As well as put in place some animal cruelty laws. You would hold your head in your hands if you saw what happens. For dogs, for example, they will tie their front legs together BEHIND their back (YES, DISLOCATING THEM), and leave them tied up like that with a tin can over their mouth until they're ready to deal with them. They'll even hold the dogs legs like a "handle" while carrying them around. I've never seen cruelty like it...
They should pass laws, but so should the west. The poultry/egg and fishing industry is unquestionably unethical. And much of the dairy and beef industry would have to improve as well.
Again, not trying to say China shouldn't. But am pointing out that it's a bit of throwing a stone in a glass house.
I totally agree the West needs to improve animal welfare even further. But SOME cruelty laws are better than NONE, which is why I bring up China more. But you're totally right, there's awful stuff going on here, too.
Here's an interesting point: do we know that the poultry/fish industries can absorb the cost of "humanely" raiding these animals without collapsing? Assuming the money is there and this law would not kill an industry, how can we ensure that these cost increases are not passed on to the consumer?
Living in the US is expensive enough. Would you guarantee "ethical eggs" if the cost was fewer poor people could afford them? I am not happy that we treat poultry and fish the way we do, but if that means keeping those products affordable the I'd take that over increasing the welfare of an animal.
> do we know that the poultry/fish industries can absorb the cost of "humanely" raiding these animals without collapsing?
Enter the Tardis, go back 200 years and replace "poultry/fish" with "cotton/tobacco" and "eggs" with "fabric".
I don't think the industry needs to absorb those costs. Food is not expensive, we are just too stupid to eat it. It is ridiculously cheap since the industrialization of its production:
* We got used to only eating the very best. Lots of fruit does never reach the consumer because it does not look "nice" enough.
* We don't plan anymore. "Chicken today, we'll use the stock tomorrow for $this and the day after we can use the leftovers of $this for $that." That too comes with a high price.
* We became squeamish: A lot of meat that was regularly eaten just 50 years ago completely disappeared from our menus (tongue, liver, kidney, heart, tail, testicles, intestines). Since you are already paying for those parts, why not eat them?
* We have sacrificed the local workers' kitchen for the reliability of fast food chains: 365 days the same menu. That means 365 days of constant quality - pretty expensive when compared to the chef who goes to the market every day, picks what is good and affordable (which usually translates to "in season") and offers a good, simple and home cooked meal for $2.
* We are completely detached from our food: Who can, without googling, name 3 varieties of apples, how they taste and where they are used best? How much bread does a 10 by 10 meter field of wheat yield?
And by "we" I mean the US and Europe, in most other parts of the world people have a much, much healthier relation with their food.
Why do you want to "ensure that these cost increases are not passed on to the consumer"? Isn't that a major problem already (people not paying the real cost of their food)?
I can appreciate the need for cheap protein, but I don't see why it should be addressed in isolation from any other form of social inequality.
I see no reason why the government should be subsidizing someone's steak, bacon or fish. Eggs and dairy? Yes, but only for the vulnerable.
I'm not really squeamish, and I'm cognisant of the cultural difference but.. I would caution people against image searching for tied up dogs in the context of China unless you're prepared for some pretty shocking stuff.
I know, but I don't think very many people know this even exists. That's the worst part about this practice -- it's so horrible that it's too horrible to even share. As much as I hate it, I know I can't share pictures of this on Facebook because people will likely hate me more than they hate what's going on.
There is also growing sympathy for animals in China, in my experience, but it's a few generations behind the West. My family just moved back to the US from 5 years there.
(1) A story: My two younger daughters, probably 9 and 11 at the time, were on the street in Chengdu near our apartment, and they saw a puppy, probably stray. A granny was out with her toddler grandson, and when they saw the puppy too, the granny brought her grandson over and physically swung his feet at the puppy to kick it. She was teaching him to kick a stray dog. My daughters were shocked that someone would "teach a child to kick dogs".
