Hot on the tails of my last vegetarian post, I learn the City of Ghent has a weekly “Veggie Day”:
The Flemish city of Ghent has designated every Thursday as “Veggiedag” — Veggie Day — calling for meat-free meals to be served in schools and public buildings, and encouraging vegetarianism among citizens by promoting vegetarian eateries and offering advice on how to follow a herbivorous diet.
(h/t Caroline, who got it from here.) If you read the article, the day is (predictably) not gaining full compliance from its meatier citizens. But as a public awareness campaign, this is a great step. Imagine if New York declared a meatless day once a week. Sure, millions of people would ignore it, but even a few thousand conscientious meat-eaters might participate. I’m thinking of the kind of consumer who has considered the ethics of their diet but lacked the drive to forgo meat entirely. I’m thinking the impact would be noticed pretty quickly.
Of course, I think it would have at least as large an effect (likely larger) if people starting avoiding corn-fed livestock and eating beef only when it was grass-fed, but until that becomes even a remote likelihood, veggie days wouldn’t be that bad of quick fix.
Sean Carrol over at Cosmic Variance has a very nice piece today on how science and religion are not compatible. But my philosophical sense (like Spiderman’s spider-sense, only far less useful) went crazy at this sentence:
You can use words to mean whatever you want; it’s just that you will consistently be misunderstood by the ordinary-language speakers with whom you are conversing.
In fairness, I agree with the basic point. I’m really just quibbling with the word “use”. Or rather, with the claim that “you can use words to mean whatever you want,” when the second half of the sentence denies just that. Whatever you might intend by your words, if you fail to be understood by other speakers they’re not going to be of much use to you (or anyone).
Now back to your regularly scheduled internet usage.
I thought it fitting that I followed up todd’s last post with something from rational side of the meatless agenda. Although I don’t eat meat (besides fish or eggs), I try not to proselytize, even though I think there are good arguments for taking on certain dietary restrictions. Since I’m now reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, those arguments are a bit nearer the surface than is usual, and so I was well-primed for reading this appeal to meat eaters everywhere:
What if a group of people collectively signed a contract that said one of them would be vegetarian everyday of the year? More specifically, say a group of 7 people signed a contract saying that each of them would go meatless on an assigned day each week. Thus, within the group each member could eat meat 6 days a week, but there would be one vegetarian at all times.
This strikes me as a good way to capture a certain kind of consumer. I’ve known friends over the years who, while accepting lots of the merits of vegetarian eating, are unwilling to embrace an outright ban on meat in their diet. (Of course, one of the big holdouts caved last year.) And I would hope that the arguments for such a mild restraint have grown even more compelling in recent years:
The effect may seem marginal, but I have seen tons of sources which say that just a bit less meat consumption could have immense environmental benefits. Here is one: According to Environmental Defense, if every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetarian foods instead, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than half a million cars off of U.S. roads.
Seems pretty obvious to me, but then after reading Michael Pollan it’s pretty baffling that, with all the petroleum it takes to produce corn and all the corn it takes to feed cows, anyone still eats beef.
He is known to follow a vegan diet, eating no meat or food containing animal products. In the past, he has worked as a computer network specialist and with the operating system LINUX. [He] wears eyeglasses, is skilled at sailing, and has traveled internationally.
“He” is FBI most-wanted criminal Daniel Andreas San Diego. My thought on reading that was, “sounds like half of the Bard kids I know. Crazy how people with similar interests to people you like can be totally nuts.”
In this way I am different from Erik Marcus, who runs Vegan.com, as he seems to have had a related but much less reasonable reaction: he sounds like people I like, so surely he’s not that bad, right?
Light fisking after the jump.
(more…)
Briefly, a story. Ed Whelan, who apparently worked in the Bush administration Office of Legal Counsel, has been saying dumb things about Sonia Sotomayor. Eugene Volokh dismantled some of these dumb things, and publius from Obsidian Wings linked to the dismantling. Whelan took offense at this, and responded by publishing publius’s real name. Publius posted about why this is an odious thing to do.
This last post generated this awesome bit of wingnuttery:
An “unbelievable dick” is what I would call someone who takes pot shots using a pseudonym. You folks are like the fat guy who thinks he’s tough anonymously posting threats only to be found out and confronted in a Blockbuster parking lot, suddenly shrinking like a violet. [...]
Posted by: BigYap | June 07, 2009 at 12:44 AM
If I were awesome enough to be Scott Kaufman, and if this blog were awesome enough to be Edge of the American West, this would be filed under “SEK is shocked SHOCKED! to find that there is rightwing lunacy on the internet.” Unfortunately, none of that is true, so it’s just an isolated case study in stupid.
About a month ago I went to Ruth’s lab to drop off something she forgot at home, and when I got there the doors to the building were locked. After I got someone to let me in, I asked what was with increased security. I was told, “It’s ‘Be Kind to Animals Week’,” as if that explained everything.
Turned out that all of the buildings with research labs on campus were locked down because the authorities were afraid that some people would interpret “Be Kind to Animals” as “Terrorize Scientists.” The fear wasn’t entirely unfounded. A partial timeline of terrorist acts committed by animal activists against UC employees since 2006 includes things like
October 2007: Vandals broke a window and used a garden hose to flood the house of a UCLA professor who researches nicotine addiction. More than $20,000 in damage resulted.
[...]
June 2008: A UCLA vanpool vehicle was badly damaged in a fire in an Irvine parking lot.
August 2008: Firebombs at separate locations struck a home and a car of two UC Santa Cruz scientists. The car was destroyed and the house was filled with smoke before the fire was put out. One of the scientists, his wife and two young children fled the home through a second-story window.
Fortunately, at least as far as I know, nothing much happened during Be Kind to Animals Week. But this timeline came to mind today when I read Ta-Nehisi quote someone saying, in regard to the murder of Dr. Tiller:
I mean, if I believed that a guy working in an office down the street was murdering innocent and defenseless human beings every day, and the governing authorities repeatedly refused to intervene on behalf of the victims, I might feel compelled to do something about it, perhaps even something unreasonable and irresponsible. Wouldn’t you?
Coates himself adds:
“Abortion is murder” seems like a slogan meant to whip up your own, and attract attention. But in truth, do pro-lifers really believe it? Can they truly morally maintain that all abortion, all the time, is murder? If so, I don’t know how you really condemn someone for killing George Tiller.
Um … the same way we condemn every crazy, every terrorist, every murderer. It doesn’t matter that some insane person really believes that animal research is the same as torturing humans, it’s still terrorism to firebomb the homes of researchers. People can believe all kinds of loony shit, and it’s great that we understand the motivations of terrorists, as I am sure it makes them easier to deal with. But I don’t see any reason to go so far as to say, “Yeah, OK, from where you’re standing, I guess that’d be a job well done.”