Letters to the Editor
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Published Letters: 181 Editor's Choice: 9
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Oh look, one of the fiercer animals...
[Read the article: The practical ethicist]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]An interesting article. You don't agree? America and the internet lets you do that easily.
I agree that if we're going to eat animals (and we are) that they should be raised and slaughtered in a humane way- a way that allows them to engage in the aspects of their natures that releive their suffering (perhaps 'stress' would really be a better word).
Yeah, I'll pay a little extra for the privilage of soothing my concious.
I note that Mr. Singer did not equate farmers with Nazis, boys with rats, or dairymen with slavers. Read the article, you know ALL the words, you idiots.
It is more efficient to use land to raise food plants than to raise animals. In other news, seawater is salty. I think (and I cannot prove this) that eventually we'll come around to that realization one way or another. Perhaps the end of oil will spur the path to enlightenment.
I don't have the knowledge base to discuss the most efficient political/socio-economic methods of transporting food so I won't even try.
"Vegetables are tasteless and bland." You've clearly never had my pepper/onion/shroom k-bobs. For that I pity you. ... uh, the pepper/onion/shroom/bacan k-bobs are better, sure, but still...
I always find it odd that whenever you talk about animal rights there is a certain group of insecure people who get all chest-puffy and grouse about hard life and hard choices and stuff. Dude, I've got an idea for you, eat yourself a big ol' burger, strut into a boxing studio, tell the instructor about your tough-guy ethics and then bitch-slap that faggot down.
You know, just to get a first hand education about hard choices and suffering and stress and all that.
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Three words you can use to identify the bad guys
[Read the article: "Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Rule the World."
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This is when it would be good to know-
[Read the article: At what point can I just give up on my son?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]- who is the sociopath? Is it the mom? Is it the son? Is it the grandmother? All three? Two out of three? None? My guess is that it would be the grandmother and the son (genetics are a bitch), and the mother has picked up a bunch of coping strategies that she's using attempting X, Y, and Z and hoping that proves that she's not the bad guy here).
As we can't pop 'em in an MRI and get the answer, I'd say that the mother has to rescue her child from the clutches of her grandmother. Bad grandmothers are real, very very real. The history of lying and teaching others to lie is a clear indicator of her badness. Her use of an apocalyptic end-time cult as a control tool over her family is another indicator. Took her a long time, but she finally found a victim who can't get away.
And, since he can't get away (assuming he's only 14 or so), the LW has to go get him. Personally, I'd advise she wait until Christmas Day (because it's always better if you can ruin Christmas)then go down with her husband and meet the police at her grandmother's house and take care of some business.
Then I'd advise her to do the therapy thing (or better yet, the MRI thing, just to be sure) and tough it out for the next four years.
THEN she can be done with him if that's how it has to be.
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conspiracy theorists
[Read the article: The 9/11 deniers]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm sure that there is some fancy-pants psychological term for when people are so horrified by the realization of how frail they and their support structures really are that they make shit up to feel stronger.
I noticed this with the OKC bombing of 1994. It's amazing how many people were so hoping that there was something BIG behind it. The Iraqis. The Iranians. The Illuminati. Anything but a handful of unhinged guys and a truck full of fertilizer. Surely it can't be that easy!
Doesn't that make you feel vulnerable? To know that an easily acquired truck and a slightly-less-easily-acquired amount of fertilizer could bring the building that you're in right now down. Not only that, but a federal building with the guards and the cameras and the comings and goings.
Isn't it an easier thing to believe that huge amounts of money and manpower and secret deals and efforts all had to go into it, and that any slip up along the way would have resulted in the Murrah building still being there? Don't you feel safer, now.
The fact is that the 9/11 hijackers bet that passengers and crew of those planes would not want trouble, would believe that it was a hijacking like they had heard about before, and then they steered the planes into buildings. Landing a plane is hard, taking off is hard, pointing it at buildings and keeping it in line to them... not so much...
But I guess that making it a reciprocal international conspiracy between the U.S. and Al Quida and dozens of others makes people feel safer that it won't happen again.
Wrong. We are still incredibly vulnerable. You, right now, are incredibly vulnerable. One of your co-workers could be planning on gunning everybody down. There could be a car bomb in your parking lot. Somebody somewhere has surely put together that a big enough smoke bomb in a crowded theater/stadium will cause panic which will kill as many people as a decent sized bomb anyway.
You're fragile. You're not safe. You've never been safe. You'll never be safe. You play the odds all your life. Try your best to be brave.
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Give 'em Hell, Xanthro!
[Read the article: The 9/11 deniers]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There have been times in the past where Xanthro and I have held opposing views. But in this case, the case of getting some of you people to pull your heads out of your asses, we're on the same side.
AGain, you are not safe. There was (and likely is not now) no net of jet fighters flying around to keep you safe. Buildings are built of collapse upon themselves, that's really common knowledge.
Xanthro, for your thankless task, I thank you.