PETA Piper Picked A Peck Of Pesky Peabrains
May 05, 2004 // Link
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, is a cult that was founded by Ingrid Newkirk, who is still their cult leader. There are about 750,000 members of PETA worldwide.
PETA’s public tenants are that every puppy, kitten, doe and calf should live its life free from torture and abuse. I can get behind that. Everyone who’s not a raving sadist can get behind that.
But PETA is not needed for that. For that, we need (and already have) the Federal Animal Welfare Act. All the horrific images and tales PETA spreads about animal cruelty—and let me be clear here, these things disturb and anger me as much as they would any rational person—are opposed legally and judicially by existing legislation. There are already legally empowered, publicly supported bodies in place to fight such activities, monitor animal treatment, promote animal care education, and uphold the law.
So why does PETA exist? Because it’s not here to fight for animals. It’s here to fight against humans.
PETA opposes fishing, dog shows, keeping goldfish, and it has even taken an official stance against honey. They also oppose the use of seeing eye dogs. That’s nothing against the blind, however, because to PETA all humans are less important than dogs or chickens or bees.
PETA also vehemently (and, though the Animal Liberation Front, violently) opposes animal shelters. Why? Because shelters euthanize animals. But PETA’s own headquarters takes in over two thousand stray animals per year, and then euthanizes almost two-thirds of them. Fucking hypocrites.
PETA also claims—and let me be clear here too, this also disturbs and angers me as much as it would any rational person—there is no ethical difference whatsoever between the killing of chickens and what holocaust victims went through. PETA even has a commercial which shows images of concentration camp victims on one side of the screen and chickens and cows on the other. Since PETA considers all animals as the equal of (or, more accurately, as better than) all humans, they claim to see no difference between killing a chicken or killing a Jew.
PETA also equates their goals with those of the woman’s rights movement and the emancipation of slaves. Such trivialization deserves not debate, only scorn.
PETA uses something called the PETA Foundation, or the Foundation to Support Animal Protection, to funnel money to anti-human terrorist groups like the Animal Liberation Front. In fact, PETA and the ALF are as different as night and day...literally. During the day they use microphones and buckets of fake blood, and during the night some of those same people use ski masks and firebombs.
The ALF uses vandalism, property destruction, and arson against humans on the behalf of animals. PETA says they “neither condemn nor condone” terrorist acts, but that they “understand” them. Oh, and they also financially support them. But I suppose paying for the bombs doesn’t mean you condone their use. Oh no.
PETA is also against using animals for medical experiments. It’s easy to persuade the public to think of animal testing as a terrible thing involving needless cruelty to cute and fuzzy bunnies to improve moisturizing creams. But let me put it in a bit of perspective.
ALL biomedical advances in the past fifty years have been as a direct or indirect result of animal experiments. Every single one of them. That includes the development of insulin, which keeps over 10 million type-A diabetics alive each year. It also includes vaccines for anthrax, chicken pox, cholera, diphtheria, influenza b, hepatitis a, hepatitis b, measles, mumps, polio, rabies, rubella, smallpox, tetanus, whooping cough, and yellow fever. It also includes medicines like anti-inflammatory drugs, anticoagulants, chemotherapy, cycllosporine, pain killers, penicillin, and streptomycin. It also includes artificial hearts and hips and knees. It also includes pacemakers, medical procedures like anesthesia and angioplasty, and the transplantation of hearts and kidneys and livers and corneas.
Over and over PETA spokespeople will claim (by “claim” I mean “lie”) that no biomedical research performed on animals can result in cures and procedures for humans. They hope you don’t know that wave upon wave of anthrax epidemics devastated us humans until testing on sheep resulted in a treatment. They hope you don’t know that the reason we no longer read every year about thousands and thousands of infants and children with the defective bone growth called rickets is thanks to testing performed on dogs. They hope you don’t know that testing on cats gave us anticoagulants, and that there are scores of other examples. In short, they hope you don’t know much at all.
