Day: April 17, 2002

Blogrolling In Conversant

BlogRolling.Com “provides a free, easy to use service to manage your buddy lists on your blog that works with every major blog tool and website.” The idea is apparently that people using some blogging tools have to go in and manually edit their templates to add or delete sites that they link to on sidebars.

This sort of feature is easy to do with Conversant. My list of links on the right is just another message in the database. When I am logged in as the site administrator, the system provides administrative links that other visitors and members never see. For example, this is how the bottom of my list of links looks,

Clicking on edit brings up my list of links in a form where I can add or delete to my heart’s content.

Andrew Stepanian Back in Prison

Twenty-three year old animal rights activist Andrew Stepanian is back in jail, this time serving a 6-month sentence for a December 2000 incident in which he was charged with resisting arrest and obstruction of justice.

Both of those charges were misdemeanors, but since Stepanian has a habit of getting arrested every several months — according to one animal rights web site, Stepanian has been arrested 15 times. The judge apparently decided to send a message to the young activist.

Stepanian served several months in jail after being caught smashing windows at a Long Island fur store in 2000. He was arrested in 1999 after chaining himself to a fur store.

In a profile for Newsday, reporter Sean Gardiner had an amusing quote from Stepanian’s mother, Ceil Stepanian, who said,

He’s a bunny hugger. Why are people so afraid of someone who’s concerned about the animals?

I don’t think the problem is so much that Stepanian is concerned with animals as much as that he insists on acting like one in public. Somehow I doubt Ms. Stepanian would be as understanding if some hooligan smashed all the windows in her home or car.

Sources:

Long Island Youth Under Attack. Spirit of Freedom, March 2002.

‘Bunny Hugger’ has a tail, too. Sean Gardiner, Newsday, February 1, 2002.

Japanese Researchers Claim Advance in Heart Research with Rats

The Japan Times reports that Japanese scientists claim to have developed cardiac muscle tissue derived from the heart-muscle cells of newborn rats that they used to treat rats with poorly functioning hearts.

The researchers apparently cultivated cells from newborn rats and used them to, in the words of The Japan Times, “form a sheet of cardiac muscle.” The researchers then combined four of these sheets of muscles and transplanted it into a rat, causing a 40 percent improvement in heart functionality.

Unfortunately, at the moment the research does not appear to have been peer reviewed.

Source:

Rat experiment gives hope to the weak-hearted. The Japan Times, Thursday, April 11, 2002.

Hillary Clinton: Milk Tainting Is Terrorism

After reports emerged earlier this month that someone is deliberately contaminating milk from New York dairy farms with antibiotics, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) announced that she had written to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III requesting that the FBI get involved in the investigation.

Clinton said,

They [the FBI] certainly have many more resources at their disposal to assist local and state law enforcement. Given the heightened awareness. . . . this is the kind of activity that the FBI needs to know about and keep track of.

Clinton added that the intentional contamination was “a form of terrorism” and that federal officials could help by creating a central clearing house for information on these sorts of crimes.

The Buffalo News reported that it had contacted Lt. John Hibsch, who is in charge of the state police investigation, who said that while state police had been in contact with federal authorities, no decision had been made yet on whether or not to open a federal investigation into the matter.

Source:

Clinton describes milk tainting as ‘terrorism’. John F. Bonfatti, The Buffalo News, April 12, 2002.

The Christian Science Monitor on Constitutional Amendments to Protect Hunting

The Christian Science Monitor’s Patrick Jonsson wrote an interesting article recently surveying efforts to add amendments to state constitutions that protect the rights of hunters. Since 1996, Alabama, California, Minnesota, North Dakota, Vermont and Virginia have enacted such amendments to protect hunting. Efforts are underway in at least 13 other states to enact such amendments.

Of course animal rights activists are highly critical of such efforts. Jonsson quotes The Fund for Animals’ Jeff Leitner saying,

I think that, because the number of hunters across the country is dwindling, the hunting community sees this constitutional amendment approach as a way to give themselves a public relations boost for an otherwise flagging pastime. More and more Americans don’t want anybody hunting in their back yard.

But despite the decline in the number of hunters, hunting is still viewed positively. People might not have the time or ability to hunt themselves, but in a 2001 Roper Starch poll conducted for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, 87 percent of respondents said hunting was as acceptable as golf and tennis.

And such broad support means these constitutional amendments are very likely to become the norm in states where animal rights activists are trying to limit hunting.

Source:

‘Right to hunt’ vs. animal rights: What’s fair game? Patrik Jonsson, The Christian Science Monitor, April 3, 2002.