(2) China is still very much recovering from PTSD as a nation, from the events of the 60s and 70s. It will take another couple generations for the panic over survival to fully recede, I imagine. Animal rights are a luxury compared to survival (in people's minds).
(3) Change comes extremely fast in China -- people are very connected and can collectively shift their opinions and outlook in a heartbeat, when they're ready, thanks in part to WeChat, and in part to culture, which inculcates rapid adaptability to changing conditions.
(4) On the other hand, China is still 40-50% rural, where animals are livestock and not pets. That will likely not change as long as people eat meat! (Or at least change very slowly -- see US meat industry for example.)
He was 49 years old. Wouldn't this cause problems for his hips and knees? I'm all for pushing physical limits, but not to the point where it could backfire. Even 20 year-old professional footballers (soccer) are told to take 2 weeks complete rest at the end of a season, and during the season they only train maybe 3-4 days a week.
I hope this guy doesn't regret doing this down the line, because right now it is very inspiring.
After the first 30 marathons, his body has probably settled into a pretty efficient, gentle way to run, out of necessity. There are, in fact, ways to run that put less wear and tear on your body.
It's probably possible to go out in a single day with poor form and do more damage to your body than this guy did in an entire year.
He says about his heart rate that it's "below 100 if I run 10 kilometers". That seems pretty amazing to me. I've been measuring my heart rate recently and mine's at about 150 bpm if I run at a medium pace.
Here's a good article by Christopher Hitchens on freedom of religion: http://www.slate.com/id/2266154. Some examples of where he thinks religion oversteps its bounds:
- Mormon polygamy
- Christian sects that disapprove of medicine
- Ritual circumcision (especially when the mohel sucks off the debris from the penis with his mouth)
I would also add to that list the ritual slaughter of animals. Kosher and Halal both mandate that an animal cannot be stunned with a captive-bolt stunner before having their throats cut, and must be fully conscious. Needless to say, this cruelty only persists because of "freedom of religion".
If you ever want to get away with things you otherwise couldn't get away with, freedom of religion is probably the most potent argument you could unleash.
Even Hitchens' examples reflect some basic rights a civil libertarian should want to protect.
Mormon polygamy: the government shouldn't be telling you who you can or can't marry.
Christian sects that disapprove of medicine: the government shouldn't be forcing you to make changes to your body.
Ritual circumcision (especially when the mohel sucks off the debris from the penis with his mouth): sounds gross to me, but the government shouldn't tell you what changes you can't make to your body, or how you provide care for a member of your tribe.
Can government intervention in these areas bring about greater human well-being? Possibly, but I think the above are relatively self-regulating. Christian sects that disapprove of medicine (Christian Scientists for example) must contend with proliferating evidence of the benefits of scientific medicine. As long as scientists have freedom of speech too I suspect their membership will continue to decline in the US.
Can government intervention in these areas bring about greater suffering? Absolutely. The US government currently intervenes in gay marriages, and recently intervened in abortions (and many in Congress would love to intervene here again!).
The government certainly /can/ tell you "how to care for a member of your tribe" if that member is a minor. The ritual circumcision Hitchens references led to a small but deadly outbreak of herpes among recently circumcised babies. The government should let /adults/ practice their religion as they choose, but there would certainly be a rational basis for concluding that this particular practice unnecessarily endangers a third party: children who lack the ability to say, "No, thank you! I'm Buddhist." The same goes for Christian sects that disapprove of medicine. Sure, adults can turn down medical treatment for /themselves/, but if they do so for their children they could (and should) go to jail for child endangerment. A civil libertarian should want to protect everyone's right to liberty, the right to do whatever they wish /without harming others./ In these cases, the religious parents' choices often do harm their children, who are too young to object.
Government can tell you things to or not to do that are by some definitions "immoral" - a legal argument here is moot. You talking utilitarian principles - not libertarian ones.
A civil libertarian would reject the notion that a government should restrict you from a personal activity (which parenting certainly is) - because of society's majority judgment against it. They'd easily call this tyranny of the majority - whether you agree with it or not.
