I was just looking at Charlie Moore's presentation about the alleged "Great Pacific Garbage Patch." The concept sounds really nasty until you look at the Wikipedia entry that contains the information that they go on about. It tends to prove that the ocean is really big and environmentalists are really nitpicky. The high concentration of garbage is about 3.34 pieces per "square meter" with an average weight of 5.1 milligrams per square meter. My calculator says that's 17.034 milligrams per square meter. I'm presuming that this is floating garbage and that there is little or nothing in between the surface and the depths. It either sinks or it floats.
One manufacturer of molds for bottle-caps says that their plastic bottlecaps weight 2.35 grams. The average mass figure is satisfied by a floating bottle-cap in every 138 square meters, one bottle-cap in a square about 33 feet on a side. If we actually do have this 17 milligrams per square meter, that's 17,000 kilograms per square kilometer, about 37,400 pounds. That sounds impressive except that a cubic meter of sea water weighs 1000 kilograms and a square kilometer of ocean, to a depth of a meter, weights 1,000,000,000 kilograms or 2.2 billion pounds. 17 milligrams of plastic in one billion milligrams (one cubic meter) of seawater equals 17 parts per billion plastic versus seawater in the notorious "garbage path" of the Pacific, and that's just going to a depth of one meter.
There is a lot of doom and gloom in the predictions but this has been going on for more than 20 years and there are still millions of albatrosses out there, the bird that seems most affected by the garbage. Perhaps we're just making a smarter albatross by weeding out those that can't tell food from garbage.
We're never really sure how thin the justifications are for a new "measure" proposed by the environmentalists until we actually run the numbers. This sounds thin to me.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
Captive Breeding
I just had to answer this article about captive breeding.
Breeding of animals is not rocket science. The only way to fail at it is to never attempt it. Usually the problem is how to deal with an embarrassment of riches. I personally would rather have a few too many dogs, cats, or tigers than none at all. Captive breeding is in no way an "extreme tactic", it's a perfectly ordinary thing that billions of people have done.
The World Wildlife Fund uses one simple technique to persuade people that it is wrong to breed animals in captivity. I sometimes call it the "You'll shoot your eye out!" technique. They tell the reader or the listener to think only of all the things that can go wrong if someone tries to breed a rare animal. They might even admit that thousands have successfully bred those animals, but it's still "think of all the things that can go wrong." Why would anyone even listen to these people? All that they want you to do is stop doing what you think is right and obey them.
Think of all the things that can go right. Where there were no tigers there can be hundreds or thousands depending on the resources a group has. You might have mixed breeds but all of the animals whose genes went into the mix have many descendants and the more the merrier for genetic variety. The more genetic variety the better. Can you believe that so-called conservationists actually argue for "subspecies purity"? That's a lot like saying that a dog that is half Great Dane and half Saint Bernard is no good. When they say that Siberian/Bengal tiger mixes are no good for a species survival program, that's so wrong. They are the same species and genes from both populations are preserved. What they mean is that they want their programs to go their way, like an obsessive-compulsive thing.
They argue that there are "many difficulties" associated with captive breeding. So? We do it not because it is easy but because it is hard. They try to paralyze our thinking by talking about the dangers, and now the difficulties. Think of the reward: Most humans love animals. We get to keep them with us and take them into the future with us. A truly "natural" lifestyle includes as many plants and animals as we can have around us.
A species does not become uniform when humans take charge of its breeding. Look at the differences between the poodle, the dachshund, the border collie, the great dane, the pariah dog, the dingo, and all other dog breeds. Their genetic variety has obviously increased. This goes for horses, cattle, goats, sheep, pigs, and everything else. There are known and well-established methods for multiplying the number of "subspecies" of any animal, plant, or even bacteria. The only animals that have limited gene pools are the ones that people have been forcibly prevented from using in captive breeding programs, like the ocelot and the cheetah. Both of those species would number in the millions and they would be quite varied by now.
There are a lot of failures but that is the price of success. When they breed "naturally" in the wild every species loses a lot of its young. Fewer are lost in captive breeding. There is inbreeding in the wild, always. Lions are known for mating with their daughters. So are stallions. Those are just two species that live in family groups and the dominant males drive out their male progeny, or kill them, and mate with the females that stay. Outbreeding is actually alien to them.
