Settled how?

I don't think so -- it never really made much sense for non-vegetarians/leather wearers. The disappearance of fur was more fashion than rational animal rights. (I don't mean that animal rights is irrational, just that someone who's eating battery chicken doesn't have a strong philosophical reason not to wear farmed mink. If they aren't, it's because it's uncool and they're afraid of being berated by people who are either consistent animal rights types or nitwits, not because an argument has been settled.)

Settled against fur. I'd thought that was the default position (for non-immigrants under the age of fifty), as well, but, like Becks, I've recently come to realize that a lot of women don't seem to have agreed.

I guess another element might be the re-emergence of poofier sillouhettes in women's clothing.

3: That you thought that surprises me. Does it disappoint you?

Like JM, I'd assumed settled against fur. Or at least that people had figured out where they came down on the fur/anti-fur spectrum and that their opinion was fixed. Given the large increase in the number of women I've seen wearing fur coats, it suggests that wearing fur must be far more acceptable than it was a few years back so opinions must have shifted more towards fur being OK.

Is there any good reason to oppose, say, squirrel coats?

That or a number of people that were OK with fur all along but didn't have the means to buy a fur coat now have the money to buy one.

2 gets it right.

Also, a lot of fur is very very cheap and is showing up on completely non-fashionable hoodies and spherical winter coats, including sometimes when it's fraudulently marketed as fake fur!

7: No. Kitten coats, maybe.

I guess I see this as a bigger opinion shift than just the women who are wearing the coats -- it's not just that they're OK with buying one. It must also be OK (if not desired) among their peers, meaning wiser acceptance than just the purchasers.

I had thought it was out of fashion, but not for any other reason than it being out of fashion.

Fur coats are definitely something I associate with older women, though. My mom has a fur coat that she inherited from my grandmother. Which is weird, because my grandmother didn't have lots of money, which you need if you want to have a fur coat now, but maybe it was different back whenever she bought it.

9 - I'm not talking about fur-lined hoods. I'm talking full-length fur coats of the type not seen on (to steal JM's words) non-immigrants under the age of 50 since the '80s.

I've always hewed to a mushier middle ground--if the animals killed for the fur also have the rest of their bodies used for food (possible for rabbits, lambs, etc.) or are caught in the wild and destroyed as pests (muskrats(?)), then using the fur doesn't seem like an issue. However, if the animals are raised solely for their fur and/or are raised/killed inhumanely (minks, moles), fur becomes unethical.

Which is weird, because my grandmother didn't have lots of money

Sounds like Grandma had a sugar daddy.

inherited from my grandmother

Most people I know who own a fur coat (a surprisingly large number, given the weather down here) have inherited them from people of that generation.

7 - I bet my roommate would be pro-squirrel coats.

Okay, I have to admit that I find that squirrel coat very compelling.

By the time Kriston and Sausagely clubbed enough squirrels to make a whole coat, Wreck would have eaten Catherine whole.

Also, it really bugs me when the number of animals killed per coat crosses into the double digits (with the exception of the food exempltion, also possible for APo's squirrel coat).

15: She was pretty foxy.

13: I think that some fur coats might be fake fur, because from looking at coats they seem to be better at making fake fur not look like ass than they used to.

16: And the coats last forever! My grandmother's coat has to be at least 40 years old.

Fur was indeed an issue that animal rights activists thought they had settled 10-15 years ago. It's been slowly creeping back into fashion over the last 5, making especially big gains in the the last few. Which just goes to show that, duh, the public memory is relatively short. I'm sure PETA will gear up some new protests and distribute more videos of cute baby foxes being electrocuted and skinned, and maybe people will turn against it again. Or maybe not - hard to predict public mores. I think it's safe to say the objection was never a principled one, for the vast majority of people who didn't wear fur in the 1990s.

(Battery hens are much tougher to get rid of because foxes are cuter than chickens. QED.)

I actually own one fur item, inherited from my grandmother. It is, laughably enough, yes, fine go ahead, a mink muff. One of those tubes you put your hands in and go iceskating. I've worn it outside precisely twice in the two years I've owned it.

There's a (fox?) fur coat from the same grandmother hanging in my mom's closet that I can claim as soon as I think I'll wear it. I'm not sure I'd dare.

When I was growing up I wanted a live cat blanket, where they'd all wear leashes tethering them in a grid pattern, and they'd all love cuddling with me.

Back in the grandparental day, fur was pretty much the only option for splashing out for something really warm, as well as dressy, in a coat. Right? Plus there is a big cost difference between mink and rabbit (or whatever).

I am a squirrel lover and don't care who knows it. They fill my wizened heart with joy.

Fur is back in style generally, but could it have become more accepted among the young due to its popularity in hip-hop circles?

I was just shopping last night for a vintage wrap. Stoles with heads and paws are not back in, so you can find those cheaply on Ebay if you have no objections to your clothes staring at you (I do).

There's a lot of inherited fur around, lots of artificial fur, and fashion trumps morality and ethics anyway. I'm with Chopper, you can wear it if you've eaten it, and further, you can certainly eat it if you've hunted it down and killed it.

It is a sign of the new aristocracy America is developing. Just wait, monocles, tophats and canes will make a comeback also (which are all a lot cooler than fur, btw).

How about a cuddly friendly live chinchilla blanket! A cat blanket sounds sharp.

14.--Chopper, I question some of your premises here. Trapping wild animals for their fur is, I think, more cruel than raising animals on a farm. The traps do a lot of harm to other animals, don't always kill their intended prey, and create a good deal of spoilage and inefficiency. Farming fur, by contrast, is no more or less cruel than farming steak.

2- Not exactly. Most people would argue that there are much better substitutes for fur than there are for meat/eggs/dairy. (Not so much for leather, but once you're eating meat, well, the leather's something of a byproduct.) If you believe animal welfare is an important but not overriding concern, there's therefore good cost-benefit reasons to give up fur but not necessarily meat.

Yeah -- while I'm not a vegetarian, I'm sympathetic to arguments that the pain to animals should be minimized. (Numerical death toll doesn't bother me, and I'm not sure that this is principled.) I think there's a strong argument against trapping as inhumane.

Got mink?

32 was to 30.

To 31 -- you know, that seems like a possible position in theory, but not one that a lot of people (like, anyone I've ever heard of) observes in practice. Wouldn't a requirement that the numerical death toll of animals be minimized to the extent possible without non-vegetarianism require things like eating larger instead of smaller animals -- one cow rather than a hundred chickens (possibly weighted for the mental capacities of the animals involved)? If you're not controlling your carnivory in a manner to make certain that any deaths to feed you are minimized (and I don't know anyone who does this) worrying that fur deaths are inessential seems hypocritical.