However, a "classic liberal" would come at this from a natural law or humanist perspective and say there is a moral reason to do / not to do such things.
There is a distinction between civil libertarians and classic liberal civil liberties.
I said "in these cases"--turning down medicine and practicing that form of ritualized circumcision. Perhaps "often" is an overstatement, but there have been many cases of children dying when their Christian Scientist parents refused to get them proper medical attention (see, e.g., http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/flashbks/xsci/s...).
<i>but the government shouldn't tell you what changes you can't make to your body, or how you provide care for a member of your tribe.</i>
Talk to a social worker and see whether or not you still believe that a government should still be able to step in and tell you how to treat a member of your "tribe"
I remember reading one social worker's long diatribe about why they burned out and quit. Out of several truly horrible things (black and blue children are ten a penny), the one that really stuck in my mind was the description of finding genital warts on the anus of a 7-year-old because his mother repeatedly whored him out.
I'm against the abuse of children and happy to use the government to accomplish that.
However, the prevalence of abuse and neglect in the foster care system - complete with cases on that order of horror - makes a very weak case for the idea that external regulation accomplishes any better.
So... a program where near to 100% of input kids are neglected or abused that ends up with a significantly lower proportion of those kids neglected or abused is a "very weak" argument that anything has become "any better"?
If you had a drug that could save 50% of terminally ill patients, would you say "we have a very weak case that this drug saves lives"?
In order for your statement to make sense, the failure rate of foster care would have to approach 100%. Again, talk to an actual social worker about how they see foster care and whether or not they choose to use it. It's an opinion that will most likely come with caveats, but foster care is also a service they use frequently.
"near to 100% of input kids are neglected or abused"
Untrue. Children end up in the foster care system for a variety of reasons, including simple loss of parents or a woman (or teenage girl) knowing she can't care for a child.
"significantly lower proportion of those kids neglected or abused"
The evidence is not as clear on this as you'd like it to be.
To correct your example, if we had a drug that caused strokes or death in a significant percentage of cases, simply saying, "Well, many of the patients we'd give it to would otherwise suffer strokes or death," would be a quick route to an FDA rejection.
As a counter point to your first item - the government now doesn't really tell you who you can and can't marry, at least from a religious perspective. However, in the US at least, marriage is often done both religiously and legally, which imparts a whole slew of rights, obligations, and benefits. From the legal and governmental perspective, polygamy is an abuse of this (see the documented cases of welfare abuse in Utah, for instance).
Back to the point though - you could get married to 10 spouses in front of God and your friends and never tell the government about it, and I doubt they would care (unless your cohabitation violated some health code or something).
As fodder for discussion, where should the government's influence stand on issues of medicine or circumcision, as practiced by children's parents? At what point can the government say "your freedoms matter less to us than taking care of _your_ child the way _we_ believe it should be done"?
On a personal note, I was raised in a Christian Science family. While devout, my parents were very attentive and I was lucky to have a healthy childhood (though I didn't even try aspirin until I was in college). A philosophy degree at SFSU cured me of that dogma :) but that's part of why I'm sympathetic; I love my dad even if he is a radical.
I think parents still have a legal obligation to not be negligent. There's a difference between not providing any care (while playing WOW all day) and doing your Christian Scientist damnedest for your children. A person espouses civil libertarianism not because they hate government, but because they trust people and hold others to the personal commitments they make.
Things get more complicated when you bring children into them, yes. However, even then there are areas civil libertarians should be leery of and should scrutinize government involvement in - like the religious, political, or other beliefs that a parent teaches a child.
Kosher, at least, is not a standard for "ritual slaughter of animals", but a dietary standard. Kosher meat rules require fairly humane methods of animal slaughter, whereas captive-bolt stunners are the rug under which many factory-farms try to sweep their treatment of animals at slaughter-time.
As for halal, I'm not as familiar, but due to the level of ignorance you've shown on kosher, I'm going to have to call shenanigans and say "citation needed".
