I'm a vegan, and I typically detest PETA. Their heterocentric, fatphobic, white middle class way of doing things usually makes me want to claw my eyes out. This ad, however, is surprisingly nuanced for them.

I'm also a dyke, and I have to admit a love of tits. I understand why guys love tits, I just don't understand why they love exploited tits. It's of course a different situation when one chooses to be objectified than when one is pushed into pleasing the viewer, although the point seems to be lost on many (although always up for debate is when is it really your choice).

This ad seems to be making the connection between the exploitation of women and that of dairy cows. We force the cows to give us milk by artifically inseminating them and then taking their babies away to be pregnant all the time. They are not choosing this: they are being chained up and forced. However, their reason for giving milk is the same as ours: for their babies. In a way this ad sets up a strange visual showing women as both exploited sex object and baby machine, something that I hope most good people realize is awful to do (despite that, I'm sure there's some breast milk fetishists who are LOVING this ad). However, rightly banking that most people are not, it seems that PETA has actually created an ad that reels people in for the whole thing, while usually I just pass on what they say.

While I wish one didn't need to make comparisons to human experiences to see the problems that animals have in their dealings with humans, I'm really not sure how to get to people who are so selfish to not realize the horrible things that we do. Since we can't stop doing horrible things to each other, maybe it's all a mute point anyway. You'd think with our powers of critical thinking we could do something about all this, but it seems that we're only animals as well.

Veganism is about doing the best we can, not about making ourselves miserable. There is only so far we can go before we find a path that is too tenuous to keep upon. It is important to find balance in ourselves while staying true to our beliefs.

I've been vegan for 9 years and vegetarian for 5 years before that. Although I strongly believe in this, I do not prosthelytize and live my life by example. However, by being a quiet force, I seem to have done much good by allowing people to approach me, see the goodness within my path, and strive to do what they can to be better whether that's giving up meat, eating less animal products, or becoming vegan.

I've dated meat eaters and veg*ns and having that ethical disjunction is difficult to say the least. I wish that those who eat meat could see beyond their selves to the pain and suffering their choices bring. Ultimately however, I recognize that this is their choice without forgetting how much I disagree. Again, it's all about finding your balance. Everyone is going to be different in this regard and that is fine.

There will always be those people who see things as they are before other people do. These people are called visionaries. It's not easy being a visionary: we are creating a path for people to follow down the road.

There is so much hostility in some of these letters that I know it'd be impossible to respond to. I agree in essence with what bwunderlick says. We do not need to eat meat. We have the reason and ability not to. However, people can't stop killing and hurting other people who they presumably have more empathy for... we have so much potential, it's kind of sad.

Truely man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds theirs. We live by the death of others: we are burial places! I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look on the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men. ~Leonardo da Vinci

I guess people still do need librarians after all.

http://www.ugadm.northwestern.edu/freshman/facts/alumni.htm#entertainment

Regardless of where Stephen Colbert went, that does not change the fact that he gave the performance of a lifetime. Thanks to Colbert for saying all that we wish we could say!

Are people still not aware of how the Iranian government works? Ahmadinejad has little real power. People should recognize that anything he says may not happen if it is not backed by Ayatollah Khamenei.

When Ahmadinejad says something that may be controversial to the real person in power, we should wait to hear what Khamenei has to say first.

The government seems more interested in propping up subsidies than providing people with healthy food.

For those of you who want Omega 3s without eating fish, try flax seeds! Yummy sprinkled on cereal in the morning!

Calling the possibility of reproduction that doesn't involve both sexes "our most perverse and monstrous desire" takes the prize. Of all the perverse, monstrous dseires that humanity has expressed throughout history... this one deserves the superlative? Ignoring all the monstrous desires fueled by greed, self-righteous fury, dehumanizing of others, lust for violence, warping of the human spirit... nah, none of that really matters. Genocide? Withholding life-saving pharmaceuticals? Casually ripping away the freedom and lives of countless people? You don't even need to have an agenda to open a history book and take your pick. But no... the idea that people might reproduce without a partner of the opposite sex, that's the most perverse and monstrous desire. Don't you read your own sentences? It's enough to crack your readers up.