The hopefully large number of tigers and lions in captivity in the United States reflect the success of an informal grassroots breeding program. Some say that there are as many as 25,000 tigers in the U.S. and I could only wish. No one ever seems to estimate the number of lions but it would seem that there would be more because even fewer of them kill their owners than tigers do and they like to live in family groups. Any true conservationist would congratulate the private owner on the success of breeding thousands of species individuals of endangered and threatened animals. A really good conservationist finds ways to help them and make it legal to breed the really endangered animals.
Were I to be in charge of a conservation program I would do this: Live-capture orphaned cubs from the wild and hand-raise them as pets. Take advantage of the large body of knowledge from successful private owners, and their enthusiasm, and their money and time and energy, and use them to raise the next generation of that endangered animal. Let's not kid ourselves. The wild is disappearing. People are living there. A war to move those people would destroy the habitat and kill a lot of humans. So let's put the animals on the dole and do it right. They'll be living better than they do in the wild. Humans will be a happier and calmer species. Everyone benefits.
Breeding of animals is not rocket science. The only way to fail at it is to never attempt it. Usually the problem is how to deal with an embarrassment of riches. I personally would rather have a few too many dogs, cats, or tigers than none at all. Captive breeding is in no way an "extreme tactic", it's a perfectly ordinary thing that billions of people have done.
The World Wildlife Fund uses one simple technique to persuade people that it is wrong to breed animals in captivity. I sometimes call it the "You'll shoot your eye out!" technique. They tell the reader or the listener to think only of all the things that can go wrong if someone tries to breed a rare animal. They might even admit that thousands have successfully bred those animals, but it's still "think of all the things that can go wrong." Why would anyone even listen to these people? All that they want you to do is stop doing what you think is right and obey them.
Think of all the things that can go right. Where there were no tigers there can be hundreds or thousands depending on the resources a group has. You might have mixed breeds but all of the animals whose genes went into the mix have many descendants and the more the merrier for genetic variety. The more genetic variety the better. Can you believe that so-called conservationists actually argue for "subspecies purity"? That's a lot like saying that a dog that is half Great Dane and half Saint Bernard is no good. When they say that Siberian/Bengal tiger mixes are no good for a species survival program, that's so wrong. They are the same species and genes from both populations are preserved. What they mean is that they want their programs to go their way, like an obsessive-compulsive thing.
They argue that there are "many difficulties" associated with captive breeding. So? We do it not because it is easy but because it is hard. They try to paralyze our thinking by talking about the dangers, and now the difficulties. Think of the reward: Most humans love animals. We get to keep them with us and take them into the future with us. A truly "natural" lifestyle includes as many plants and animals as we can have around us.
A species does not become uniform when humans take charge of its breeding. Look at the differences between the poodle, the dachshund, the border collie, the great dane, the pariah dog, the dingo, and all other dog breeds. Their genetic variety has obviously increased. This goes for horses, cattle, goats, sheep, pigs, and everything else. There are known and well-established methods for multiplying the number of "subspecies" of any animal, plant, or even bacteria. The only animals that have limited gene pools are the ones that people have been forcibly prevented from using in captive breeding programs, like the ocelot and the cheetah. Both of those species would number in the millions and they would be quite varied by now.
There are a lot of failures but that is the price of success. When they breed "naturally" in the wild every species loses a lot of its young. Fewer are lost in captive breeding. There is inbreeding in the wild, always. Lions are known for mating with their daughters. So are stallions. Those are just two species that live in family groups and the dominant males drive out their male progeny, or kill them, and mate with the females that stay. Outbreeding is actually alien to them.
The hopefully large number of tigers and lions in captivity in the United States reflect the success of an informal grassroots breeding program. Some say that there are as many as 25,000 tigers in the U.S. and I could only wish. No one ever seems to estimate the number of lions but it would seem that there would be more because even fewer of them kill their owners than tigers do and they like to live in family groups. Any true conservationist would congratulate the private owner on the success of breeding thousands of species individuals of endangered and threatened animals. A really good conservationist finds ways to help them and make it legal to breed the really endangered animals.
