March 02, 2004

• So, if Pam Anderson is a member, why isn't she out there braving the cold and frolicking on mattresses. Seems to me if she was part of these stunts there would be considerably more notice as well as press. Throwing money and opinions around is all fine and good, but geez, Pam, this would have been a perfect venue to promote PETA. There would have been chaos in the streets and national attention.
• Okay, I don't mean rock-star mattresses, I mean PUBLIC mattresses.
• While I am in a general sense against PETA's aims, I am and continue to be unreservedly for naked pillowfighting.
• Darshon, it's happening in all the threads. MonkeyFilter has flipped upside down. Monkeybashi is aware of the issue, and until a better explanation comes up, I'm blaming the earth's magnetic core. I don't know what it is about PETA, but no matter how much I agree with their goals, their method of protesting is always so trashy that it makes me want to vivisect bunnies for fun. They somehow manage to make opposing needless cruelty look like an ill thought-out opinion held only by sociopaths and attention-seekers.
• Okay, it's flipped back again. I give up too.
• Nice post title, trac!
• i'll preface this (long) post by stating for the record that i think animal rights groups, by and large, have made some valuable, important changes in our society. but i do think that many of the members of these groups are nutballs who really think that rolling naked near harvard is doing the right thing for the poor furry animals. peta seems determined to undermine the advances they have made by promoting themselves using silly or offensive means. it takes away from the message, in my opinion. anyway, given my biology background i don't see why it's immoral for me to eat another animal and still ok for a predator to eat one. if the predator is fundamentally different than me in some way, then i'm better than it - well, if i'm better, i ought to be able to eat it, 'cause it's less important than me, right? which isn't what peta says. they keep saying all animals are equally ok. but if i'm not better than the predator, and it's wrong for me to eat other animals, why isn't peta protesting lions killing wildebeest in africa? damn lions, meat is dead! i also wonder how many peta activists would call an exterminator if their house was full of mice, rats, or even insects. they're animals too. where do they draw the line? bacteria are living, do peta activists not use soap or scope for fear of unbalancing the natural environment on their skins or in their intestines? heck, unless you have chlorophyll in your cells, you can't eat anything without killing it. even when you eat fruit you're murdering unborn baby apples. and if it's ok to eat the fruit, 'cause it's part of the tree and taking it doesn't kill the tree, remind me again why eggs or milk or wool is bad? the tree didn't go to the trouble of producing the apple for you to eat it, it made the apple to grow new trees. we've artificially selected for bigger apples, often so big that branches can break due to the weight. who's going to care about the trees? life is life, we're all made from the same stuff. sorry to go on and on like this, but this whole animal rights movement annoys me. i think it's illogical to arbitrarily decide that one form of life is more worthy or better than another. this is why i love evolutionary biology so much - it states that all life is the result of random chance and change over time, therefore all forms of life are equally important in the grand scheme of things. (if you attribute it to god rather than biology, how do you know that god doesn't care as much for all forms of life as he does for furry animals? who are we to question what god holds to be important? even the least of his creatures is supposed to be important, no?) plus, why do the same people that hold life so sacred often use the destruction of life as a means to solve the problem? at least one lab on my university campus was firebombed and utterly destroyed by an animal rights activist in recent years. the tactics seem to go completely against the ideals behind it. anyway, i'll finish by pointing out that what's moral or immoral to us in the west has a lot to do with our standard of living. there aren't many peta chapters in parts of the world where trying to find any food is a daily struggle. you don't see too many nomadic tribes of cattle or goat herders wearing pleather clothes in the national geographic, yet nobody throws blood or paint at them when they walk by. there, i think i've successfully derailed the post, given my honest opinion on the whole thing, made sure i won't be invited to a peta rally, and maybe even angered someone, and all that sparked by a little post about people rolling around nekkid' to save the bunnies. my work here is done.
• "This is nothing compared to what the animals go through," one protester said. They have to watch.
• insect rights... hug a bug today!
• Well put, caution live frogs. But, for my experience in veggie forums, it's easy to counter that argument with moralistic ones about humans having higher consciousness and thus higher responsibility for the welfare of the poor and defenseless rest of the animal kingdom, which I agree up to a point on personal grounds. But God knows most diehard veggies hate moral relativists.
• As I sit here eating my lunch (salami and cheese sandwich, yum) I have only a small complaint about this story. We need more photos of the naked vegetarian chicks! "Bueller, anyone, Bueller..."
• I heart you, Sidedish! I remember having an argument with a lovely girl because she wanted us to set un a fire far from some grass patches to avoid hurting the little green buddies. Then a cockroach appeared and she was the first one that tried to squish it but I saved it arguing that a cockroach has the same rights than the gras since it's also a living being and has more neurons. Ahh, but she was sooo lovely...
• A few years ago I was working as a contractor for a small biotech company, and part of my job included reviewing the contracts for animal research that it was outsourcing. It was really hard to read the research protocols ("they are going to do WHAT to those poor rhesus monkeys, and then they are going to do THAT to them?") but the compounds being researched held promise as possible treatments for Multiple Sclerosis, lupus, and and few different cancers- and I have family members struggling with each of those. Having read the research protocols, and followed the progress of the research projects, I know that great attention was placed on the animals not suffering- the pain responses triggers hormone releases that would skew the results of the research- and in one instance, the study was ended early, before all of the animals were included, because the initial data didn't meet the criteria to continue with the study. I may have the karma of a dozen rhesus monkeys on my soul, but if progress is made in one of those areas, I can live with that. It *is* a troubling subject. A fundamentalist response, such as PETA's, refuses to acknowledge the vast gray areas, and isn't terribly helpful. (And to echo Caution Live Frogs, I've always wondered whether the animal rights folks ever use over the counter painkillers or cold remedies- products that almost certainly were tested on animals- and if they were to confront a serious illness, would they turn down the latest medical technology to save their own life?)
