Dear Stranger,

Dear the Stranger,

Why do you assume that Seattle wants to look at someone stabbing the face off of a pig?

I am fully aware that pigs (with their attending faces) are where meat comes from. This is why I choose not to eat other animals. It isn't easy a lot of the time, and I'm not one of those sanctimonious assholes who pretends that enlightenment (or whatevs) comes naturally to me. I miss bacon, sure. The hardest part, though, isn't eating hummus when everyone else is eating short ribs. The hardest part is watching other people pretend that it's funny, how things die for the pleasure of their palette.

It's not funny. You joke about it because the truth is often uncomfortable, and you don't want to be uncomfortable, so you look askance. Which is also why people move to Bellevue.

So this picture of a pig's face with is jowls laid open, it's not pleasant. It's not nice. It's supposed to be "real" and "honest" because somehow people have it in their minds that looking in the eyes of an animal before killing it so they can have a nice snack is somehow more thoughtful than buying their meat from a package.

But it's not. It's just another way to avoid really looking. You look at that pig-face and you see a way to be "green", to go against the system get your food "responsibly". But you don't see a pig. You still see a snack.

Please stop reminding me.

Oh, I Quit

I'm so mad about this that I can't think or write about it.

Killing animals for entertainment is a form of free speech; protesting the killing of animals for entertainment or use is domestic terrorism. You can torture a puppy to death of film but you can't stand outside the building where they torture puppies to death for "medicine" and say it's wrong.

It's such utter bullshit, so blatantly contradictory, so clear how little most people care about anything smaller than their own private interests.

This reason, this complete disregard for other lives, is the most disgusting thing that happens in the U.S. We'll deserve what we get when our narrow-mindedness finally poisons our land and water (it already poisons our food regularly--check the recalls) and there's nothing left to do but regret.

"The Canine As Canvas"

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/19/sports/19grooming.html

“People sometimes say, ‘Oh, poor dog,’ ” the M.C. Teri DiMarino told the audience that surrounded the show area at the Meadowlands Exposition Center. “But their perception is limited to their front feet. Really. All they know is that people are paying attention to them. They love it.”

Is there anyone out there who has met a standard poodle (the dog of choice for this particular medium) who they honestly thought was only self-aware to its front feet? Poodles are some of the most intelligent, perceptive, intuitive dogs--which is why they're so popular. They're problem-solvers. And these dogs apparently don't notice all the hours (25 in one case) they're required to submit to baths and dyes and standing perfectly still on a small table. No, in fact, "they love it".

When my mom was four she gave her cat an "airplane ride" like she loved her father to give her. She picked the cat up by one front foot and one back foot and spun it around in the air. She was convinced the cat loved it, and was confused and hurt when it turned around and bit her foot in thanks.

I'm not going to go as far as to say this dog-sculpting is cruelty. Hair grows back, and these dogs are arguably better off than a standard poodle locked in a kennel ten hours a day and then put out in the yard all night. And animals can grow to enjoy some pretty weird-ass things. But pretending that the dogs both don't notice and "love it" is completely unreasonable.

Oh, and they look dumb.

Scientific Perspectives on Animal Personalities

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/science/06angi.html?pagewanted=1&ref=homepage&src=me

Some critics complain that the term “animal personality” is a bit too slick, while others worry that the entire enterprise smacks of that dread golem of biology, anthropomorphism — assigning human traits to nonhuman beings. Researchers in the field, however, defend their lingo and tactics. “Some of the behavior patterns we’re talking about are similar to what we call personality in human psychology literature,” said Max Wolf of the Max Planck Institute in Germany. “So why not call it personality in other animals?”

Maybe the problem isn't anthropomorphism, but anthropocentrism: we're not "assigning human traits to animals" but assuming that we are the only animals that can have certain traits. Hence the frequent 'scientific' argument that saying animals are sensitive to their physical and social environments--basically, that they are susceptible to things like stress, pain, and emotional distress--is "anthropomorphism", when if it is considered purely through an evolutionary lens it makes perfect sense. They're not our traits; they came from somewhere, didn't they? If we share traits with monkeys then shouldn't monkeys share traits with us?