Were I to be in charge of a conservation program I would do this: Live-capture orphaned cubs from the wild and hand-raise them as pets. Take advantage of the large body of knowledge from successful private owners, and their enthusiasm, and their money and time and energy, and use them to raise the next generation of that endangered animal. Let's not kid ourselves. The wild is disappearing. People are living there. A war to move those people would destroy the habitat and kill a lot of humans. So let's put the animals on the dole and do it right. They'll be living better than they do in the wild. Humans will be a happier and calmer species. Everyone benefits.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Equal Protection
Responsible animal owners deserve at least as much protection under the law as do responsible drivers of cars. Responsible users of cars are not punished for what drunk drivers do even though over 47,000 people are killed in automobile accidents each year.
Equal protection under the law is a bit more than treating all animal owners equally. It also includes rewarding citizens equally for equally responsible behavior. Automobile drivers who do their daily driving safely are rewarded by being allowed almost unfettered access to the highway and very lax requirements for renewing a license. The state actually facilitates access to the highway and the obtaining of a license.
Punishing every owner of a pitbull or a monkey or a tiger for something that went wrong somewhere else with someone else's animals is denying them the kind of legal protection that every owner of an automobile enjoys. When a drunk kills an innocent family of four, the authorities don't go out and ban everyone else from driving a car. Far from it, they actually take steps to make other drivers safer. They protect responsible drivers from irresponsible drivers, rather aggressively.
The keeping of animals is just as much a necessity as is driving a car. For physical well-being, we need our food animals and it has been shown that pet owners are healthier, more resistant to disease and less likely to die of heart attacks and strokes. Most animal species have proven to be good for human emotional well-being. Emotional well-being is a necessity.
No one has yet shown that an escaped exotic pet has killed anyone in the United States in its entire history. All deaths due to exotic pet attacks in the entire United States add up to a statistically insignificant number. Rexano's website has several articles about the safety of keeping non-traditional pet animals. Not only does it seem that less than one person per year is killed by big cats in the U.S. but it also seems true that pets are less likely to kill than those handled by "trained experts." Either way, even if it were justifiable to restrict a right due to actual deaths related to the exercise of that right, this isn't one that has been shown to be very hazardous.
By the doctrine of equal protection under the law, a less hazardous activity should be subject to less control and scrutiny than an activity that is more hazardous, and that control and scrutiny should be the least necessary to achieve a valid goal. Drivers of cars and riders of horses are not subject to any formal training requirements at all. People are killed about every other day in the U.S. by horses and no one anywhere has to pass a test to own or ride a horse. To drive a car a person has only to pass a written test and a driving test. It is wrong to the point of being unconstitutional to force people who want to own tigers to fulfill requirements that are more stringent than those imposed on drivers of automobiles.
Equal protection under the law is a bit more than treating all animal owners equally. It also includes rewarding citizens equally for equally responsible behavior. Automobile drivers who do their daily driving safely are rewarded by being allowed almost unfettered access to the highway and very lax requirements for renewing a license. The state actually facilitates access to the highway and the obtaining of a license.
Punishing every owner of a pitbull or a monkey or a tiger for something that went wrong somewhere else with someone else's animals is denying them the kind of legal protection that every owner of an automobile enjoys. When a drunk kills an innocent family of four, the authorities don't go out and ban everyone else from driving a car. Far from it, they actually take steps to make other drivers safer. They protect responsible drivers from irresponsible drivers, rather aggressively.
The keeping of animals is just as much a necessity as is driving a car. For physical well-being, we need our food animals and it has been shown that pet owners are healthier, more resistant to disease and less likely to die of heart attacks and strokes. Most animal species have proven to be good for human emotional well-being. Emotional well-being is a necessity.
No one has yet shown that an escaped exotic pet has killed anyone in the United States in its entire history. All deaths due to exotic pet attacks in the entire United States add up to a statistically insignificant number. Rexano's website has several articles about the safety of keeping non-traditional pet animals. Not only does it seem that less than one person per year is killed by big cats in the U.S. but it also seems true that pets are less likely to kill than those handled by "trained experts." Either way, even if it were justifiable to restrict a right due to actual deaths related to the exercise of that right, this isn't one that has been shown to be very hazardous.
By the doctrine of equal protection under the law, a less hazardous activity should be subject to less control and scrutiny than an activity that is more hazardous, and that control and scrutiny should be the least necessary to achieve a valid goal. Drivers of cars and riders of horses are not subject to any formal training requirements at all. People are killed about every other day in the U.S. by horses and no one anywhere has to pass a test to own or ride a horse. To drive a car a person has only to pass a written test and a driving test. It is wrong to the point of being unconstitutional to force people who want to own tigers to fulfill requirements that are more stringent than those imposed on drivers of automobiles.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Never Cry "Cruelty"
In his book The Mass Psychology of Fascism, in the last chapter which is titled On Natural Work-Democracy, Wilhelm Reich wrote a very good illustrative story of fair versus unfair criticism.
