large Mammals group, and her influence on slaughterhouse design is important... but also probably nowhere close to being adopted throughout the beed producing world (say, Argentina, for example). But there's no question that when doing things a little differently can reduce the stress/fear in the animals, it's crazy not to do it.
Damn dude. I was with you until this last ignorant sentence where you commit the same crime that the person you are replying to committed.
Yes, you're right. I meant to indicate that people who don't hunt, and say "I never could!" or "how awful!" etc... I'm sure you know the type, and probably know what I mean. But that was a little careless of me. Of course, in practical terms, a great deal of the meat I eat is killed by someone else for me. It's not whether someone else does it, or the ratio, it's whether you can see yourself doing it. I think it's important for people who aren't too squeamish to eat meat and wear animal skins around to understand what death is all about, as a precurser to those products. And people who THINK they understand, but don't ever want to see it (let alone DO it) are the folks about whom I'm complaining. Sorry I didn't make that clearer - it was shortsighted.
To be perfectly fair, not all people who don't kill their own food are cowards or shrill, hypocritical asses.
You're right, of course. I should say that people who say they never would/could are more in that camp. My apologies, because that was a bit too much of a generalization.
How can you be a well-informed consumer when half the groups that claim to be able to give you reasonable information are paid husks of marketing companies?
Half?
Well, never mind whether that's even close to accurate. The solution is simple: let the market itself sort that out. One solution has been around for decades: Consumer Reports.
And, moderation systems with adequate oversight will evolve to support communities (like here) where reputation can be worth something. But we've all developed our own sense of who we trust for insight or advice. Is it really necessary to pass laws on this subject?
You know who used fake grassroots movements to promote themselves? The Soviets under Stalin,
Yup, it's a favorite among the professional activist types, too. They go to a lot of trouble to try to create the illusion that everyone holding the nicely lettered signs at the anti-globalization protest appears to have just shown up on their own.
I think the solution to cheesy advertising will always be to have smarter consumers. And when someone actally perpetrates fraud, make it very very public.
how mind blowing it would have been if the sub-surface radar showed roads or infrastructure of a previous existance... It would have turned the way funding is for space all around, as well as change text books all over the world.
I believe it's canals you're thinking of. And cool, gazing intelligence that travels in lighting bolts, etc. But that would still be good for funding!
Oh gosh darn it all to heck. ;-)
Here I am at work not having read those books for a while.
Remind me, if you will, which side the cows were on?
Go evil cows!!! ( I have a really nice steak in the fridge
You're in luck! The closest thing in the books were Minotaurs, which are half-bull, half-man. And C.S. Lewis had them in the Witch's camp. So, other than that little half-man detail, I think you're good on that steak. Medium-rare, I suggest. Perhaps a nice glass of Cabernet? Maybe a little wild rice on the side (gotta have that fiber).
Bon apetit!