Scanning through the comments after the article, I've become even more frustrated with the piece. Reader response is pretty much unanimous: of course animals have personalities, for the exact reasons grumped about above. But 'science' pretends not to understand this, or pretends that the way we understand it is inadequate to make any arguments for compassion towards animals. It's dialogues like this that illuminate how inadequate science actually is when it comes to thinking about animals. All the concerns about anthropomorphism--tiptoeing around thinking about animal experiences to the point where the concern serves as a major roadblock to any kind of understanding or compromise--seems very clearly skewed against animals' interests. Giving science authority over how and when we use animals means we wait until science realizes that animals aren't really ours to use, and it's abundantly clear that this is not going to happen.

from the NYT-"Can Animals Be Gay?"

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/magazine/04animals-t.html?src=me&ref=homepage

I found this article interesting more for the fact that everyone seems so surprised that homosexuality could exist in a "natural" state. The implication that human culture and behavior is so far removed from nature, that the human animal is so separate from our evolutionary next-of-kin that our rules and experiences are absolutely non-applicable to other animals, is, evolutionarily, ridiculous.

What animals do — what’s perceived to be “natural” — seems to carry a strange moral potency: it’s out there, irrefutably, as either a validation or a denunciation of our own behavior, depending on how you happen to feel about homosexuality and about nature. . . . “A lot of zoologists are suspicious, I think, of applying the same evolutionary principles to humans that they apply to animals,” Paul Vasey, the Japanese-macaque researcher, told me.

This bias towards regarding human experiences as something completely incomparable to the experiences of animals, even in ration-and-reason-obsessed science, is irrational and unreasonable. Humans are animals; animals with strange evolutionary adaptations, granted, but still subject to the same forces that created all forms of life. And, as such, it is silly to disregard the possibility of things like emotions, thought, sensation, and even sexual choice--for whatever reason and due to whatever complicated, controversial science-y factors that we haven't quite figured out yet (and do we really expect to find the absolute answer, really?).

The only people who should be honestly, truly surprised by the phenomena of homosexual pairings in non-human animals are people who honestly, truly don't believe homosexuality is something that happens naturally.

San Diego Polar Bears versus Fox News

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4124069/zoo-taking-political-stand?category_id=86861

Fox news thinks it's too controversial for the San Diego Zoo to talk about the rapid loss of polar bear habitat due to receding polar ice because "some people don't believe" that climate change has anything to do with people. These creatures are pretty much doomed--there's no way to reverse what is already happening rapidly enough to maintain the population, and it's very likely I will see polar bears extinct in the wild in my lifetime--but hey, let's not be ALARMISTS.

If there is a problem with two causes, one of which we have absolutely no control over and the other which we, the human race, control, wouldn't it be wiser to just give it a go, try to make that positive impact, and err on the side of safety? If it turns out we're wrong, what have we lost? Some investments, yes, but those investments have positive side-effects: more independence from the global oil market, a healthier environment, new jobs in new industries. How is that a bad idea? And, really, there are still people that don't believe that human industries have negative environmental effects? Who are these people? And what the fuck?

I love the part where the interviewer tries to make the case that since the bears can live in San Diego, then rising temperatures shouldn't be such a big problem, right? Oh, so, so wrong: I thought your problem was that you didn't think global climate was changing, sir, but this seems to indicate that you kinda secretly maybe acknowledge that things really are going wonky, weather-wise, but you'd rather just not do anything about it, doesn't it? Oh, yes, polar bears can adapt to heat, if you can just completely rewire their instincts (to seek out high-fat meals of seal and walrus to build up heat-retaining blubber, to hunt on ice, to completely change their historic ranges--which adds additional problems, because people live in the places where the bears would move to) and provide them with air-conditioned houses which they may retreat to when the heat gets too much for them. Yes, terribly practical. Much more reasonable than, I dunno, selling your fucking Range Rover and cutting back on the beef.

Oh, Iorek Bjyrnison, you miserable, gorgeous bear. Come whack some sense into these people.

"The Hump" Closes, Caught Serving Whale Meat

It's hard to believe that the illegal whale trade is happening in the U.S., but this Santa Monica restaurant's name seems to almost flaunt it.

http://www.tonic.com/article/dedicated-animal-activists-prompt-a-santa-monica-restaurant-to-close-for-serving-illegal-whale-meat/

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2010/03/20/13303406-ap.html

Recent interest in the trade in whale and dolphin meat is probably entirely due to the success of The Cove, but I'm not complaining. It feels good to see something finally fall on the side of the non-human, even if it's as small as the closing of a restaurant.