Nobody likes vegetarians.

I recently saw a woman walking around wearing a waistcoat with mangy strips of fur hanging off the bottom (like cuddly tassels perhaps?). It was not a good look. Bad taste aside, I was also surprised at the fur.

I like vegetarians. I occasionally consider becoming one.

Fur is passé.

34- what? I didn't say anything about the numerical death toll of animals being minimized to the extent possible without non-vegetarianism. I'm just saying someone who doesn't like the idea that animals suffer but sees it as something of a necessary evil might decide to forsake fur (as not-actually-so-necessary) long before meat.

And there's an extraneous 'non-' in 34.

35 is wrong. If you've eaten both, it's clear that vegetarians taste better.

39. Right, but if that person is balking at the deaths of 20 mink to make them a coat, once every ten years, but is untroubled by the deaths of 20 chickens to make them dinner every two months, I think they're being kind of silly.

I occasionally consider becoming one.

That's just liberal guilt talking. God clearly intended for man to enjoy the bounty that is bacon.

I'm not against trapping, consumption of meat, fois gras, nor in fact any traditional and fairly small-scale practice. I do dislike and regret battery chickens, fur-farms, and virtually all forms of industrial production. That extends to historical examples of industrial-scale wildlife harvesting, be it Buffalo or Passenger Pigeon slaughter right up to seal-clubbing and the horrific overfishing of our time. But that gives the game away: my objections owe more to William Morris than to Peter Singer, and any attempt to reason morally about it would be window dressing for me.

I think 31's reasonable, LB. You could just say: hurting animals is a harm, and one we should minimize whenever practical. Whatever else wearing fur is, it's certainly a luxury and not the sort of thing people are wearing because they can't afford other alternatives. No one needs fur in 2007 America.

You could argue that no one needs meat. But if you're not a full-out vegetarian, this gets tricky, because it's more expensive to eat cruelty-free meats & dairy. Someone might be eating nasty-farmed chicken because the other chicken is $4 more a pound.

I'm a non-leather-wearing vegetarian, but I'd have no objection to wearing a coat made out of dogs provided I got to kill them myself.

it's a fashion thing, and I agree the full coat has bled over from hip-hop videos. I'm sure there's a warehouse where aspiring rappers can rent them, along with bentleys, magnums of krug and hos. my mom got a full-length mink 6 or so years ago and it's great. I never cottoned to the non-fur thing and stubbornly wore vintage fox coats at the height of naomi's hertfelt desire to go naked rather than wear fur (AFAIK all of the models from that campaign have modelled fur in recent years if they are still working). I have a great short mink I got from my grandmother, but not much opportunity to wear it in singapore, or even in the new, post-global warming dc winter. I have a soft spot for hugo schwyzer's militant pro-chinchilla policy, but you know what's nice? my stepmom's chinchilla chubby (ie a short, puffy jacket). mmmmm sooooffft.

If you've eaten both, it's clear that vegetarians taste better.

Data point. I have a friend who claims the best tasting girl he's ever gone down on was a vegetarian.

Well, the timestamp in this thread suggests you're on US Mountain Standard Time, and a brief look at the NOAA Weather site suggests that it's officially fucking cold in Denver..

37- I once spent about six months as a vegan. It was actually a lot easier than I'd originally imagined it would be. After a suprisingly short while you don't miss (m)any of the foods you've given up. I ultimately dropped it after becoming convinced that it's not very healthy, however, despite what all respectable medical authorities say.

You could argue that no one needs meat. But if you're not a full-out vegetarian, this gets tricky, because it's more expensive to eat cruelty-free meats & dairy.

So be a vegetarian.

Not what I meant, gswift, but I'll enter that into the spreadsheet.

that reminds me I have a great viontage chinese jacket that's reversible, with maroon patterned silk on one side, and medium-length back-and-white fur on the other. a woman at a party in SF asked me what it was and I said, I don't know, dog, I think? or maybe monkey? she just about shit.

in 53 viontage s/b vintage, duh.

she just about shit.

That reminds me: in the interest of killing Ogged's sex drive permanently, here's Sarah Silverman singing about trying to ogg and crapping her pants instead.

It's also more expensive to be a vegetarian in most places, too.

This isn't really meant to be a hard argument: if you think potential problematic practice P might be unjustified in some cases, it's a safe bet that it's probably not justified in the discretionary luxury cases before it's not justified in the day-to-day cases.

It's also more expensive to be a vegetarian in most places, too.

Depends on what kind of eating you aspire to, surely. Bologna and family packs of chicken are cheap, but so are potatoes and carrots and rice and beans.

30: Note my distinction--if the animals are going to be destroyed as pests anyway, I don't have a problem with using their fur. The fur is an adjunct to another activity. Let's substitute, say, nutria for my muskrat example--they're overrunning Louisiana, destroying aquatic vegetation and natural habitat to the point that there's a bounty program for them--if we're trying to get rid of 'em anyway, why not wear their fur and/or eat them?

If you're not controlling your carnivory in a manner to make certain that any deaths to feed you are minimized (and I don't know anyone who does this)

"In Tibet, Buddhists believe that by killing the largest animal they minimize suffering by maximizing meat per animal. So they don't eat chicken or fish as they view all beings as equal and these smaller animals have too little meat to justify their deaths".

http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/Buddhism/BuddhismAnimalsVegetarian/VegMeatTibet.htm

possibly weighted for the mental capacities of the animals involved

Did we just get into Bell Curve and Social Darwinism territory? There's a very slippery slope about 2 S.D. away from the mean.

I know nutria are bad for the ecosystem, but I'm totally fascinated by the ones in the river behind my house. They're like giant wiener-rats.

Yikes. Not giant-weiner rats. I just meant like dachsunds.

in the discretionary luxury cases before it's not justified in the day-to-day cases.

Right, but I think your initial categorizations are doing all of the work. I suspect that your hardcore vegetarians will tell you that meat is also a discretionary luxury item. And then they will drive a stake made from fallen wood through your heart to stop the evil.

a stake made from fallen wood

Nice touch.

stake made from fallen wood

Awesome.

Among some crowds, fur never goes out of style. At Dubya's first inauguration, there was more fur per capita in D.C. than back when it was a swamp full of nutria. Also Stetsons. (Not for the nutria, though.)