In 1952, nearly 58,000 cases of polio were reported in the U.S. alone. Why weren’t there tens of thousands of diseased and paralyzed victims of Polio last year, including perhaps some of your family members or friends? Because studies on rabbits, rodents, and monkeys found a way to prevent it. Just like animal studies found ways to prevent the severe fetal defects caused by rubella (thanks, monkeys), and the fatal fever of diphtheria (thanks, horses).
Currently, studies on fruit flies have brought us close to discovering the genetic and environmental factors of breast cancer, a leading cause of death of woman. But of course, PETA has come out strongly and angrily against such testing on fruit flies. PETA claims fruit flies have the same rights as humans. I’d love to meet someone whose mom has breast cancer who wouldn’t swat a fly, or ten thousand flies, to save her life. What kind of anti-human asshole would you have to be to make that choice?
To play fair, I’ll admit I’ve been using euphemisms like “studies” and “testing” in place of perhaps more accurate terms like “killing.” So let me put it this way: we intentionally infect animals with diseases that kill them, sometimes horribly, and doing so saves human lives. That’s the trade. Good for us, crappy for them. Welcome to the food chain.
It may not seem like it at the moment, but I actually do love animals—some more than others, but all of them in general. I love them not only because they are delicious, but because I feel a kinship with them as fellow denizens of this planet. We share many genes with them. We share many traits and goals with them. We share more in common with any animal you could name than we do with any rock or chair or pencil or cloud. Animals are alive, like us. Animals feel pain, like us. They eat and fuck and try to stay alive, just like us.
But I’d kill every puppy in the world, or every kitten or every chimp or every koala bear, to save my mom or my friend or myself or you.
If you love animals and want to protect and promote their welfare, I encourage you to support animal care education through shelters and responsible agencies. I encourage you to boycott pet stores in favor of animal shelters if you wish to own a pet. And be sure to spay or neuter those pets once you get them.
If instead you want to support PETA, then fine. But don’t be a hypocrite. For PETA it’s not enough to not eat meat and not wear fur. Supporting PETA means not using insulin or owning a pet. It means not living in a home built from materials containing animal products (no bricks, cement, plaster, or insulation for you—enjoy the draft, Woodsy McWoodsman). It means building your own furniture, since anything you buy in any common furniture shop is going to employ animal based glue. You’ll have to give up your VCR too, as magnetic tapes use animal based products. Oh, and you’ll have to throw away your computer’s hard drives and floppy disks for the same reason. Be sure to avoid antibiotics and painkillers, and if you head to a hospital be sure you make your stance clear: you insist upon no anesthesia, and none of those minimally invasive laprospopic surgical techniques for you. Oh no, you’d rather have a much higher chance of death and an extra couple months recovery time instead of that yucky low risk, back to work in a couple of days stuff.
Stand your ground, PETA supporters! Avoid all animal based products and procedures developed through animal testing. I really hope you do. That means you’ll all be dead in a few years, and the rest of us can go out for burgers to celebrate.
Shut Down
May 18, 2004 // Link
I’m setting the Wayback Machine to July of 1999 to give you a copy of a column I wrote for a budding Canadian Macintosh magazine. The magazine quickly became a non-success, and only one issue made the newsstands. I was the guy writing the obligatory back page humor column, called “Shut Down,” and you’ll see that this was back when I still used Canadian spelling with its quirky extra U.
So let your mind drift back to the late 90s, when Macs were colorful and I called them colourful, as I tell you about the similarities between owning a Macintosh and being Canadian...
We Stand On Guard For Tea
This morning while eating my Crunchy O’s (which are full of sugary goodness) I decided that I’m not going to tell you what type of computer I own. Not just yet. I will tell you that it’s lime green and it’s often hugged and cuddled by visitors to my office. In fact, my computer has been getting more affection at work than I have.
It’s not that I’m disgruntled. I’m still just as gruntled as ever, perhaps even gruntlier, but it irks me that along with a sexier profile and new industrial lines my computer seems to have better chat-up lines that I do.