Here it is briefly: Imagine that an engineer has to repair a large engine that his factory needs by the next day. He's working well into the late evening. One person comes along and just smashes wires to be doing it because his wife nagged him earlier. The next one gives the engineer a pile of nonsense about how he's doing it wrong, tells him he's filthy (from working on the engine), and that he's immoral for abandoning his family that evening. Number two knows nothing about repairing engines. The third one had a hard time with his mother-in-law and spits in the engineer's face. Reich says that they are like highwaymen who disturb honest work. Does that sound familiar? This was written at the beginning of the establishment of the Third Reich in Germany, when a bunch of animal rights activists/ environmentalists took over a more or less democratic country and we know what they did with it.
The next person who comes along is another engineer who rolls up his sleeves and pitches in and helps. He knows the work and in the story he spots a mistake that he helps correct, and is POLITE, something that the activists are quite incapable of being.
Compare this to the kind of personal experiences that either teach a person when it is appropriate to be critical or prove that the would-be critic used his brains first. One example was when I was at a stable and a horse in a small round pipe enclosure without food and water begged me to give him some food. Using my brains and my own experience I realized that the horse was a valuable animal and if he was being "starved" it was for a reason. He might have gotten into the sacked feed and was being treated to prevent laminitis. He might have been due for a visit to the veterinarian and needed to be kept from food and water for a prescribed time. The most important thing to realize was that most likely the owner knew what he was doing and I didn't. The horse looked like he was in very good shape, too.
I've seen dirty houses and yards that had dogs that were reasonably clean, healthy, quite well-fed, and free of fleas and disease. This could be genuinely objectionable but it's a home and they're happy and cared for. On the balance it is still good and if I want better I should be willing to pitch in and help. I have done this before and if I were someone who would cry "cruelty" instead of cleaning Edward Taub's laboratory like I volunteered to do, I don't belong around the animals and I don't belong there because I'm either clueless or malicious. In other words, I should be like the engineer who goes in and helps to the best of his ability. Even if I didn't know much he might need another set of hands, maybe someone to bring in drinks and a snack and so on, but to me someone who helps does so by actually helping. A real helper has to be trustworthy, honest, and polite. He has to serve. He has to be truly tolerant. He has to be respectful.
Here it is briefly: Imagine that an engineer has to repair a large engine that his factory needs by the next day. He's working well into the late evening. One person comes along and just smashes wires to be doing it because his wife nagged him earlier. The next one gives the engineer a pile of nonsense about how he's doing it wrong, tells him he's filthy (from working on the engine), and that he's immoral for abandoning his family that evening. Number two knows nothing about repairing engines. The third one had a hard time with his mother-in-law and spits in the engineer's face. Reich says that they are like highwaymen who disturb honest work. Does that sound familiar? This was written at the beginning of the establishment of the Third Reich in Germany, when a bunch of animal rights activists/ environmentalists took over a more or less democratic country and we know what they did with it.
The next person who comes along is another engineer who rolls up his sleeves and pitches in and helps. He knows the work and in the story he spots a mistake that he helps correct, and is POLITE, something that the activists are quite incapable of being.
Compare this to the kind of personal experiences that either teach a person when it is appropriate to be critical or prove that the would-be critic used his brains first. One example was when I was at a stable and a horse in a small round pipe enclosure without food and water begged me to give him some food. Using my brains and my own experience I realized that the horse was a valuable animal and if he was being "starved" it was for a reason. He might have gotten into the sacked feed and was being treated to prevent laminitis. He might have been due for a visit to the veterinarian and needed to be kept from food and water for a prescribed time. The most important thing to realize was that most likely the owner knew what he was doing and I didn't. The horse looked like he was in very good shape, too.