Friends and I wandered around handing out "Hail to the Thief" balloons to the good guys and serenading the bad guys with a song we made up on the spot that included the line, "In our furs and our Stetsons." Tragically, I can't remember the rest.

Not giant-weiner rats.

Reminds me of a joke...

It's also more expensive to be a vegetarian in most places, too.

That's just silly. It may be more expensive to be an organic, free-range, etc., vegetarian, but then the proper comparison is being an omnivore who only eats hormone-free cows who are petted behind the ears twice a day.

re: 28

I for one am looking forward to the return of the cane and the top-hat.

See: http://ejmas.com/jnc/vigny/Assailed1903.jpg

What is a free-range vegetarian?

And before someone tries to explain: that was not a serious question.

70: What is a free-range vegetarian?

I won't eat green beans that were tied to a pole or tomatoes that were grown in cages.

Obviously, a vegetarian who is allowed to wander where she would.

I think the bottom line about the resurgence of fur, as someone else suggested, is that it was once "fashionable" to be anti-fur, but now the designers (including our pop music clothing designers like J.Lo and P. Diddy) are using fur again so it's "okay". Sadly most people don't go along with what's right because it's what's right, but because it's what everyone else is doing.

I only eat corn that gets petted behind the ears twice daily.

Oooh, I have a story about nutria. When I was working in Shanghai lo these many years ago, some Chinese friends took me to the (very depressing) zoo. As you might expect, all the animals lived in little concrete pens. There was one large concrete pen with a ten-foot moat between the viewers/wall and the animals, which were, as far as I could tell, rats the size of cats. I'd never seen the like of 'em, and we paused while my friends tried to translate the information sign. Then I could have reached down and petted them, except they would have probably taken my hand off at the wrist. It was alarming. For years I wondered what they were, and now I see (thanks to Google Images) that they were nutria. Nonetheless, I wouldn't want a coat made from them--it would be like having a coat of pirana scales.

(I have a couple of vintage fur-collared coats myself. Interesting how the vegan activists don't talk as much about fur as they used to...I've worn the coats to activist events and haven't even been shunned.)

Oh, hey, the important part of the story--where the nutria surged across the moat and bobbed around chittering by the wall--seems to have gone missing due to my faulty html. Seriously, those things wanted to eat us.

I'd like to see JM in her muff.

I thought the raccoon-skin coat went out in the 20s or something.

24 - The cat blanket reminds me of what I think about sometimes when I'm having a hard time falling asleep (and my own cats aren't purring). I picture cats as far as the eye can see, all the way to the horizon. They're all laying on their backs, belly up, arms and legs relaxed, their little paws flopping down, crazedly content and purring their little hearts out. As for me, I picture my head in the middle of all these cats. Kind of like a record of cats and my head is the metal thingie in the middle. A cat's purr is the best fall asleep sound ever. I'm surprised no one's put it on a sound machine or sold a cat purr machine on QVC.

I should probably sign this admission 'Martha Washington'.

Stay classy, Ben.

God clearly intended for man to enjoy the bounty that is bacon.

My baco-vegetarian friend, to whom I was talking about the Protagoras, recently said that for him, the experience of akrasia was mostly a mixture of salt and fat.

About that muff, a couple of days ago, as I was leaving my bedroom, I caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye of it hanging out of an open drawer and mistook it for a giant rat. Scared the hell out of me.

Mink are morally repulsive. I have no problem with cruelty to mink, and they do make lovely coats. ON the other hand, if mink coats are widely desirable and expensive, mink will be farmed. Then they will escape from the farms, and range up and down the countryside eating more attractive animals, like birds and trout. So perhaps mink coats should be discouraged.

I see a different moral problem with my long-standing yearning for a wolf coat. But I don't think those are actually for sale anywhere.

I used to have a black ankle length fur coat that I bought to wear to a particular club night I used to go to in the early 90s.* At the time I thought it was fake. I only discovered later that it was, according to someone else anyway, real.

Even though I ate meat, and the coat was old and bought in a thrift shop, I still felt pretty uncomfortable wearing it once I knew it was real. Weird and inconsistent, I know.

* sort of a 70s revival Huggy-Bear-chic, thing. The sort of thing the hip-hop people are re-re-reviving ...

I only eat meat that I find at thrift stores. And some bacon my grandmother left behind when she died.

Mink coats would be less popular if people called them weasel coats.

I would kill and skin Jules Crittenden if I got to wear a jacket make of his flesh.

What about the Protagoras, Ben?

Do I never have anything meaningful to contribute? Sheesh, Heebie.

Or stoat coats.

Oops, probably akrasia.

How did your section go, Ben?

"In Tibet, Buddhists believe that by killing the largest animal they minimize suffering by maximizing meat per animal. So they don't eat chicken or fish as they view all beings as equal and these smaller animals have too little meat to justify their deaths".

Oh sure, they just made that up to make it sound like they intentionally moved to yak/musk-ox country.

The argument from (roughly) 352 to 358 about how the many are wrong wrong wrong to think they're ever overcome by pleasure, and how one needs the art of measurement so as not to be mistaken about what pleasures are greater than others, and all that, and, in particular, the claim the many make that there's a particular experience of being overcome by pleasure, and the need for an explanation not just of the possibility of the actions that the many take to be akratic, but also why they have this sort of experience.

Hence his claim that the experience of akrasia is &etc.

Right, that argument is awesome because you sort of have to dig a while before seeing that it just begs the question.

Faux fur looks really real these days. As in, I'd have to check the label to know. My default assumption, as per nattarGcM ttaM, is always that they're fake.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16769024/

Gah

I lived for a while in the Yukon, where killing varmints for their fur is popular. The whole cruel leg-hold trap argument is seen as bogus, as many trappers use quick-kill traps, which are far more humane. That doesn't seem to mollify those who object to trapping animals.

Yet something in the neighborhood of 600,000 animals, most of whom lived in hideous conditions, are killed every hour for food in the US.

I'm pretty sure that Disney movies like Bambi are at fault for the disproportionate concern.

45: I'll do it. No one needs to eat meat. Many people probably need to eat dairy--esp. children and pregnant or lactating women. No one needs to eat meat.

Being a vegetarian is also cheaper, once you are used to it. When people first go vegetarian, they basically just eat their previous diet less the meat. Depending on what your old diet was like, this can be expensive, and will almost certainly be unhealthy. With time though, you find things that are cheap and healthy that you like to eat.

