Venezuela spending on arms soars to world’s top ranks
This is how it all begins. You have to love Chavez’s attempt to bring a country from poverty to its current state, but you have to worry when the rest of the plot begins to play out as if he were Napoelon in Animal Farm – first by giving himself special “temporary” powers, then by gathering an army. And to have all of this aggression directed squarely at us can’t possibly be a good thing…
A student in my class started a group called “Chickens’ Rights.” To support her cause, I authored and posted the following:
I am a vegetarian, but not for the sake of chickens.
Nonetheless, I joined the group because I think more people would shy away if they knew how their meat was handled…given shots of steroids and growth hormones, the chickens’ breasts become overdeveloped, and their small legs cannot bear the weight. They break, and are left broken. To move itself around, the chicken must flap its wings on the ground, causing it to move in a sort of circular pattern. As it drags the majority of its body around a pen, its orifices become infected and the animal becomes diseased. These diseases are quickly spread, by virtue of the fact that about 30,000 chickens are often kept in a single small barn. And due to the injections, their weakened immune systems leave them compromised and vulnerable to a host of diseases outside their normal range.
Of course, this is the good life for chickens, nowadays. This is when they aren’t kept in individual cages that are so small they can’t even *extend* their wings. Because the USDA has declared 4×4 to be the cage size above which a chicken can be called “free range,” even buying eggs with a humanitarian intent can sometimes be a lost cause, depending on how hand and fist the farmer and USDA official happen to be. In instances like this, the eggs roll out of the bottom of the cage and away from their hen, who will never see the fruits of her labor or any of her children. After a solid life of pumping out eggs as if part of some deranged machine, she will be able to retire to a quiet life in the field….if by that one means that her throat will be slit, her body will run around headless for a few moments, and then the carcass will be hung upside down to drip dry. Finally, at this stage, they can manually trim off any diseases or infected areas (almost everything but the breasts), and put the carcass aside (to be fed to horses, cows, or even other chickens).
Keep all of this in mind next time you get a drumstick at KFC. Or have a yummy chicken sandwich at McDonald’s. Or even buy pollo at el vivero.
And this ISN’T why I am a vegetarian.
I just signed a petition to ban paperless voting. I included the following note:
“Paperless voting is like paperless wiping – it’s bound to leave a mess!”
A report on how endocannabinoids, the active agent in marijuana, affect the nervous system of lampreys, a small and relatively simple organism.
Shouts & Murmurs: Sheepish: Humor: The New Yorker
My mom sent this to me in the wake of news that some sheep have been proven to be genetically gay.