I've seen dirty houses and yards that had dogs that were reasonably clean, healthy, quite well-fed, and free of fleas and disease. This could be genuinely objectionable but it's a home and they're happy and cared for. On the balance it is still good and if I want better I should be willing to pitch in and help. I have done this before and if I were someone who would cry "cruelty" instead of cleaning Edward Taub's laboratory like I volunteered to do, I don't belong around the animals and I don't belong there because I'm either clueless or malicious. In other words, I should be like the engineer who goes in and helps to the best of his ability. Even if I didn't know much he might need another set of hands, maybe someone to bring in drinks and a snack and so on, but to me someone who helps does so by actually helping. A real helper has to be trustworthy, honest, and polite. He has to serve. He has to be truly tolerant. He has to be respectful.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Is "Safety" What We're Even Looking For?
Some degree of safety is necessary, of course. The thing is, what are we protecting? Our lives are what we are protecting. Too much safety means that we don't live our lives. We lose what we try to save.
You can't build positives from negatives. Anything that is worth having is made of something that has some intrinsic positive value. Anything that is worth doing is made of positive actions that result in added value or pleasure. Rules that say "don't do this or that or you will be hurt" obscure the positive and may even successfully conceal it. They create fear just by warning people of dangers.
When people tell me about rules for handling or encountering animals, all too often it's like that. All too rarely it's "do these things and you will do well." It's like telling people how to bake a cake by saying "don't cook it too long" or "don't use too many eggs" without telling people the correct cooking temperature or number of eggs. Maybe some people seem like morons because they're used to being treated as if they can't retain the simplest of instructions.
There are events and circumstances that get people killed, like rides at carnivals, air shows, auto races, and rodeos. They don't get bad reputations because of this. Also, in spite of or maybe even because of the number of deaths and injuries involving various animals, they are still very very popular. I think that the public is just fine with the danger but we submit to the use of the danger as an excuse when a public official wants to make a name for himself. This is something that people of good faith have no control of because bad situations can be made to order or even completely faked, any day that the activists want. Even if we were actually losing ground because of incidents like the chimpanzee attack, and exotic animal owners could stop all such incidents from happening within their ranks, animal rights activists would produce one if need be.
People really aren't looking for the "safe" experience, though. Thrill-seeking is a very positive side of human nature. So is the quest for pleasure. We're seeking experiences that we will enjoy or achieve some kind of fulfillment from. Sometimes we seek to be scared half to death. We also seek reality in its rawest forms. There are people who regularly tour active volcanoes, so many that some places have regular tours that skirt molten rock. These are the things that we do to live. Safety in those cases is like "most likely we'll survive the experience."
Maybe the malaise against ownership is because of the "safety first" attitude. People who own big cats act like they're doing something dangerous with little redeeming quality. They even try to conceal the redeeming features for fear that other people will want to do the same thing, get hurt, hurt their reputations, and so on. Don't they hurt their own reputations by doing this, though? One of the treatments for fear is an emotional reward. Too much "safety first" creates the fear and denies the reward. Fear-based thinking is self-destructive and doesn't even make the fearful ones any safer. By the formula that I just described it puts animal owners in more danger of being voted off the island.
Sadly, one of the verbal weapons that animal owners and animal lovers use is the "I wouldn't let you near my animals." It's the nuclear option in arguments. I can't think of anything at the moment that is more likely to dampen someone's positive attitude. A fear-based attitude makes it easy for someone to say that about someone who expresses too positive an attitude towards animals and the idea of contact with them. Take seriously the idea that the fear-based attitude could be directed towards someone who is trusting of horses or dogs. I've seen some of that on occasion. The idea that someone who loves and trusts animals should never go near said animals is one of the most frustrating, depression-inducing ideas that ever came down the wires. Animal owners should be striving to create positive feelings and when people feel them, they get slapped in the face with a cold wet towel. Owners who do this may want to rethink their positions.
Like I said, people aren't looking for ultimate safety anyway. They desire a thrill, or a pleasant encounter with an animal, or even for an ego boost. These are the desires that we need to respect. Guidelines should become conduits for people to achieve the experiences that they want, not obstacles to trip people up.
[additional]
I liked this quote so I added it. It sums up my feelings about some people's views of "safety":
You can't build positives from negatives. Anything that is worth having is made of something that has some intrinsic positive value. Anything that is worth doing is made of positive actions that result in added value or pleasure. Rules that say "don't do this or that or you will be hurt" obscure the positive and may even successfully conceal it. They create fear just by warning people of dangers.