People will often go vegetarian for a short period of time, and then stop, assuming that life as a vegetarian is always like the transition period. It isn't.

Re yearning for bacon: Salt and fat can be found in any food, if prepared properly. You do not need to kill the most sensitive and intelligent food animal just to eat salty, fatty food.

I see a different moral problem with my long-standing yearning for a wolf coat. But I don't think those are actually for sale anywhere.

Wolf fur is traditionally used for parka and mitts trim in the north.

Wolves are not generally endangered, 'cept in the South where you guys keep shooting them all. Wolves have large litters, and are very quick to rebound in numbers. They've evolved this way because of the predator/prey cycle, which results in very small number of wolves every dozen years or so.

No one needs to eat meat.

This is true in the same sense that nobody *needs* to have oral sex.

You mean, vagiterians.

97: The disproportionate concern for animals that are hunted comes from the general desire to worry about how other people abuse animals, rather than how you yourself abuse animals.

The first popular targets for animals rights action are hunters, rich people who wear fur, and scientists. This happens because it is easy to attract a lot of followers who do not hunt, think fur is unfashionable, and aren't scientists. The problem is that hunters and scientists actually have some justification for what they do--far more than simple meat eaters--and fur farms are far from the biggest crime committed against animals. As a result, animal rights people look irritating and irrational.

You do not need to kill the most sensitive and intelligent food animal just to eat salty, fatty food.

You do, however, if you want to eat bacon.

Among vegetarians of my acquaintance, bacon is the most-oft craved meat.

100: If animals were killed in the production of oral sex, I'd stop it. I bet you would too, at least, if the animal had to die right there in the bedroom with you.

Countdown to oral sex bestiality snuff jokes in 3, 2, ...

I bet you would too

I'll take that bet.

I have several friends who operate organic meat farms. They treat their animals with a great deal of respect and tenderness, right up to where they shoot them in the head and butcher them.

I asked one if she found it difficult to do. Yup, she replied.

double-plus-ungood, all this is true about people in the North, who in general tend to feel as though nature is out to kill them and they'd better get their blows in first. My grandmother's fur coat inheritance also includes a baby-seal parka. We have no idea what to do with that one.

I can't say the trapping argument placates me, though. It was my YT dad who pointed out that the traps often a) get unintended animals and b) often spoil the fur. That just sounds like unnecessary death to me.

Akrasia is a great example of a philosophical issue that's been obsolesced by cognitive science. Does anyone still think it's a proper subject of inquiry for philosophy, rather than cogsci?

Probably people who aren't so sanguine about cognitive science do.

109: Cogsci isn't entirely independent of philosophy, yet.

A better way of thinking about it is that no one can think about akrasia properly without studying a fair chunk of cog sci. But this is far from saying that the cog scientists will have the last word. There are many questions, like about responsibility, that they don't even know how to ask, let alone answer.

I'll actually be teaching akrasia later this semester, and it is a part of the course that is still a little thin on the psychology and cog sci. If people can suggest additional readings, I'd love it.

JM, one thing that I learned about trappers is that they don't like spoiled furs, and they don't like wastage. Undesirable animals that might be trapped would certainly go on the table, or feed the dogs.

Trappers need to keep their lines productive, and often pass them on to other family members. They're quite conscious of the land, the animals, and the balance that needs to be maintained.

Among my animals rights friends, the fur trapping issue in the north pales beside the annual dog kill, in which thousands of stray dogs are shot in the streets around the first snowfall.

Leaving the office where I was working in Inuvik my first October there, and stopped to pet a dog at the side of the road. "Uh, don't do that," said the woman I was working with, "I'm surprised someone hasn't shot it yet. It'll be dead within the hour."

It was gone by the time we got back from lunch.

112: I can't give you specific references, but something examining the role of dopamine in learning and addiction might be appropriate.

You do not need to kill the most sensitive and intelligent food animal just to eat salty, fatty food.

It does add a certain delightful frisson to the experience, though.

This is true in the same sense that nobody *needs* to have oral sex.

Ah, see, transferring this argument to other realms is a mistake. The "But it feels good!" argument seems to be strangely compelling in the context of vegetarianism, even for people who wouldn't think so much of the "Okay, sweetie, I'll agree to that. I didn't *need* to get a blowjob from her but..." argument.

113 - Are these dogs stray dogs? How do they get so many?

Well annie, when a male dog and a female dog love each other very much, yadda yadda yadda, dogs.

118 - yuk, yuk, yuk. I'm wondering why they've got to go shooting dogs on the street. Do people not spay or neuter their dogs?

I'll have to check back later for the answer. I'm off for a mammogram.

No, I don't think people do spay or neuter their dogs. And there are a lot of strays. There have been packs of feral dogs wandering the streets of the Yukon since at least the 1930s.

Fewer terrorists harassing women who wear fur leads to more women wearing fur. Same as fewer terrorists harassing women who don't wear veils leads to more women not wearing veils. It isn't complicated.

In the thread above ogged announced that he was off to swim, and here Annie announces she's off for a mammogram.

Is anyone else off to do things that involve taking their shirts off?

Should I take my shirt of here at the office just to fit in?

There have been packs of feral dogs wandering the streets of the Yukon since at least the 1930s.

Yukon and NWT. And yes, dogs have many unwanted babies.

I was sympathetic to the dog's position until one afternoon when a stray showed an unhealthy and persistent interest in my toddler.

Packs have been known to kill and eat kids, hence the practice of shooting any dog in the streets unaccompanied by their human.

Fewer terrorists harassing women who wear fur

Could we call this vandalism? Or, if you like, assault? I would like to see a trend away from labelling all disagreeable behavior as terrorism, even all politically motivated disagreeable behavior, as the term seems to be considered a justification for every infringement on liberty our present executive cares to impose.

124

So what would you call throwing acid on women wearing fur?

Let's go with "assault"; I've had it up to here with the word terrorism.

126

How about bombing abortion clinics?

How about "criminal conspiracy to commit homicide," "homicide," "attempted homicide," and, if that won't stick, "vandalism"? Combined, those should get people some years. The language of terrorism is all rhetoric, from all sides.

Has there ever been a case of someone injured by a fur-opponent-activist? There's certainly bad behavior there, but everything I've ever heard of has been harassment rather than terrorism.

129: Harassment, and to a minor extent, destruction of property. (Like ruining a fur coat with ink.)

