Maternity leave, unlike sick leave, is 100% elective. Women can choose whether to become pregnant, can choose whether to keep a pregnancy if they become pregnant by accident or change their minds, can choose whether to keep the baby or give it up after they give birth, and can choose whether to care for the child or to delegate that to a family member, spouse (who may take paternity leave), or other (possibly paid) third-party.

I agree with madmatt and shazzer. For women to not only claim that they are entitled to paid leave and for others to pick up the slack from them without compensation just because they decided to have a baby and take a vacation with it, but that they are additionally entitled to a performance-based bonus for time that they didn't show up and did no work, is quite amazing.

At a time when the world is already so overcrowded, isn't it great that we have this incentive scheme set up for breeding when those of us who choose to opt out get no comparable benefit? In many cases even those who adopt (a much better choice) get either no leave or less leave.

And yes, parenting is hard enough that paid leave hardly makes up for it. It's still a choice. And, brianinmontana, we "need" to procreate? That is news to me. Where exactly does this need come from? Seems to me that we need to procreate a helluva lot less.

I grew up in a meat-and-potatoes home and liked bacon just fine then.

Converted to vegetarianism upon leaving, and since then, I can say it is no "gateway protein." Rather bacon, in its smelly, greasy, fatty way, is one of the more repellent food products out there. It serves, if anything, as an indicator that something is Not Safe To Eat.

If this is any indication, the Pork Week concept is one that should have been dead on arrival. Pigs are incredibly intelligent animals whose mass-production is devastating to the environment--enormous amounts of pig waste from CAFOs is dumped to putrify in giant lagoons.

Every time there is a natural disaster, the farm animals are left to die. In the recent Iowa floods, one CAFO evacuated only 6000 of 9000 pigs, leaving the rest to drown. A few dozen made it to the levies, only to be shot by the sheriff.

Body.

The law is an unconstitutional violation of the dormant commerce clause, so it won't be valid for purely domestic reasons. States pass these kinds of symbolic, unconstitutional laws all the time. All it does is waste money.

Only the federal government can regulate international trade.

No more than a tiny percentage of meateaters eat even a tiny percentage of their meat from farms with even close to these standards. This kind of propaganda just leaves people feeling justified eating meat.

And what you didn't show in this obscene propaganda video is the slaughterhouse. How happy, lazy, and content were these pigs in their final hours, I wonder? If you could give these pigs a choice and the rationality to make it, perhaps they would choose NOT existing over being eaten?

Down with "Pork Week"! Shame on Salon for promoting the twisted fallacy that eating meat is good for animals because the meat industry breeds more of them. An argument that I'm sure the Pope would agree with; who cares if everyone is more miserable, as long as there are more miserable people around.

www.farmsanctuary.org

The vegetarians/vegans/Jews/Muslims did not pick this fight. You want to eat pork, knock yourself out. It's a free country. Salon has always been very carnivorous in its foodie articles.

But now this supposedly enlightened, liberal-minded, ecological publication decides to dedicate a whole week to pork. And so far we've got three of these supposedly "edgy," "controversial" pieces all cheerleading pork consumption with the most one-sided, shallow, and juvenile analysis. It tastes good! It's a kitschy, trendy meme! I can work it into my bobo lifestyle with handcrafted, heirloom greenwashed bacon that I can afford on a Salon salary!

Guess what? Pork is environmentally devastating, a huge public health problem, and extremely cruel. But all we get from Salon is Fox News-style "American lifestyle, oink oink fuck yeah" bullshit. Not even a tip of the hat to the other side. Just a big "Fuck you" to any readers with deeply held objections to pig farming, and to the animals themselves.

I'm sorry, I've lost most of my remaining respect for this publication over this series. If I wanted this kind of content I could just go to a family dinner and take notes.

if they had consulted a single vegetarian when writing these articles, perhaps they wouldn't be so damn vapid and old.

So far we've got these meat-eater bingos out of Pork Week:

1. If God hadn't wanted us to eat animals, he wouldn't have made them out of meat!

2. Omigod, baaacoooon!

3. But all the farm animals need us. If it weren't for us eating them and farmers raising them, they never would have existed!

Too stupid for words. A complete waste of space.

Actually, I didn't see those, because reading all the comments on Salon would waste even more time than I do reading as many as I do. I did read the article. Wasn't any "tip of the hat" in there.