I think you are more wrong than right. While 'kosher' is a dietary standard, there are certain conditions that must be met before meat can be considered kosher. These ritual slaughter techniques fall under 'shechita', which traditionally requires that the animal be unharmed (hence unstunned) before its throat is sliced with a knife in a very particular manner. If this is not done, the meat is not eligible to be considered kosher.
Various countries currently have exemptions to their humane slaughter rules explicitly for Jewish and Muslim traditional practices. Here are some citations:
I mean that semantically, not morally. While it's technically true that kosher is a dietary standard, food meets this classification based on the means of slaughter. I have no particularly strong beliefs as to exactly what constitutes the humane treatment of animals.
I run a company selling primarily vegan products (http://screamsorbet.com), but also hunt and fish. I eat less meat than most Americans, but also have two whole wild boar hams currently in brine for Christmas dinner. I care about the conditions of animals, but eat meat with gusto when I do.
I agree wholeheartedly with the parent article that there should a consistent set of laws, and that exemptions based on belief are a loophole that should be closed. Either shechika is humane or it is not; but the religious beliefs of performant should not be a factor.
Then you're being uselessly pedantic, and failing at it - there's no slaughter involved in making quite a lot of kosher food.
"exemptions based on belief are a loophole that should be closed"
Then expand the freedoms of all people to make exemptions on peaceful religious activity superfluous. Otherwise, when dealing with governments that carefully parse and rank claims of rights (particularly when it comes to "weird" minority groups), exemptions can serve to protect particular freedoms for the people who most care for them.
Do Jewish slaughter laws call for the animal to be conscious when having its throat cut, and do you think this is preferable to being stunned?
That is, if you HAD to kill your pet dog by cutting its throat, would you want it to be stunned or not?
I probably used Kosher and Halal incorrectly, but suffice it to say that slaughter of conscious animals is widely practiced in the Jewish and Muslim faiths. To ask another question: Do you think western slaughterhouses adopted captive-bolt stunning because they were bored, or because it granted a small reprieve at the end of the farming cycle?
Ah, so this isn't a matter of ignorance, but deliberate portrayal with a yes-or-no gotcha question.
But no, the requirement for an animal to be conscious is not universally agreed upon in kosher law. Further, the intent of kosher slaughter practices is to induce rapid loss of consciousness through blood-loss, minimal pain via the use of a razor-sharp blade, and a resulting humane death.
You can certainly cherry-pick kosher meat facilities that have failed to live up to this standard, but I can simply point to the normal state of meat-slaughter in the developed world, particularly the US.
Would it be more humane to cut an animal's throat while it was conscious, or unconscious? That's all I'm asking. If that's considered a gotcha question, then we've probably reached an impasse...
It's more humane if it's conscious because to make an animal unconscious you have to hurt it. I'd rather simply kill it instead of hurt it first, and then kill it.
A captive bolt does not always work on the first try, and it doesn't always fully stun either.
You can't just increase the power of the bolt or you get brain matter mixed into the meat, raising the risk of mad cow disease. So you have to carefully tune it to "enough to stun, not enough to kill". It doesn't always work.
With Kosher slaughter on the other hand making sure the animal dies very fast is important otherwise the meat is not kosher and can't be sold.
It's not really "hurting" it if you make it deeply unconscious, which is the goal of stunning. Can it be botched? Yes. But just like medicine that sometimes doesn't work, or isn't administered properly, the solution is not to stop using the medicine, but to correct the mistakes made when delivering it.
Consider this: When you use a stunner properly, the animal feels a split second of pain before becoming unconscious. At this point, pretty much every vet would say it can't feel pain.
But if you cut its throat while conscious, it can feel the pain of the wound immediately, and continues to feel it until the brain starts shutting down. This can take minutes. Cutting the throat does not cause immediate unconsciousness, and this is the problem.
Compare a properly stunned animal vs. an animal whose throat has been cut by via sechita, and tell me which one reaches unconsciousness faster. Because that is the animal that endures less pain in death.
