Just another nerd.
The log file analysis for August was pretty impressive. Last month the server handled 254,236 page requests which was the best month yet for 2001 — and more requests in August than the previous four years combined.
September’s total should easily exceed 300,000, and I just might go over the 3 million page views/year mark which would be very cool.
Just a few weeks ago I saw Mary Tyler Moore on some news show testifying before Congress about the importance of continued federal funding for diabetes research, much of said research occurring in animal models. Now, though, I see Moore coming onboard as the Honorary Chair of Farm Sanctuary‘s Sentient Beings campaign, which has a web site at Sentient Beings.
At a Farm Sanctuary gala in May 2001, Moore told the audience,
To come face to face with a sheep, cow, pig, or goat and to look into their eyes is to see the depth of their souls…whether it’s fear and terror in the eyes of an animal traveling to slaughter or the joy and trust in the eyes of an animal safe and comfortable at a place like Farm Sanctuary. Animals look to us for compassion and protection, and it is our duty to relieve their suffering.
The front page of the SentientBeings.Org site clearly endorses an animal rights view saying, “Cows, pigs, chickens, and other animals commonly exploited by agribusiness are sentient beings — capable of awareness, feeling, and suffering — and humans have an ethical obligation to refrain from behaviors which inflict suffering upon these animals.”
Notice, it does not say people have an obligation to minimize these sufferings to the extent that can be done consistent with a given use of animals, but rather that people shouldn’t engage in any behavior that would inflict suffering on animals.
In an op-ed posted at SentientBeings.Org, Moore actually stops considerably short of this view, arguing that, “Farm animals, like all animals, have feelings, and should be protected from cruelty.”
Like many celebrity spokespersons, Moore does not seem to have thought through her position on animals, especially in relation to her activism on behalf of diabetes, and instead seems to simply allow her emotional reactions to different forms of animal use dictate what she finds acceptable and unacceptable.
Source:
Night in the Spotlight for Farm Animals. Farm Sanctuary, Press Release, May 2001.
It’s the sort of claim routinely made by animal rights activist: medical researcher Michael Stryker must be some sort of monster because he performed experiments that involve drilling into the brains of kittens and then sewing their eyelids shut. But Stryker, who was targeted by the COalation Against Vivisection as part of their protests against the 34th International Union of Physiological Sciences world congress, wasn’t having any of it and publicly defended the importance of his research.
Stryker’s research was designed to answer a basic question: does sleep deprivation affect the way the brain organizes its visual systems during the first few weeks after birth. Stryker told The Dominion that prior to his researcher, there was no definite evidence either way on this issue.
Stryker chose to study kittens because the brain structures that control site in cats are very similar to those of human beings. The study found that, in fact, there were several periods shortly before and after birth when parts of the brains re-assembled themselves. The brain, then, turned out to be extremely sensitive to changes during the first couple months of life.
This finding led to changes in the way that surgeries to correct congenital eye problems are scheduled. Previously such research was delayed until an infant was four to six months old. As a result of the new information about the sensitivity of the brain in the first couple months of life, such surgeries are now starting to be conducted in the first weeks after birth and proving to be more successful at correcting the problem.
Source:
Researcher defends experiments on kittens. The Dominion (Wellington), August 25, 2001.
Reuters reported that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals decided to pull its pro-shark ad campaign which featured a billboard that asked, “Would You Give Your Right Arm To Know Why Sharks Attack, Could it Be Revenge?” The billboard was a crass attempt by PETA to cash in on the publicity surrounding the shark attack on 8-year-old Jessie Arbogast.
PETA spokesman Dan Shannon told Reuters,
Our message is that humans kill billions of fish, including sharks, each year, in the most hideous ways, and sharks aren’t really to blame for doing what comes naturally, because, unlike us, they don’t have choices when it comes to what to eat. But right now people would just shoot the messenger without hearing the message.
Live by public relations disasters, die by public relations disasters. Now PETA needs to come clean about whether or not the Ranger who fire four shots into the shark that attacked Arbogast was morally justified in doing so.
Source:
Animal rights group pulls be-kind-to-sharks ad. Reuters, September 4, 2001.
Time Asia recently published a horrifying account of a young Pakistani woman who left her husband and was subjected to an apparently all too common punishment — her husband doused her upper body in acid, severely disfiguring her.
Writer Hannah Bloch describes how Fakhra Yunas rose from rather humble beginnings to marry the son of a wealthy politician. But after several years of unhappy marriage in which she claims he regularly beat her, she left him to live with her mother.
In April, while Fakhra was napping at her motheouse, her husband entered the house, pushed her mple, Bloch reports that “the acid burned the hair off Fakhra’s head, fused her lips, blinded one eye, obliterated her left ear and melted her breasts.”
As with Honor Killings in some countries, such acid attacks are apparently rarely prosecuted. In fact, when Fakhra tried to obtain a passport to travel outside Pakistan for reconstructive surgery, she was initially refused on grounds that the story might harm Pakistan’s reputation abroad. And, so far, Fakhra’s husband has faced no punishment for his actions.
Source:
The evil that men do. Hannah Bloch, Time Asia, August 20-27, 2001.
Slashdot was the first site I saw to point out that JK Rowling won this year’s Hugo for best science fiction novel for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
I wouldn’t have been surprised if Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone had won a Hugo a few years ago, but Goblet of Fire is not only inferior to the other books nominated, but its inferior to Rowling’s other books.
In fact, the one thing Rowling has in common with the folks who write genre fiction series is that her books are getting more bloated and less interesting with every passing book (remember Goblet of Fire was so bloated, that everyone in the process missed an obvious inconsistency between it and a previous book in the series until after the huge worldwide launch of the book). Halfway through Goblet I thought I was reading a Robert Jordan novel.