Right. Certainly criminal behavior in many cases, but nothing that it would make sense for a reasonable person to be terrorized by.

As I understand, the Temple grandin / Peter Singer autistic philosophy alliance says it's OK to kill animals, as long as they're happy at the moment you kill them.

132- I think it's more like: if you're going to kill animals anyway, there are a few inexpensive things you can do to significantly reduce their suffering in the whole slaughter process, and you ought to do those things.

No one needs to eat meat.

Yeah, except for that whole Pernicious Anemia thing.

Oddly enough, a 31-year-old friend of mine had a mild stroke a couple of weeks ago and the only thing the doctors could pin it on was severe anemia (which can cause a platelet build-up, which in turn can cause a transient ischemic attack). They put her on iron supplements and told her to start eating red meat.

134: If that turns out to be a problem for you, eat eggs. Pregnant women especially are at risk if they go full blown vegan. Also it is not hard to find eggs from chickens kept in relatively humane conditions these days.

Spinach, raisins, and broccoli are also good sources of iron.

Bah.

1, We evolved as meat eaters.
2. Meat is damn tasty.
3. I freely admit to not giving a flying rats ass if my dinner got in enough time prancing in the fields before it was slaughtered.

Saw this a while back, and couldn't remember where the hell I'd read it. Found it.

Human faeces can contain significant B12. A study has shown that a group of Iranian vegans obtained adequate B12 from unwashed vegetables which had been fertilised with human manure.

Mmm, feces.

1, We evolved as meat eaters.

No, we evolved as omnivores. My own theory is that our ancestors mostly drove large carnivores away from their kills with our awesome rock-throwing abilities, which most other animals seem to hate. But we eat the hell out of plants too.

Is that sustainable, though, or are they relying on the fæces of ominivorous people? It might break down in an all vegan community.

rob helpy-chalk, do you have an e-mail?

"fæces"??

You're a stinking Mac-user, aintcha, LB?

My understanding is that B12 is from bacteria that are common in most all dirt. Unwashed anything will get you enough of it.

I could be wrong about this, though.

Nope. Just typing æ on a Windows box. In IE, yet.

Nope. Just typing æ on a Windows box. In IE, yet.

I didn't know that one. Thanks.

122 - Mammogram done. Maybe I'll stay in the spirit of things and keep my shirt off. Nude commenting.

The other day I found some "topfree" website via a link of a link of a link chain that began w/unfogged. I get so jealous of men when it's really hot out and they can go out w/o a shirt and it's no big deal. And I don't understand why people get upset when a woman breastfeeds in public. Unless they're just jealous. But that's not her problem.

cala: rloftis at stlawu dot edu

138: That's what the donut sprinkler was up to. Just vitaminizing the donuts!

145: Or hold ALT and type 0230 from the number pad. You should get æ.

The other day I found some "topfree" website via a link of a link of a link chain that began w/unfogged.

And went through Apostropher?

E-mail coming your way.

151 - I don't remember if it went through apostropher.

BTW, I was just frying up some bacon and thinking of apostropher.

No, we evolved as omnivores.

I didn't say only meat eating.

Thinking of you while frying bacon, topless: Apo, you're a lucky man.

Also, frying bacon topless is dangerous.

152: WIll no one think of Chopper, the guy who makes his own bacon?

the guy who makes his own bacon

And that's not a euphemism.

I have a non-insignificant number of friends who would be vegetarian and happy, they think, if not for the allure of bacon.

I think of Chopper. Frequently.

154 - I wasn't topless. I had an apron on.

155 - I did not know that you make your own bacon. That sounds like a euphemism.

pwned by the BaconMaster.

I wasn't topless.

Don't ruin my fantasy, annie.

Do you want the spicy, the black pepper, or the brown sugar?

Chopper, what exactly does it mean to make your own bacon? As in what do you start with? Live hog? Or do you start with bacon and then just cook and season it yourself? (Not trying to diminish that feat, just trying to understand.)

Best not to tell folks you make your own bacon -- lest they assume you're really Bob Pickton.

start with bacon

That seems to be skipping a few steps.

131

So Anna Wintour has no reason to be nervous?

And there was the whole brain damaged nanny thing but I guess you could argue that was unforseeable.

165- well, not really. If I said I had some homemade roast chicken, you would assume I started with a chicken and just cooked and seasoned it myself, no?

When the section of the pig that becomes bacon is uncured, it's known as pork belly. So, when I say that I make my own bacon, I mean that I cure it (pack it in salt, nitrates, and various seasonings--brown sugar, black pepper, etc.), let it sit in my fridge for a week or so, turning it every couple of days, take it out, wash it off, dry it, return it to the fridge for a day to air dry a bit, then smoke it using a variety of different woods (apple, cherry, hickory, etc.). Then I let it cool and slice it into strips.
It's surprisingly easy--the only special order item is the pink nitrate salt, which you can get at butcherpacker.com. Most butchers or farmer's market meat vendors can get you a whole pork belly no problem. You can even do the smoking in a Weber kettle grill, although that's not optimal. I've reached the point where I'll most likely never buy supermarket bacon again.

166:

Terrorised ≠ nervous

there was the whole brain damaged nanny thing

One wonders what happened to the workers--were they wearing hazmat suits? How like Conde-Nast employees not to bother evacuating a mere servant.

No doubt it is wrong, but the image of Paris Hilton, and a person who allows himself to be photographed with Paris Hilton, getting covered with flour from head to toe gives me great pleasure.

I'm going to start referring to anyone who makes me nervous as a terrorist. And anything anyone does that threatens to make me nervous as a threat of terrorism.

Off to work. Time to put my shirt back on. Oh well.

Pork belly is, itself, quite good, even before it becomes bacon.

Since American grey squirrels are driving English red squirrels out of their own habitats, shouldn't we all go to England and hunt grey squirrels and make coats and tasty stew out of them?

I had a fur long ago, when I was still in New England, that I bought for $1.50 at a thrift shop. I think it was older than I was. It helped me get through those long late-winter-night waits at the bus stop in front of the university when I got out of class a couple of minutes late and had to wait an hour for the next bus. It helped even more when I lived way out in the country, on 30 acres, in a converted barn, and didn't have power most of the winter. It finally fell apart after a decade of hard use, so I made it into a cat bed.

Having just spent a week in Utah with nothing but a heavy wool [and totally inadequate] winter coat, I really, really, want to go hunting squirrels.