No, it isn't. You tried to go on about ritual slaughter of animals, then backpedaled as your ignorance was pointed out. Now you're trying to reduce the issue of cruelty to animals in a slaughterhouse to a question of consciousness at the moment of slaughter, ignoring the fact that kosher laws require better treatment of animals than the civil laws governing slaughterhouses. The "we stun them, so they don't suffer" line is a favorite of the meat industry, even if it doesn't always work out that way.
But then, cruelty to animals isn't your concern. After all, it would be most humane not to slaughter the animal at all - but conspicuously, you're not arguing for vegetarianism.
That's a misrepresentation of what he was saying, don't know why you got the upmods. A captive-bolt stunner is a quick strike that stuns. "beating" something is protracted causation of pain. You're not 'filling in' details that have been left out, you're creating a new situation out of whole cloth.
"A captive-bolt stunner is a quick strike that stuns."
If it's successful, yes. They often aren't; it's not hard to find undercover video of "stunned" animals in clear, loud pain.
Let's take this whole what-if to the extreme:
If I had to be turned into a cow and slaughtered and was given the choice of a random secular slaughterhouse that would use a stunner and a random kosher slaughterhouse, I'd absolutely choose the kosher option. I'd have a better chance of not being injured and mistreated on the way to my death, and I'd have a better chance for a clean, quick, and minimally painful death.
For those who don't know it, the problem requires no math except a very basic grasp of probability. Personally, I find it somewhat absurd that you can be considered a mathematical legend but still miss that problem. I think it even took Erdos some time (months) to accept the solution, but I don't have a citation for that.
He's not alone, either. Lots of mathematicians miss that problem, which makes me wonder about the fundamentals of a Math education.
I really hate to start yet another Monty Hall Problem discussion, but it's worth noting that the Monty Hall Problem is often ambiguously phrased -- it's not specified whether the host has to open a door to show a goat or not. If Erdos got confused, it's probably because he heard an ambiguous version.
...Really? You find that absurd that he just made a simple goof to a fun problem like that? Believe me, Mathematicians are spending their time focused on much more important and difficult problems than the Monty Hall problem, so don't wonder too much.
And even by your own admission it involves no mathematical ability so why couldn't a Mathematician not get it, right?
The Koran burning fiasco generated a lot of criticism by peaceful muslims, but I wonder if they also criticize the myriad flag/effigy burnings by angry muslims across the world?
Terry Jones was just plain dumb to propose burning the Koran (not least because he would be up in arms if the Bible were to be burned). But in my view, muslims who are offended by Koran burnings should be equally as offended when people burn American flags and effigies in the name of Islam. Yet somehow I think their concern dies down for the latter, and I view it as a real problem.
But I have to say, the muslim clerics defending the Islamic center in NYC are really a credit to their religion when they oppose the Koran burning not on religious grounds, but because it will endanger American troops.
But in my view, muslims who are offended by Koran burnings should be equally as offended when people burn American flags and effigies in the name of Islam. Yet somehow I think their concern dies down for the latter, and I view it as a real problem.
1- You realize this is a belief you hold, not a fact, right?
2- Allegiance to one's religion and one's nation often hold different importance to different people.
It's a belief based on valid logic, which is much closer to a fact than the simple word "belief" would imply. If they are offended by rudeness towards one group but not equivalent rudeness towards another, that's either chauvinism or hypocrisy.
Maybe it's the press not doing their jobs, but I never really read about how moderate mosques put out any statements against flag burning, which I think they should be doing every time it happens in their country (like Britain very recently).
If it does, and it's just not reported, then I'm wrong.
right - you think they should be doing. that's fine and all, but the point is you're assuming _they_ should view the world the way you do. which they clearly do not.
("they", of course, being millions of people, or at least their religious leaders. let's leave the issue of painting such a large and diverse population with the same brush for another time, shall we?")
>a credit to their religion when they oppose the Koran burning not on religious grounds, but because it will endanger American troops.
