4/7: PETA milk protest

[Chewbaccus]

I'll meet you there with a legion of vendors doling out cheesesteaks, burgers, milkshakes, and wearing Kevlar.

~Mike

[Griff]

My wife was a fine arts major in college (obviously she's now a programmer/analyst) and loves to tell about one poser chick in the art school at Syracuse. The girl would stomp around campus in heavy leather boots and a "Meat is Murder" patch on her jeans. She was definitely not trying to be ironic. That, to me, defines the animal rights movement.

I'm no fan of industrial style farming, mainly because my roots are in family farming and I recognize what is lost when the manager/worker isn't the owner. If you ever get a chance to work on a production line... don't, unless you really need the paycheck. Animals should be well taken care of and they will be if your goal is producing healthy food.

This thread reminds me of a couple good red neck bumper stickers People Eating Tasty Animals and EARTH FIRST! we'll ruin the rest later.

(the following not for weak stomachs)

Alphageek,In my indestructable youth, I shared an apartment, in Scranton, with five other guys and there was a constant round of "You don't have the cojones to...". Well, at one point, we had a lot of raw venison in the fridge and some of it was marinating in speidie sauce (local food cooked on a skewer like a kabob but just meat, lamb being the best, vinegar, oil, and Italian spices) So I ate a cube of the marinated venison. It was absolutely delicious! After that, we ate a lot of raw speidie meat, like a pack of wolves. Nobody got sick, but that was pretty stupid. Oh, did I mention there was alcohol involved, a lot of alcohol... Surviving that period is my personal proof for the existence of a benign greater power. I've only been on an antibiotic twice in my life and I agree with your assessment that the immune system has to be tested to function. I was raised on raw cows milk which is full of microbial life which many folks think inevitably leads to illness. I've done barnyard butchering, never wearing gloves and shoveled a lot of crap. Both of these activities could potentially impact an uninitiated immune system.

[russotto]

Originally posted by Tony Shepps
I agree.

I went through CS in 1985 when college CS was just getting started. The brutal weed-out is always expected in programming. It's just necessary. They do it a lot worse in college pre-med courses; in CS it's "You aren't capable of this" while in pre-med it's "You can't HANDLE this". People are brutalized.

Err, my father went through CS when college CS was just starting -- his degree is mathematics with a concentration in computer science. That was circa 1966.

The weedout at University of Maryland College Park involved a class where you did all your programming in something called 'CF Pascal'. CF was for "Character and File" -- those were the only two types you had available. No steenking integers, no strings, no arrays, just character and file. The class also involved proving programs correct, which is where I learned that attempting to prove a program correct is pointless because the proof is more error-prone than the program... I don't think the professor appreciated that insight :-).

(hmm, what happened to milk?)

[russotto]

Originally posted by alphageek31337

man now. A mutant strain of the virus that causes the common cold is now deadly. And this mutation would, probably, have never happened except that people have a bad habit of assaulting their bodies with drugs and other medicines anytime they get a tickle in their throats.

Uhh, no. Those drugs don't affect the cold virus, so they cannot be responsible for its evolution. Overuse of antibiotics is a bad thing for other reasons, but not for mutating the common cold.

However, one genius managed to graft the business end of Ebola into a cold virus. Supposedly a weakened cold virus which couldn't spread, and done under serious containment, but still...

[quote]
fight it before, and now can't. Now I'm not advising that we stop using drugs to treat illnesses, but we ought to stop using them to treat illnesses our bodies can fight. Between that, and allowing genetic deformations to stay in the gene pool, and be passed on to children, we are becoming a weaker species.
[quote]

True, but I'm not about to sterilize myself over my 20/400 eyesight. What we need is a way to remove these genetic deformations at the source. Alas, I suspect enough regulations will be placed on human gene research that it won't happen within my lifetime.
/QUOTE]

[elSicomoro]

Originally posted by Chewbaccus
I'll meet you there with a legion of vendors doling out cheesesteaks, burgers, milkshakes, and wearing Kevlar.

I'll need some of that Kevlar, Mike.

This PETA thing reminds me of something...when I was previously engaged to a woman in Chicago, I would go up and visit her regularly. While I was up there, we would do a lot of driving. Mimi and I would then proceed to count something that seemed to stick out on that particular weekend. For example, we would see a lot of check cashing places, and proceed to count them from Friday-Sunday. One weekend, we noticed a TON of people wearing fur coats (Whether they were fake or real I couldn't tell ya.). The number we noticed got rather high. Granted, it was an awfully cold weekend--in the teens with that trademark wind.

PETA has a right to protest all they like, but I suspect they may be delusional at times.

I eat meat because I enjoy the taste, and it contains many vitamins and nutrients that are good for my body. I drink milk and eat dairy products for the same reason. I have no religious provisions preventing me from eating these products. (What would I do without pork roll? PORK ROLL?! I'd lose my mind!) Furthermore, with the whole "They suffer" mentality, I figure it to be survival of the fittest. Who knows? Maybe there will be a being that wants to eat us someday. Not to mention, if all the products of the animal are used to their capacity, then I have no real problem with it.

My $.05...

[adamzion]

Originally posted by alphageek31337
This would be a good time for my tirade on devolution. We're all beocming weaker as a species.

While I don't know how much I'd agree with the assesment you make above, it has been demonstrated emperically that there are some instances in which an increasingly antiseptic and disease-free environment are <b>harmful</b> to our health. Take various types of irritable bowel disease (yes, I know, please). Diseases of this sort- Crohn's is one of the best-known- aren't common in the industrialized world, but neither are they exceedingly rare. They <b>are</b> exceedingly rare in parts of the world where cleanliness isn't as common.