I've read before that American Grey Squirrels are displacing the native European Red in England. I'm always struck by how, in category after category, Europe is much less biodiverse than No. America. Even here in densely urban Cook County, Illinois, we have the Grey, Fox, Red, and Flying squirrels, plus the Thirteen-lined ground squirrel.

The price of pork bellies is wildly variable because the speculators, of course. Sometimes its a good idea to buy well in advance at an agreed-upon price just for safety's sake.

In Fargo saw what a single red squirrel (it looked red, anyway) drive half a dozen larger grey squirrels away from a bird feeder. It would chase a single squirrel up a tree and follow it all the way up. Whatever the grey squirrel's advantage is, it isn't aggression. Maybe the red squirrel's just too feisty to live, and has heart attacks or something.

Having just spent a week in Utah with nothing but a heavy wool [and totally inadequate] winter coat, I really, really, want to go hunting squirrels.

It's been godamn cold out here. Air rifles are good times on squirrels. None up here in the suburbs, but my dad still uses my old Sheridan to get them out of his pecan tree.

OT, but apparently calling someone a faggot is cause to enter yourself into therapy.

No, Grey squirrels have been displaced in much of the US by the very similarly-colored but distinct (22 teeth vs. 20)Fox squirrel. For some reason this has not happened in New England, and Greys appear to do better in cities. So that European Red must be less aggressive still.

169 171

You guys remind me of right wingers redefining torture. Let me rephrase my question. Does Anna Wintour have reason to be scared?

Pissed, yes. Frightened of injury, not so much on the facts.

I'd just like to keep 'terrorism' for people who actually hurt other people, or threaten to. (And the brain damage from smelling paint thinner doesn't cut it.)

my old Sheridan

Mine is in the garage, it's a little underpowered for the entities I might have to bag in L.A. When I used to live right next to a large state park with an infinite supply of squirrels I tried to clear out the attic with the Sheridan 'cause the late night squirrel orgies were getting annoyingly loud. What I discovered was that squirrels abhor a population vacuum, and I'd swear I could hear tiny voices discussing a new vacancy as soon as I'd created one.

I was sensible and just gave up after a bit, one of my neighbors escalated to a 12 gauge fired from the inside of his attic before he decided co-existence was a viable policy and lots cheaper than roof repairs.

How big of a cat would it take to eat the squirrels in one's attic? Would a lynx do the trick, or would you have to go up to a bobcat or even a puma?

You guys remind me of right wingers redefining torture.

Because a cream pie in the face has always meant "terrorism," just as waterboarding has always been "torture"?

The Three Stooges as terrorist masterminds...

Ms. Wintour certainly has reason to file for a restraining order. If she's being stalked and harrassed, she has cause to seek criminal charges. As she's been assaulted, yes, criminal charges are appropriate.

I do not see what added value throwing in the word terrorism provides here, except perhaps for points on the grand puerile rhetoric scoreboard.

183: Depends. Is the cat permitted more than one meal of squirrels, or does she have to catch them all at once?

181

"Pissed, yes. Frightened of injury, not so much on the facts."

So an abortion doctor subjected to a similar level of vilification and harassment would have no reason to be scared?

You neglect the difference between a conspiracy to throw pies and a conspiracy to commit homicide and arson.

187: In a world where that was the worst thing that anyone had ever done to an abortion provider, or in our own world, where they get shot? In the former world, I wouldn't call it terrorism regardless of the target. In our own world, where significant violence against abortion providers occurs, then I could see characterizing harassment of this sort as terroristic, depending on the details.

More than one meal, naturally. I'm envisioning at least a symbiotic relationship, possibly even rising to that of pet.

Paint-on-fur isn't terrorism, but it is a pretty cowardly way to take advantage of the comparative physical weakness of women (especially old ones), in my book.

190: What does "comparative physical weakness" have to do with it? Would someone young and hale be expected to block or nimbly dodge the flying paint?

Besides, even within the animal rights domain, you have people conspiring to commit arson and acts of personal violence. These people are clearly distinct from those throwing paint at old women.

Unlikely to punch you for throwing paint on them?

191

Old women are vulnerable to falling and breaking a hip (which can be an extremely serious and life altering injury for them). Hence they have more reason then healthy young people to fear being jostled or bumped as might happen in a paint throwing attack.

191: No, but one young and hale might be expected to retaliate physically in a moment of moral weakness. To trot out and old but nonetheless valid cliche, you don't see people hanging out outside of biker bars throwing paint on leather vests. Paint-on-fur is physical intimidation ("Look! We violated your belongings, and you stood there and took it! The righteousness of our cause gave us courage!"), and you generally don't physically intimidate those stronger than you.

192

Throwing paint isn't an act of personal violence?

Grasping at straws a little there, aren't you?

197 to 194.

I wouldn't mind seeing the PETA paint throwers get a good beatdown each time they pulled one of these stunts.

196: Nope. Your valiant (and impressive!) effort to bring broken hips into it aside, it's not in the same league as blowing up someone's car or firebombing their lab. It's intimidation.

183: How about a nice coyote?

201: But could a coyote get up to the attic unassisted? Cats are independent like that.

189

I don't see it. In a world with lots of mentally ill people with access to guns, anyone subjected to a Wintour level of personal vilification has reason to be scared. It just takes one nut.

197

I don't think so. The elderly women I know would certainly be terrorized if some group of slogan screaming nuts threw paint on them, in part because of their physical vulnerability.

Where did everyone targeted by animal rights activists suddenly become an elderly woman? I guess Anna Wintour is getting on in years, but she doesn't seem all that fazed by the whole thing.

Paint-on-fur is physical intimidation . . . and you generally don't physically intimidate those stronger than you.

The reasoning here seems flawed. First, the point of pranks like cream pies or paint-on-fur is that they're hard to physically retaliate against. Second (and following on the first), they're not necessarily used just against supposedly helpless specimens of decrepitude like Anna Wintour. The reason you don't do these things with bikers is because they often carry guns and might be the sort of people who would actually kill you over a prank, it has nothing to do with their physical strength per se.

I mean, if someone throws paint at you and you can catch them, they should expect to do their thirty days of jail time (or whatever it may be). But I don't see any reason for hand-wringing about "violence" and "intimidation," it's a prank.

Arson by the ALF, now that's different. But "eco-terrorists" are a vanishingly small fraction of even the most loopy sector of the animal rights movement.

I think PETA recognizes the bad PR that would come from tackling my granny and breaking her hip.