When people tell me about rules for handling or encountering animals, all too often it's like that. All too rarely it's "do these things and you will do well." It's like telling people how to bake a cake by saying "don't cook it too long" or "don't use too many eggs" without telling people the correct cooking temperature or number of eggs. Maybe some people seem like morons because they're used to being treated as if they can't retain the simplest of instructions.
There are events and circumstances that get people killed, like rides at carnivals, air shows, auto races, and rodeos. They don't get bad reputations because of this. Also, in spite of or maybe even because of the number of deaths and injuries involving various animals, they are still very very popular. I think that the public is just fine with the danger but we submit to the use of the danger as an excuse when a public official wants to make a name for himself. This is something that people of good faith have no control of because bad situations can be made to order or even completely faked, any day that the activists want. Even if we were actually losing ground because of incidents like the chimpanzee attack, and exotic animal owners could stop all such incidents from happening within their ranks, animal rights activists would produce one if need be.
People really aren't looking for the "safe" experience, though. Thrill-seeking is a very positive side of human nature. So is the quest for pleasure. We're seeking experiences that we will enjoy or achieve some kind of fulfillment from. Sometimes we seek to be scared half to death. We also seek reality in its rawest forms. There are people who regularly tour active volcanoes, so many that some places have regular tours that skirt molten rock. These are the things that we do to live. Safety in those cases is like "most likely we'll survive the experience."
Maybe the malaise against ownership is because of the "safety first" attitude. People who own big cats act like they're doing something dangerous with little redeeming quality. They even try to conceal the redeeming features for fear that other people will want to do the same thing, get hurt, hurt their reputations, and so on. Don't they hurt their own reputations by doing this, though? One of the treatments for fear is an emotional reward. Too much "safety first" creates the fear and denies the reward. Fear-based thinking is self-destructive and doesn't even make the fearful ones any safer. By the formula that I just described it puts animal owners in more danger of being voted off the island.
Sadly, one of the verbal weapons that animal owners and animal lovers use is the "I wouldn't let you near my animals." It's the nuclear option in arguments. I can't think of anything at the moment that is more likely to dampen someone's positive attitude. A fear-based attitude makes it easy for someone to say that about someone who expresses too positive an attitude towards animals and the idea of contact with them. Take seriously the idea that the fear-based attitude could be directed towards someone who is trusting of horses or dogs. I've seen some of that on occasion. The idea that someone who loves and trusts animals should never go near said animals is one of the most frustrating, depression-inducing ideas that ever came down the wires. Animal owners should be striving to create positive feelings and when people feel them, they get slapped in the face with a cold wet towel. Owners who do this may want to rethink their positions.
Like I said, people aren't looking for ultimate safety anyway. They desire a thrill, or a pleasant encounter with an animal, or even for an ego boost. These are the desires that we need to respect. Guidelines should become conduits for people to achieve the experiences that they want, not obstacles to trip people up.
[additional]
I liked this quote so I added it. It sums up my feelings about some people's views of "safety":
"In our country are evangelists and zealots of many different political,
economic and religious persuasions whose fanatical conviction is that all
thought is divinely classified into two kinds -- that which is their own and that which is false and
dangerous."
-- Justice Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954), U. S. Supreme Court Justice
Monday, March 2, 2009
Vandals Are Just Vandals
In the news, a group of environmental vandals who I haven't heard of before in Tucson Arizona. They have been cementing locks and water valves and slashing tires. They are targeting researchers who work for the University of Arizona and for a copper-mining company. These are terrorist acts. Even at that relatively low level of destruction the vandalism is intended to make people afraid to go to work and live their lives. These acts cost people money that they can't afford to spend even if they're getting a relatively good salary. They physically prevent people from going to work.
They also express total contempt for the law that they want to use to protect the environment. The fact is that it is still legal to experiment on monkeys and it is still legal to do research for a copper mining company. If being legal means anything it should mean that a researcher, a farmer, or a pet owner should be safe from harassment and property destruction. The point of a terrorist act is to show people that they are never safe from the judgment of the terrorist.
Whose judgement are we talking about? Some gang of young adults who may have read a few books, attended lectures on how to firebomb your neighbor's car, who have been exposed to PETA's propaganda in school, who are angry at the world because they didn't do well in school, or who just like to break stuff. We already know these people. It wouldn't be acceptable if these acts were masterminded by pillars of the community. It's just a little bit worse when your local environmental parasites are the same kids who steal your purse out of your car for drug and booze money. Their own report on their actions is laced with childish profanity.