• Your right, ambrosia, and I think that Pam Anderson should be reminded of that considering she's has Hep. C. Whatever will she do? BTW, I'm not trying to just dog on Pam, I agree that PETA doesn't do themselves or their cause any favors by being so over-the-top.
• I'm sorry for my first comment. By veggies I was referring to the militant PETA members. Not vegetarians in general.
• point taken, zemat. 'course it's the higher consciousness thing that is at issue - we can't prove it, and i personally see no reason why we are more special than other critters, especially great apes - if you teach a chimp to talk, how different is it from us again? we can't ask other animals what they experience, so we can't prove one way or the other that we are similar or different in our level of self-awareness (although most signs seem to say we are more self-aware, there are new studies that question the belief.) by the way ambrosia - if it makes you feel any better - if we were all held to the standards at home that animal researchers are held to in the lab, we'd all be in jail right now for breaking the rules. how many times weekly do you all dry-heat sterilize your dog or cat's food and water dish? how many times a week do you physically check each pet you own for health issues? and how often do you give your pets lab-tested, sterilized food and bedding, changed at least once a week for fresh, new stuff? most of these animals get treated better in the lab than they ever would at home or in the wild. most protocols push adoption of ex-research animals when possible - i've got a friend who loves her beagle, formerly a blood donor and now a house pet. those of us who do animal work do it with the knowledge that we may be helping people. it's a tough spot to be in; while i like to think that i can hold all life in perspective, if it's a choice between killing a couple of hundred rats to save one or two human lives, or saving the rats and losing two people, i'll sacrifice the rats. there are an amazing number of restrictions on how and why animals can be used, there must be a clear benefit to humans (and quite often to the animals themselves - we know more about proper lab rat nutrition than we know about proper human nutrition!), and nothing can be done without multiple forms, records, inspections by three or more different local, state, and federal agencies, lots of signatures, and oh yeah if it's at a publicly funded institution, your research plans and methods, as published in your request for funding, are made available to anyone who asks. it still isn't fun, i feel bad about the rtas, hamsters, cats, dogs, etc. used in research. especially the ones that i use myself. (rats; i don't really think i could work on a cat myself, i empathise with cats too much.) the myth of the scientist taking the animal's life lightly is perpetuated by the animal rights groups who encourage others to take the life of the scientist lightly. i guess if i'm supporting rights activists i'd put my money into the group that understands and respects the gray areas, rather than the one that tries to make it a black or white issue... (damn i gotta start making shorter posts.)
• No, your posts are a good length. They have good words in them. I mean, if somebody who actually does animal research can't post more than a couple of paragraphs in a thread about PETA, then we're all going have to a) perfect our mastery of language to the extent that everything we desire to say can be summed up in a single, Borgesian word, or b) stop. In any case, you've got to make your posts waaaaaaay longer before you challenge jb for the title of longest-post-maker, and we like her posts, so there...
• caution live frogs: terrific posts. please keep making them.
• I am a meat-eater, and I think testing products on animals is okay, to a certain extent. But if you watch how it's done, you can easily see why PETA would protest the use of fur for unneccesary fashion statements. Does the end justify the means? Well, it depends on the means. Semi-nude pillowfighting in the snow? I would say not the best way, but OK. As far as handing out disturbing comic books to kids, I would have to say no. PETA has a legitimate message on some issues, but their immature ways of getting their message out probably turn more people away, then they bring in.
• Actually, caution live frogs. I have the same exact fellings about humans that you do. We are no more special than any other kind of animal or living being in the eyes of nature. We all evolved and live by the same natural rules, and we have no special rights or obligations over nature, neither to exploit it nor to protect it, just because of our condition of being humans. The best we can do, as "rational" animals, is try to be true to ourselves and do our best to get along with the environment as long as it benefits us all in a practical way.
• And, also, I believe dolphins are smarter than us. We should regard them as our masters and bow before them.
• Whoa! What's up with the misplaced comments, trac? MoFi is going ape.
• I would third the compliment to caution live frogs for excellent posts not a word too long (and not just because, yes, I have exceeded them by much too much - oh, and using the small tags means you can squish in more) To be short(ish): a) focussing on fur is the most inane obsession of PETA, considering the far worse conditions our food animals are subject to - frankly, I would volunteer to be a mink rather than a hog or beef cow anyday, even if I did get the cool sunglasses of Moopheus from The Meatrix [Flash/shockwave videothing warning] (sensible and not vegan-nazi discussion about food production) b) do you know how many annoying times I have mistyped and gotten www.meatfilter.com? (But it seems to be gone now - here's the google cache.
• An activist owns up to Neil Gaiman
• The Harvard Crimson reports that the protesters were arrested for disorderly conduct and indecent exposure. I was wondering what harm could lie in a nearly-naked pillow fight-- well, now I know.
• It should be abundantly, totally crystal-clear by now that PETA will do absolutely anything for publicity. I suspect if God (or more likely Satan) offered them the choice between ending all cruelty against animals on the condition they would disband and nothing more be heard of them or leaving the animal situation as is but making PETA as famous and rich as the Catholic Church, they'd go for the latter in a heartbeat. That having been said, I too was kind of expecting more in the way of naked photos.