205: I think that's my fault, with the whole "women (especially old ones)" thing. Wintour is presumably sharp enough to realize that she's not going to be injured, that retaliating with a swift kick in the nuts will just bring assault lawsuits and more bad press, and that going around with bodyguards to administer less intense beatdowns is not worth the hassle.

It's still a chickenshit strategy.

199: Yeah, I have the same reaction.

I think the answer to questions that start with "could a coyote...?" is generally "yes," but I suppose it need at least some sort of a ladder or something.

Well, sure. It's a lousy thing to do, certainly.

I'm sympathetic to the paint tossers. I think they're probably wrong to toss the paint, but I certainly wouldn't call what they do "lousy." Reckless, perhaps, and maybe ill-advised. But done with noble intentions and for a good cause. (Sort of like the jihad, in that way.)

206

It is not a prank. A prank is something you would pull on a friend. Throwing paint on people when they are all dressed up and out on the town is not something you would do to a friend as least in my circle.

In a world with lots of mentally ill people with access to guns

We ALL have reason to be nervy, especially women. I'd be willing to classify catcalling and aggressive flirtation as terrorism, if only to annoy the Republicans. You with me?

212, 213: Hey, I'm a moderate! This is a new feeling.

I gotta comment and run here, but thinking about the ethical quandaries of fur, I'm reminded of an article in the NYT within the last year or so (actually I want to say it was related to Fall '05 fashion) that was getting into the issues over astrakhan wool, which is often made from fetal lambs (although sometimes they are as old as three days). All the cruelty of fur, plus the extra squick factor of late-term abortion.

216.---Wow. There has just got to be an occasion to give the maximal offensiveness by wearing that.

The problem is that it looks so harmless and oldladyish, rather than evilly glamorous.

It is not a prank. A prank is something you would pull on a friend.

No, actually, a "prank" is a "practical joke." And yes, practical jokes can be pulled on strangers.

Throwing paint on people when they are all dressed up and out on the town

My God, you mean they were dressed up? Oh, the humanity! Will no-one save the rich from the bottomless depravity of PETA?!

Those damn neighborhood teenagers who toilet-papered my friend's house last weekend? TERRORISTS.

Does anyone know the number to call DHS and report tips on terror-cells?

Keying nice cars in poor neighborhoods to protest gentrification: harmless prank, or lousy thing to do?

(Idle aside: while searching for an example of paint-thrown-on-men the only name that came up was Robin Williams. But it turns out he was just walking down the beach in his swim trunks, and so a case of mistaken identity.)

I think that PETA is nuts every which way, starting with the whole idea of giving supermodels a voice in politics, and escalating from there.

Attacking a fur coat someone is wearing is a kind of assault and depending on the circumstances, could be extremely threatening, especially for an older woman.

It's sort of like when someone unknown sneaks into a house and leaves a handwritten note in the bedroom. No actual harm is done, but the intrusion can be terrifying. And in public places you don't have any way of knowing whether someone is either sane or nonviolent. Even though the fur people haven't hurt anyone yet, there's always a first time.

I still don't think it should be called terrorism until there is the intent to kill, or actual acts which might reasonably have fatal effects. Some forms of sabotage push the line, but animal rights and environmental saboteurs so far have all taken steps to (successfully) avoid causing death or bodily harm. The Oregonian did a 20+year retrospective trying to make these movements look violent, and they didn't come up with much of anything.

I just pretty much hate mindless destruction of other people's stuff in all its forms. It shows a fundamental lack of empathy. It doesn't hit me as viscerally when directed at extremely rich people's items of conspicuous consumption, but I don't really think that makes it OK.

220

If they did it because they don't like black people moving in definitely. If they did it at random they are just ***holes.

223: The tree-spiking stuff sure angered and scared a lot of loggers and sawmill workers. I don't know whether it did anything more than that, but even at that it did a hell of a nice job of convincing blue-collar people that environmentalists don't give a shit about them.

223

So if you just chop off people's hands that is not terrorism?

The tree-spiking stuff was outrageous, reckless and very dangerous. I don't have sympathy for that.

I'm tempted to call the mouse that invaded my apartment a few weeks ago, only to be rebuffed by my brave patriotic cat, a bioterrorist.

You know, hantavirus.

228: Were there cases where they didn't warn people about the spiking? Where there was a warning, it doesn't seem particularly dangerous.

228: From Wikipedia: "In 1987, California mill worker George Alexander was seriously injured when the bandsaw he was operating was shattered by a tree spike. While both the County sheriff and Alexander's employers, Louisiana-Pacific, blamed environmentalists for the spiking, when Earth First! activist Judi Bari obtained the sheriff's files on the incident some years later, she discovered that one of the suspects for the spiking was Bill Ervin, a 50 year old property-owner, unconnected with Earth First. While Ervin freely admitted spiking trees on his own land to prevent Louisiana-Pacific from taking timber on his side of the property line, he was never charged with spiking the tree that injured Alexander."

Repeating the same disinformation doesn't make it true. Isn't it funny how rightists are so easily incensed by the injury to a single worker, while at the same time campaigning to outlaw OSHA and limit tort claims.

230

The it's ok to plant bombs as long as you give a warning theory.

They planted exploding spikes? That's just out of line.

230: IIRC (and I'm not sure I do), the tactic was to say that some trees in a tract had been spiked so that tract shouldn't be cut and the blood was on the timber companies' hands if they tried to cut and someone got hurt. If that's what was done, I don't see the warning as morally sufficient. The act of putting people at risk of life or limb if they do their job is a problem even if you tell them that you did it and therefore they shouldn't do their jobs.

Having said that, I don't have either enough facts or enough passion about the issue to be looking to pick a fight about it. I'm happy to be enlightened if someone has facts to add.

Wow, an issue that divides the Unfoggedtariat in new and exciting ways.

Just to clarify, PETA is an absolutely ludicrous organization. They have bad gender politics, they lack a class analysis, and they frequently focus their considerable resources on utterly pointless crusades (like the 1996 Fishkill fiasco.)

Additionally, Earth First! was in many ways poisoned from the start by Dave Foreman's deeply creepy xenophobia, macho posturing and uncritical patriotism. The current organization has much to recommend it, although there are still some pretty big contradictions when it comes to integrating radical environmentalism into the totality of social justice activism.