The HSUS hired an environmental terrorist as their expert on dogfighting. John "J. P." Goodwin is a "former member of the A.L.F." as if there is such a thing as a former terrorist. I have no reason to believe that he respects the law now, or that his employers do, what with their fraudulent use of Michael Vick's dogs to gather money or their fraudulent gathering of money for Katrina victims. He spent time in jail for vandalism of fur farms and has taught people how to burn down buildings and cars.
The hiring of John Goodwin sends a similar message: The HSUS will not respect the law that they want to use against owners of animals. They hired a vandal and that sends the message that they will vandalize commercial breeders, farms, and other industries that use animal products. The law can be used to vandalize just as effectively as a gasoline bomb. Just forcing meat producers to change out all their equipment costs them a lot of money and hands an advantage to new operations. Any operation that was in compliance with the law before may lose the protection that compliance entitled them to. Staged videos and photographs, which might actually be filmed somewhere else, can also be used against facilities that lack the ability to prove their innocence.
The HSUS obviously condones vandalism against legal owners or John Goodwin would never have been hired. It's also true that his hiring is used by them to get a lot of us to focus on Goodwin and to say things like "HSUS is a terrorist organization." But we still have this problem. The HSUS gave a convicted criminal a cushy job for his work for the Animal Liberation Front, an organization that just took credit for setting a zoo and its animals on fire in Turin, Italy.
I really can't see the HSUS's actions as anything but an extension of animal rights vandalism and terrorism, any place, any time, any excuse.
They also express total contempt for the law that they want to use to protect the environment. The fact is that it is still legal to experiment on monkeys and it is still legal to do research for a copper mining company. If being legal means anything it should mean that a researcher, a farmer, or a pet owner should be safe from harassment and property destruction. The point of a terrorist act is to show people that they are never safe from the judgment of the terrorist.
Whose judgement are we talking about? Some gang of young adults who may have read a few books, attended lectures on how to firebomb your neighbor's car, who have been exposed to PETA's propaganda in school, who are angry at the world because they didn't do well in school, or who just like to break stuff. We already know these people. It wouldn't be acceptable if these acts were masterminded by pillars of the community. It's just a little bit worse when your local environmental parasites are the same kids who steal your purse out of your car for drug and booze money. Their own report on their actions is laced with childish profanity.
The HSUS hired an environmental terrorist as their expert on dogfighting. John "J. P." Goodwin is a "former member of the A.L.F." as if there is such a thing as a former terrorist. I have no reason to believe that he respects the law now, or that his employers do, what with their fraudulent use of Michael Vick's dogs to gather money or their fraudulent gathering of money for Katrina victims. He spent time in jail for vandalism of fur farms and has taught people how to burn down buildings and cars.
The hiring of John Goodwin sends a similar message: The HSUS will not respect the law that they want to use against owners of animals. They hired a vandal and that sends the message that they will vandalize commercial breeders, farms, and other industries that use animal products. The law can be used to vandalize just as effectively as a gasoline bomb. Just forcing meat producers to change out all their equipment costs them a lot of money and hands an advantage to new operations. Any operation that was in compliance with the law before may lose the protection that compliance entitled them to. Staged videos and photographs, which might actually be filmed somewhere else, can also be used against facilities that lack the ability to prove their innocence.
The HSUS obviously condones vandalism against legal owners or John Goodwin would never have been hired. It's also true that his hiring is used by them to get a lot of us to focus on Goodwin and to say things like "HSUS is a terrorist organization." But we still have this problem. The HSUS gave a convicted criminal a cushy job for his work for the Animal Liberation Front, an organization that just took credit for setting a zoo and its animals on fire in Turin, Italy.
I really can't see the HSUS's actions as anything but an extension of animal rights vandalism and terrorism, any place, any time, any excuse.
Freedom Trumps Safety
So do good works. The freedom alone is worth taking risks for. Every human around should be willing to take risks to live in a free land.
So why is it that a "specific" risk is bad? I guess that when we can name a fear it trumps the vague idea of freedom. Along with the mongering of fear you will hear people say that there's no good reason to keep a pitbull, a chimpanzee, or a tiger. Why is that? It is because taking a risk for a reason is generally considered right. Some of us think of freedom as a concrete and useful thing. Those of us who think of animals as worth something think of the chimpanzee, the tiger, or the dog as worth taking a risk for.
