Suck On It

I'm not one to hate on someone else's lifestyle, but vegans piss me off. Veganism can be necessary for health reasons, for example, I had a friend who developed a build-up in his joints of animal proteins, but it usually is a moral decision. Vegetarians are off the hook, mostly, since that can just be a really healthy diet.

The overcharged moralizing of vegans results in nonsense like the organic movement and PETA who make explicit, public statements that I am evil because I eat animals and animal products. As you can imagine, being called a bad person doesn't sit well.

We are animals. We eat animals. It's the only damned reason that our brains are so large. At one time, a moral drive was critical for the survival of our species. Understanding right and wrong made sure that we never fell out of the good graces of society to die in the woods. Now, that moral drive is still there, but even if we're amoral assholes hated by everyone, we can still survive just fine. Without a serious need on which to focus the moral drive, it runs amok trying to find something about which to moralize.

There Is No Escape From Cows (Gizmodo.com)

Go Go Gadget Conservation!

Hey! Not too shabby, Rhode Island. We made it on the international scene for our conservation efforts with some little-known beetle. A little recognition is nice, especially since one of our best efforts, the Save the Bay foundation, has received little attention outside of the state even though its success is the most salient. I can now walk down to the Chafee Reserve and see harbor seals. They're noisy. Still, the wildlife has returned in a big way, and that's a thrill.

R.I.’s burying beetles gain international renown (Projo.com)

Dog Breeds and the ASPCA

I was just looking through the most recent ASPCA newsletter, and it referenced puppy mills.

Well, I'm sorry to say, puppy mills are a fact of life. There is nothing we can do to stop them. Jackass yuppies and people who want to be yuppies buy pure-bred dogs as status symbols. This drives desire and thus value up. With high value comes ersatz examples, such as Chinese knock-offs of Prada bags, because most people can't afford true pure-breds.

Illegalizing puppy mills is ridiculous. We can't stop it any more than we can stop drugs or knock-off bags. There is a demand in the market and it will be met. What we can do is eliminate the demand.

We should not only legalize pure-bred puppy mills, but subsidize them. Make them MASSIVE and federally regulated. Churn out doggies in mind-boggling numbers. The result? You drive the value of the dogs way down because suddenly everyone has one and it's not a status symbol. This forces those sefl-centered pieces of shit to seek out new status symbols in the form of new, designer dogs, like Labradoodles. This results in greater genetic diversity, fewer problems, and better dogs.

Because right now, lots of good dogs are born broken. If we can eliminate the system which generates those genetic instabilities, we can make the world a better place. We can do this with economics.

I Wonder If It Extends to Donkeys.

In a stunning display of utter stupidity, the House of Representatives has actually passed a bill making it illegal to slaughter horses. This is exactly the sort of mamby pamby nonsense we don't need. It not only fuels extremist groups such as Peta, it shows us for the hypocritical idiots that we are.

We may think consuming certain animals in this country is disgusting, or even wrong, but not everyone feels that way. Perceptions of animals that can and can't be eaten came from the evolution of a particular culture. Horses were at one time important for transport, agriculture, and overall health of the country. It is no surprise that there were laws in place to protect them.

This was a practical reason, not an ideological one. America's modern treatment of horses is ideological, now. This bill only cements that. We should not, and can not busy our already disorganized legal system with laws that only serve to cause problems and make self-important, overly-moralistic buffoons feel better about themselves and their own moral righteousness.

They are animals, we are animals. We eat other animals. That's just the way it is. As soon as we head towards law and regulation based on ideology, we step upon a slippery slope.

New US Bill Makes Killing Horses for Meat Illegal in US (Via Science.QJ.Net)

Are They Serious?!

Apparently, Ya Ya the panda had one of her cubs suffer SIDS. Namely, she rolled over on the cub and crushed it. While I genuinely feel bad about this, especially after reading that when she awoke to find that her cub had been taken during her rest she lay around listlessly, that's not what I found interesting in the article.

The mention almost in passing that the mother and father, Ling Ling, were shown a "mating video" before breeding. A mating video? So, that's like, pandas having sex.

We showed the pandas porn? We showed... *snicker*... the pandas... PORN?!

They say it so matter-of-factly in the article. The utter absurdity of having PANDAS watch a training video seemed to escape them, or they just didn't mention it.

Panda Accidentally Crushes Cub in China

"When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death."

Does anyone else remember the episode of The Simpsons where they accidentally wipe out the town's pidgeon population with lizards, then they control the new lizard over-population with snakes, which are in turn controlled by massive groups of snake-eating gorillas.

For some reason, I just don't see this ending well.

Scientists Ponder Releasing Virus to Kill Carp (Via LiveScience.com)