Hmm. That's the sort of kindness that you get from the mafia (or at least the mafia shown in films):
You really shouldn't do that now; who knows what our friends will do if you do. No, no of course we respect your rights to freedom - just, y'know we wouldn't want anything to happen to your little head now would we, capiche.
The difference of course being, the mafia will be the ones who break your legs, and have control over all people who fuck you up, while these religious leaders have no control over what the extremists might do. Just as many religious leaders have little say over what the pastor chooses.
So it won't be Muslims that are doing the burning and violent demonstration then?
Perhaps it's a stretch but this is clear - someone drew a picture suggesting that Islam may not be completely peaceful and the resulting self-enragement led to Muslims causing many deaths and much violent destruction around the world.
IMO it was simply a decision to be offended in order to excuse violent demonstration and terrorise none Muslims into submission, and it seems to have worked well.
I see this argument all the time on the internet, from people of every worldview. "Why doesn't group X spend more time speaking out against crazy fringe faction of group X?"
Because everyone knows crazy fringe faction is full of crazy people, and speaking out against them isn't going to accomplish anything, aside from giving the crazy people more of the attention they so fervently desire.
you can't compare Religous Book(Koran, bible, etc) to a flag. they are totally different, flag represents one nation while the other (religous book) might represent many nations. muslims don't burn Bible. americans can burn iraq's or iran's flag and no body will speak about that.
So then it's OK to burn one nation's flag, but wrong to burn the flags of multiple nations?
There's really no difference between a flag and a holy book. They are both inanimate objects that some significance has been attached to (be it nationalistic or religious).
But I have to say, the muslim clerics defending the Islamic center in NYC are really a credit to their religion when they oppose the Koran burning not on religious grounds, but because it will endanger American troops.
Burning the Koran doesn't endanger US troops. Assholes whose culture that belongs back in 700 AD endanger troops.
Al Gore's documentary didn't endanger discovery channel employees, some asshole put them in danger.
Yeah, I know a fair number of people who say they have no interest in gaming, but that sc2 replays are damn entertaining to watch. Given how balanced the game is, and how good it looks, I hope sc2 can start attracting some serious sponsorship and advertising money.
Both HD and Husky's channels have over 100k subscribers, Day9 is quite popular, and even non-competitive show matches can attract over 5k users on ustream. I'm a huge football (soccer) fan, but I honestly enjoy watching competitive sc2 matches more.
EDIT: What I should add is that the commentators add serious entertainment value when they cast the matches.
If you're going to pick one, I recommend HDStarcraft; his commentaries have the best stuff/fluff ratio IMO. I enjoyed his casts so much I tossed him a couple of bucks.
I think it's more than some people, unfortunately. It's probably the de facto way.
“One can measure the greatness and the moral progress of a nation by looking at how it treats its animals” - Mahatma Gandhi
Most nations do poorly on this test, although there is slow progress. The funny thing is, at least 7 out of 10 people would not be happy with factory farming practices, but they still dominate agriculture in this country. It deeply troubles me that you can keep pigs in pens where they cannot even turn around, even though they're about as intelligent as dogs. Other animals can be equally as unlucky.
I think you are missing the point.
Nazi Germany was by no means a vegetarian country. I think a better question to ask would be - could the Holocaust have happened in the mostly-vegetarian India?
Millions of people were murdered under the pretense that these people are pigs or rats. But what if your culture (e.g. Hinduism or whatever) also condemns the killing of pigs and rats? The entire argument that justifies murdering these people breaks down.
India long had a caste system. Do you argue that the long-standing violence and discrimination against "untouchables" could not have led to a genocide the way long-standing anti-Semitism in Europe did?
First, India isn't mostly vegetarian (about a 1/3 of the population is vegetarian).
Second, India has had and continues to have horrible acts of violence committed against various social and religious segments of the population. See: Partition of India, Ayodhya, Caste System violence.
Third, I haven't seen any study, nor any evidence that suggests that violence is unique to non-vegetarians.