The idea that "we can't risk human life for this" is generally laughable. That's right, it's laughable. Generally the risk of death is comparable to the risk taken when you drive a car, work for a living, or even sit still. People who sit still are more likely to die of heart attacks so there is no avoiding risks to human life. Inactivity greatly increases the chance of dying prematurely. Both poetically and literally this is because such a person hasn't lived. Science can prove this.
For years groups like the World Wildlife Fund and the International Fund for Animal Welfare have been telling us that it is worth considerable risk to human lives to keep various animals in their native lands. Chasing poachers around the forest is an expensive and dangerous undertaking. This approach is also failing. At the same time populations increase where there are breeding farms for animals like the rhinoceros, the lion, the tiger, and literally anything. Yet they tell us that the vanishingly small number of humans killed by exotic pets and livestock constitute a "danger". The danger is to the pocketbooks of these very well financed organizations.
There is also talk about moving millions of humans around for the convenience of the thousand or so tigers left in India. There is the "voluntary human extinction movement" which if they were sincere would already have killed itself.
It's really only fair. If humans are going to slaughter animals, and we will, for our own interests, we should put our selves and our resources on the line to restore their populations. We should take advantage of our human abilities to produce food more efficiently than nature usually does and use that to our advantage when we restore populations of endangered animals. We start with what we have and work from there. Organizations like IFAW sell us what we wish we had. They have definitely told us that any given tiger is worth the risk of at least one human life. Fortunately when they are pets it's more like one human life per year per ten thousand tigers.
I'm willing to say that the benefits of keeping exotic pets are so great that they are worth far more than the very few human injuries and deaths that do occur. They are part of us, even lions and tigers, and when people encounter them, it's often like getting in touch with missing parts of ourselves. We can put a name to what we feel when we're with our so-called domestics like cats, dogs, and horses. It's the same thing with other species. Most of us have no idea how much we receive from other animals overall. What we give them is a place to stay, a measure of safety, medical care, and love.
So why is it that a "specific" risk is bad? I guess that when we can name a fear it trumps the vague idea of freedom. Along with the mongering of fear you will hear people say that there's no good reason to keep a pitbull, a chimpanzee, or a tiger. Why is that? It is because taking a risk for a reason is generally considered right. Some of us think of freedom as a concrete and useful thing. Those of us who think of animals as worth something think of the chimpanzee, the tiger, or the dog as worth taking a risk for.
The idea that "we can't risk human life for this" is generally laughable. That's right, it's laughable. Generally the risk of death is comparable to the risk taken when you drive a car, work for a living, or even sit still. People who sit still are more likely to die of heart attacks so there is no avoiding risks to human life. Inactivity greatly increases the chance of dying prematurely. Both poetically and literally this is because such a person hasn't lived. Science can prove this.
For years groups like the World Wildlife Fund and the International Fund for Animal Welfare have been telling us that it is worth considerable risk to human lives to keep various animals in their native lands. Chasing poachers around the forest is an expensive and dangerous undertaking. This approach is also failing. At the same time populations increase where there are breeding farms for animals like the rhinoceros, the lion, the tiger, and literally anything. Yet they tell us that the vanishingly small number of humans killed by exotic pets and livestock constitute a "danger". The danger is to the pocketbooks of these very well financed organizations.
There is also talk about moving millions of humans around for the convenience of the thousand or so tigers left in India. There is the "voluntary human extinction movement" which if they were sincere would already have killed itself.
It's really only fair. If humans are going to slaughter animals, and we will, for our own interests, we should put our selves and our resources on the line to restore their populations. We should take advantage of our human abilities to produce food more efficiently than nature usually does and use that to our advantage when we restore populations of endangered animals. We start with what we have and work from there. Organizations like IFAW sell us what we wish we had. They have definitely told us that any given tiger is worth the risk of at least one human life. Fortunately when they are pets it's more like one human life per year per ten thousand tigers.
I'm willing to say that the benefits of keeping exotic pets are so great that they are worth far more than the very few human injuries and deaths that do occur. They are part of us, even lions and tigers, and when people encounter them, it's often like getting in touch with missing parts of ourselves. We can put a name to what we feel when we're with our so-called domestics like cats, dogs, and horses. It's the same thing with other species. Most of us have no idea how much we receive from other animals overall. What we give them is a place to stay, a measure of safety, medical care, and love.
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