My not understanding the whole idea of owning pets is not due to my ignorance but to the absurdity of pet ownership. If I understand correctly, you give a cat shelter and food in return for companionship. If that is the case, then the cat stays with you solely for food and shelter, not because she loves you. It is an economic relationship, a quid pro quo - so much food for so much companionship. But is this love? That is what I question. As for humans distorting the lives of animals - that is very true. But to what end are they distorted? I accept that pigs are raised so I can eat pork. Predation has been a fact of life for several billion years. But to keep animals simply as pets, simply for affection seems to be a bit of an affection, and is usually a substitute for real human companionship.

Sorry for the typo - should be "affectation"

"But consider the possibility that there are other intelligent entities, alien or otherwise, who are making the same value judgements on our species. How would we convince them that we are worth living?"

I doubt very much that humans would be cuddly enough. Too bad we lost our fur, an evolutionary mistake. In the end, I would not want to be a "lap-human", I would be bored to death.

Watching the birds and squirrels in my yard gives me a wonderful feeling of empathy and companionship which is all the greater for knowing that they are free.

Maybe you are- and don't realize it.

Hey-that would be a good sci-fi book.

Just as long as they don't "fix" me.

"Great work...

...as usual, Mr. Smith. Very informative, interesting, and thought-provoking."

"Unusually biased for this column

I'm a big fan of Mr. Smith's column, but this one is rather disappointing, in how biased and limited its view is."

"Please all and you will please none"

From Aesop, "The man, the boy and the donkey"

--

"for progress in egress

after every landing, deploy the inflatable slides"

What a great idea! In addition, fire trucks could be employed to spray water on the slides - voila, instant water park.

"Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws. ..."

Amschel Mayer Rothschild (1773-1855

So much for "democracy".

It is very clear from the events of the last few months and continuing today that the "superclass" of billionaires has no idea what they are doing. For short-term bonuses, they basically destroyed confidence in the entire financial system through sub-prime lending and securitization of mortgages. The Fed, a main tool of this class is going from crisis to crisis. Today they had to bail out Bear Stearns. Far from behaving like rational adults, they have been behaving like kids raiding a candy shop, and now the shop's out of candy.

With this article by Farhad Manjoo, Salon plumbs new depths in shoddy journalism. Farhad sets up a flimsy straw man and proceeds to knock it down. No mention of the PNAC. No mention of the Mossad agents caught red-handed filming the collapse posing as employees of Urban Moving Systems, a company even the government admits was a Mossad front. No mention of the lack of air defense or the stock trading irregularities. No mention of the magically collapsing WTC7, just moments after Larry Silverstein said it was to be "pulled". Above all, no mention of the extensive research that has been painstakingly done by people like David Ray Griffin. No, 9/11 truthers are just a bunch of hysterical people looking at photographs. Really, I would expect an article of this quality in the National Enquirer, not Salon.

Just wondering - what happened to my letter on this article?

It's ok - still there. (Don't want to get paranoid!)

For those who would like to learn more about the events of 9/11, I suggest the book listed above. See review here:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8374

"In October 1998, the Dalai Lama's administration acknowledged that it received US$1.7 million a year in the 1960s from the U.S. Government through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and had also trained a resistance movement in Colorado, (USA).[35][36][37][38]"

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenzin_Gyatso,_14th_Dalai_Lama

For more on the Dalai Lama, see:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8426

Dalai Lama

For an alternative view of the Dalai Lama, see:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8426

"We were supposed to see if America would put its money where its mouth is: that family matters."

Bailing out the Savings and Loans, Long Term Capital and now Beare Stearns, stoking the military industrial complex, feeding the health care and pharaceutical complex are what matters in this country. That's where your tax dollars go. For countries that acually use tax money to support families, try scandinavia.

COURAGE

Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace.

The soul that knows it not Knows no release from little things:

Knows not the livid loneliness of fear,

Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear

The sound of wings.

How can life grant us boon of living, compensate

For dull gray ugliness and pregnant hate

Unless we dare The soul's dominion?

Each time we make a choice, we pay

With courage to behold the restless day,

And count it fair.

— Amelia Earhart

Tor-Buff-Chester? And leave poor Hamilton, Ontario out, as usual? I suggest Tor-Buff-Ham-Chester. Of course, you could also include Burlington and Oakville, for Tor-Burl-Buf-Ham-Oak-Chester. There could be a regional international government. I would run for it, so I could be the first Governor of Tor-Burl-Buf-Ham-Oak-Chester.