Sometimes I forget what a Big Deal it is that my lime green computer offers terrific ease of hues. The fact that my computer comes in colours has been making news, but when it and I are working at our best my computer is transparent to me. Its particular shade of fluorescent lime coordinates well with my wardrobe, which let’s you know that I’m single, but the best thing a computer can be is invisible.
Speaking of backpacks (well, we will be speaking of backpacks, just wait for it) there’s an interesting irony in these colourful invisible computers. Not as ironic as Millie Vanilli on a kareoke machine, but certainly the recommended daily allowance irony. When we’re together, I take my computer for granted. It’s when we’re untogether that I remember what the Big Deal is, particularly when I’m using some other type of computer.
My lime green computer is a tool that makes me more productive. I write better with it, I keep in touch with distant friends more easily and more cheaply, and I helped Mr. Nukem protect our planet against the evil aliens bent on kidnapping our women. Yes, that was me and the Duke.
But it’s just a tool. Like a hammer, only more diverse in function. A Swiss Army hammer. Hammers are great tools: a design which lends itself to improvisation and experimentation, and a completely intuitive interface. No manual required. That’s a good thing. The larger the instruction manual, the poorer the design.
My computer came with the smallest, thinnest manual of any computer I’ve ever owned. It also came with a set of stickers featuring cute catchy phrases and photos of other people’s computers. I knew they weren’t pictures of my computer, because my computer gets that red eye thing in photos.
I like the stickers. Apple has been distributing stickers with their computers since the dawn of time, which was roughly the mid-Eighties according to the Abbreviated Timeline of Historical Events which came free inside my box of Crunchy O’s (which are full of sugary goodness). I’m glad that in all this time Apple has stuck with the stickers.
I find some other Apple traditions for computer packaging less appealing, like using Styrofoam shards that look like pieces from a Dali designed Tetris game and which once removed expand to exactly one centimetre wider than the box they came in. Apple’s online registration is a big improvement over the tradition of including registration cards which lumped all computers newer than a decade old into an “other” category. It’s disconcerting to buy a top of the line Power Mac only to find Apple listing their products as Mac II, Performa, Classic, and Other. At least we got a free gift for registering. Funny how my subscription to A+/Insider never showed up.
The Apple stickers never caught on the way I would have expected, particularly with Canadian Mac users. I would have thought I’d see them plastered all over the country. The stickers, that is, not the Canadians. I see the Canadians plastered everywhere.
Maybe the stickers are too tame. The stickers which shipped with my lime green computer were nice, but where are the “Once you go Mac you’ll never go back” stickers? Where are the “1984: the number of the best” stickers and the “Real men only need one button” stickers?
I would have thought that those of us who use Macs in the land where metric rules the rulers would take to the stickers like water takes to a fish. I base this opinion on our what we wear when we travel.
When Canadians travel to other countries we become superpatriots, able to leap reasonable hand drawn facsimiles of tall buildings in a single bound. Or maybe a double bound after a big lunch. As the epitome of patriotism our backpacks (told you!) are covered in Canadian flag patches, Canadian flag pins, Canadian flag doodles, and the complete text of both the Familiar Classic and the Exciting New versions of our national anthem in neat cursive. We even start using “eh” as if it was a punctuation mark.
Back at home at hockey games we mumble the first eight words of our anthem before lapsing into lip synch. We’re talking about our national anthem at our national pastime: Millie Vanilli on a kareoke machine indeed. But when in other countries we are patrioteers.
Canadians have it so good that our country becomes invisible to us most of the time. So it is with Mac users. Our computers, lime green or otherwise, work well enough that we forget what the Big Deal is. But send us into the world of other computers and out come the Apple stories and the Apple bragging, the Apple patches and pins and doodles. Those other places and other computers remind us just how good we’ve got it.
There is a lesson to be learned here: don’t expect to pass a history exam by cheating off the free Abbreviated Timeline from a box of Crunchy O’s (which are full of sugary goodness). There might even be another lesson, maybe something like style sells but substance sustains. But since I never got my subscription to A+/Insider, I ain’t telling.