It has also been suggested in studies that parental overcleanliness can actually end up harming an infant by reducing its chances of developing resistance to the various allergens and disease-causing bacteria/viruses which are normally in the environment.

Whether or not you can call this devolution is debatable, but there you have it.

Take it as you will,
Z

[Undertoad]

I think I recall hearing that the rise in asthma problems has been attributed to cleaner environments.

[elSicomoro]

I've heard on occasion that the United States is TOO clean. The anti-bacterial antiseptic kick going on here is actually leaving us susceptible to new strains of everything. People take an antibiotic for a chill these days...ridiculous.

[alphageek31337]

Originally posted by russotto

The class also involved proving programs correct, which is where I learned that attempting to prove a program correct is pointless because the proof is more error-prone than the program... I don't think the professor appreciated that insight :-).

(hmm, what happened to milk?)
[/b]

Just for curiousity's sake, how do you go about proving a program correct? The logical way is to compile it, run it, and see that it does what it's supposed to, but that's pretty much useless, educationally.

[Leebee]

I think that the point behind Milk being an objectionable substance is not that it is poisonous but because farms treat the cows badly when they farm them. Though I do think that milk farming is less objectionable in than the practices used for farming other animals. It is not that the meat is bad or the milk is bad ... it is that under current farming practices with big business making big bucks ofen leads to the inhumane and downright cruel treatment of animals. If you want to eat animals then fine but I don't think we need to torture them first and being a vegetarian means that I am no longer condoning the torture of animals just as I wouldn't want any part in the torture of human beings.

If you want the facts as to why peta objects to milk then have a look at:
http://www.goveg.com/rfact8.html

[Griff]

leedee, I'm glad you had the intestinal fortitude to jump in here, since this threads balance of opinion leans decidedly in the other direction. Welcome aboard! I'll follow your link but remember I grew up in farm country so my opinions may not be "paletable". (sp?)

[Dagnabit]

Welcome, and jump right in, and stick around a while. But if Griff's message is fair warning then here's the first bold attack. Nothing personal but the link you gave us has a section entitled "vegetarian cats and dogs" which is the foulest thing I've ever seen on a website.

Cats and dogs are natural meat-eaters. I don't give a rat's ass if they think they have worked out all the additives that these animals need to survive.

The page is full of incorrect information and very subjective statements tossed around like facts. You know what the dog biscuit recipe is? For a dog, nutritionally, it's total crap disguised with garlic powder to be something they'll enjoy.

Dogs are, nutritionally speaking, miles away from humans. A dog will eat vegetables in the wild? Only under three conditions that I know. One, as shredded material in the stomach of the beast they are consuming. If someone brings down a wildebeest, the dogs are happy to eat everything that's left over after the real predators have had their meal. That will include the stomach and intestines with partially-digested vegetables. They particularly enjoy the bones and much of their nutritional needs are solved by eating raw bones and bone marrow.

Two, dogs will eat vegetables out of desperation. And three, dogs will eat grass and such for medicinal purposes. It helps them vomit if they need to do that.

The real truth is, if you want to mimic dogs' natural diet, buy whole chickens, cut off the breast and thigh meat and feed the rest, bones and neck and all, to the dog. But if you lack the fortitude to nip into the meat yourself, just buy quality commercial dog food. It's largely made from the waste products of other meat production anyway. The cheap stuff is more like the "dog biscuit", crap disguised so they will eat it.

[adamzion]

Originally posted by sycamore
I've heard on occasion that the United States is TOO clean. The anti-bacterial antiseptic kick going on here is actually leaving us susceptible to new strains of everything. People take an antibiotic for a chill these days...ridiculous.

Indeed, overuse of antibiotics- and <b>especially</b> the use of these antibiotics at either subtherapeutic levels on bacterial infections or on viral infections (which are not helped by antibiotics)- is thought to be the #1 culprit in the development of many strains of disease-causing bacteria which are resistant to common antibiotic medications. Hence the resurgence of turbuculosis and more virulent strains of staph (aka "flesh-eating bacteria").

It's tons of fun,
Z

[adamzion]

Originally posted by Dagnabit
Welcome, and jump right in, and stick around a while. But if Griff's message is fair warning then here's the first bold attack. Nothing personal but the link you gave us has a section entitled "vegetarian cats and dogs" which is the foulest thing I've ever seen on a website.

Cats and dogs are natural meat-eaters. I don't give a rat's ass if they think they have worked out all the additives that these animals need to survive.

As for cats, they are perhaps nature's #1 carnivores. Making cats eat a vegetarian or vegan diet is little short of torture, and all but assures that the animal will be significantly malnourished.

Of course, cats don't often chase cans of Friskies in the wild either,
Z

[richlevy]

..because it knew riding in a truck was dangerous. One of our local channels showed an accident involving a jacknifed chicken truck. The camera zoomed in and there were some unmoving, probably dead, chickens. This apparently upset the anchorpersons, who immediately began to reassure themselves that some of these chickens must be just stunned.

Now, considering that a 'safe trip' for these chickens meant getting their necks broken or heads chopped off at their destination, I find it just a little hard to shed too many tears about them perishing in a traffic accident. As a matter of fact, the chickens who didn't make it score a minor victory in that they will probably not end up as human food (although they might be ground into animal feed).

I appreciate the need to minimize animal suffering. This is one of the requirements of kosher killing. However, there is no point at being at the top of the food chain if you can't have a burger. To quote Mel Brooks "It's good to be the king".