Day: October 14, 2004

All Hail Instiki

I’ve written a couple of blog entires over the past couple years about my fascination with Wikis. Frankly, I’m not interested in Wikis that much as far as the collaborative stuff like Wikipedia, but rather I find the Wiki-style environment great for working on longer-term projects like that book about animal rights that I keep meeaning to write.

Instiki is hands down the coolest Wiki application I’ve seen that is ridiculously easy to install and use locally rather than in a shared environment (though, don’t get me wrong — you could install this and use it as a Wiki for collaborative projects on the Internet. But if you’re interested in a locally installable Wiki for personal purposes, this thing is powerful and easy to install).

What got me was the easy-to-install process. I’ve installed Wikis on my local machines before, but this was ridiculously easy. Instiki requires Ruby, and a Windows installer for Ruby is available here. Once that’s installed its just a matter of downloading the Instiki Zip/GZ file and expanding it into whatever directory you want, double click on the and then visiting http://localhost:2500 to access the Instiki.

A couple of things from there make Instiki cool. First, a major requirement for me is that I can store all data files on my external FireLite drive. Instiki handles that like a charm — install Ruby on the host computer and then expand Instiki on the external drive and you’re in business.

Second, most of the applications I’ve been using to simulate Wiki-like environments don’t do revision tracking and color diffs so it’s easy to see what’s changed over various revisions.

All-in-all an unbelievably frigging cool, portable tool.

Meat Eating Continues to Grow

You probably missed it, but Farm USA’s World Farm Animals Day was October 2. Ahead of the WFAD, Farm USA released a report confirming the obvious — despite all the efforts of animal rights activists, meat consumption in the United States continues to grow far faster than population.

Farm USA extrapolated from the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service data to estimate that in 2004 the number of animals (not including aquatic animals) killed for food in the United States rose 2.5 percent to 10.2 billion. The vast majority of those animals — 9.39 billion — are broiler chickens.

According to Farm USA,

The rise in the animal death toll is double the annual U.S. population increase (currently 294.3 million) and reflects the continuing trend of switching from cow meat to chicken meat (a cow yields 200 times the amount of flesh in a chicken). In more personal terms, the average American is directly responsible for the abuse and death of 2,485 chickens, 78 turkeys and ducks, 33 pigs, and 11 cows and sheep during a 75-year life span.

Hmm….makes my mouth water.

Farm USA posted a number of pictures from World Farm Animal Day demonstrations around the world, and I think the winner had to be this one,

That’s Dan Holbert of Florida-based Body of Animal Rights Campaigners (BARC, get it?) Way to go, Dan. As I always say, a pig is a rat is a caged animal rights activist.

Sources:

World Farm Animals Day 2004 Preliminary Report. Farm USA, October 2004.

Death toll continues to rise. Press Release, Farm USA, September 25, 2004.

Matt Prescott Keeps On Lying about Holocaust On Your Plate

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is still touring the world with its “Holocaust On Your Plate” display. In September, the display started making its way through Canada.

In Montreal, Matt Prescott set up the show across the street from a Burger King, but he apparently was taken aback by complaints that the campaign says that meat eaters are the moral equivalent of Nazis. So he did what most PETA representatives do when confronted with embarrassing arguments — lie. Prescott told The Montreal Gazette,

[PETA is] not saying meat-eaters are the equivalent of Nazis. We’re saying anybody who eats meat is guilty of holding the same mindset that allowed the Holocaust to happen. We can take a stand against that ever time we sit down to eat by adopting a vegetarian diet.

PETA is not saying meat-eaters are Nazis? Ah, that explains why PETA features a web-ad on its site with pictures of concentration camp victims on one end and pictures of slaughtered pigs on the other, and in between text saying, “In relation to [animals] all people are Nazis.” Because, of course, PETA is not saying that meat-eaters are equivalent to Nazis.

Source:

Philllips Square exhibit a shocker. Andy Riga, The Montreal Gazette, September 9, 2004.