Having said all that, I still find it absurd to castigate individual activists or activist organizations for their occasional excesses when the ongoing activities of the capitalists are literally a million times more destructive. If you want to see some real barbarity, try going up to northern Wisconsin or southern Oregon and advertising yourself as a moderate environmentalist who supports the Clean Water Act or federal recognition of wilderness areas. The most violent and insane elements of the ELF and ALF wish they had even a tenth of the power to intimidate that the average lumber company executive and his hired thugs have. (Not to mention the pepper-spray daubing torturers of the Humboldt County Sherrif's Dept.)

234: And I don't have a good memory (or much of a memory at all) for the facts myself.

Late to the thread.

A. I also thought the fur issue was resolved, and was surprised when my daughter got a pair of fox earmuffs. They're cute, to be sure, but her parents don't approve.

B. I own a Stetson hat. Made, of course, of beaver.

C. Terrorism has a legal definition. "...activities that involve violent... or life-threatening acts... that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State and... appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and... (C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States... [or]... (C) occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States..."

Having said all that, I still find it absurd to castigate individual activists or activist organizations for their occasional excesses when the ongoing activities of the capitalists are literally a million times more destructive.

I agree political focus on "eco-terrorism" is nutty and offensive. But you don't have to think that radicals getting carried away are hugely destructive to think that they're hugely counterproductive.

234 -- That's it, alright.

I'm willing to call this civil disobediance, and allow a judge to sentence an offender to identification of every tree with a spike, and a fine the equivalent of the value lost.

That said, I think the spiker is not morally culpable if, despite a clear and fairly specific warning, a logger (or mill worker -- who's much more likely to have spike trouble) is injured.

This could be one of those one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter things.

I think it's pretty shitty to try to protect the trees by making it more likely that some guy whose job it is to cut down the trees they tell him to cut down gets hurt. This doesn't mean that other people aren't doing shitty things, too, but this I don't think you get off, morally speaking, by saying, well, we told them the trees had spikes.

That said, I think the spiker is not morally culpable if, despite a clear and fairly specific warning, a logger (or mill worker -- who's much more likely to have spike trouble) is injured.

This, to me, is crazy. Not to get inflammatory or anything, but I don't see a whole lot of difference between this and some of the tactics of the hardcore anti-abortion types. If you knowingly and intentionally create a situation where someone has to choose between quitting their job and risking serious injury, that's not legitimate civil disobedience. It's high-stakes chicken with the timber companies, with the loggers and millworkers' lives and limbs as the stakes.

I think the spiker is not morally culpable if, despite a clear and fairly specific warning, a logger (or mill worker -- who's much more likely to have spike trouble) is injured.

So if someone tells you that he put a bomb in your office building and you fail to evacuate despite a clear and fairly specific waring, the bomber has no moral culpabiliity? This seems indefensible, notwithstanding that I agree that it is a bit much to lump people throwing paint on coats or even burning SUVs in car lots with people who fly planes into buildings. But no moral culpability for intentionally doing something that at a minimum destroys very valuable property and, even with a warning, could endager lives? I don't see it.

Pwned by 241 and 242, which said it better.

Although it's funny that (given warnings) it only puts workers in danger if their bosses order them into it rather than bypassing the spiked trees. People probably still shouldn't do this sort of thing, but this one bothers me less than other similarly dangerous actions might.

I'm sympathetic to the paint tossers.

I'm not. I'm not going to start physical violence but I'm not about to ponder the chemical constituents of something tossed at me and the philosophical stance of the tosser to figure out the proper proportionate response.

Ever heard of Victor Reisel? I had dinner with him once. He managed the food pretty well for a guy blinded by some acid tossed in his face.

Crossed with 242 and 243, and I suppose 'high stakes chicken' is a good way of putting it, and one that makes me less sympathetic. But you do have to agree that moral responsibility for any injured workers is equally in the laps of the timber companies, right?

(And of course, I have a vague sense of 'tree spiking' as something that has happened, but I don't know that it's happened often at all.)

245

I believe the problem is that it is not readily apparent which trees are spiked.

246: Dude, if you're going to bring up someone blinded by acid thrown in his face in a conversation like this, mention that it was done by the Mob, not animal rights activists, wouldja?

it only puts workers in danger if their bosses order them into it rather than bypassing the spiked trees.

I think you miss the point of spiking trees (at least as I understand it). Because you cannot tell what was spiked, you can prevent the logging of a large area, containing (guessing here) hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of timber, by spiking a few trees and giving a warning. The economic effect can force a logger to choose between having a job or taking the risk.

But you do have to agree that moral responsibility for any injured workers is equally in the laps of the timber companies, right?

Nope.

248: Again, the assumption is that warnings are given. If the warning is broader than the number of trees that are actually spiked, than that just means the timber company has more money at stake. It's still morally responsible for ordering its workers into harm's way.

Are we talking about any actual injured workers that have been reliably attributed to environmentalist tree spiking?

Nope. The company is not responsible for someone else's decision to put a spike in the tree, any more than the abortion clinic board would be responsible for the hardliner asshole's decision to bomb the clinic.

I Googled around, and there are still people advocating tree spiking, including ELF and some branches of Earth First! There don't seem to be a lot of recent actual cases (since about 1996), as far as I can tell. The great majority of groups reject tree spiking, but not all.

In one case, a man spiked trees on his own land because he thought the lumber companies were encroaching.

But you do have to agree that moral responsibility for any injured workers is equally in the laps of the timber companies, right?

Yes and no. Yes because they shouldn't be directing employees to something even more dangerous than their jobs already are. No because it's absolutely predictable that the timber companies--not known for their deep concern for worker safety in the first place--are going to find a way to go ahead and cut. Otherwise a handful of people with hammers and spikes can (and probably will) put them out of business. You can make them spend some money trying to find the spikes, but they're just not going to stop cutting.

But they're responsible for their decision to tell their workers to go ahead and cut down the tree regardless of the presence of the spikes -- once they know about the dangerous condition, they're responsible for the way they react to it regardless of who caused it.

And before Ben happens by, I'll confess that "high stakes chicken" strikes me as redundant on re-reading.

No because it's absolutely predictable that the timber companies--not known for their deep concern for worker safety in the first place--are going to find a way to go ahead and cut.

This is a reason that timber companies aren't responsible for worker injuries, that they aren't concerned with worker safety in the first place?

But I shouldn't be arguing about this -- putting workers at risk is bad, it's an ineffective tactic, and I don't support tree spiking.

If someone calls me and tells me that there's a bomb in my office that will go off if I switch my computer on, I have two choices: I can switch it on, or I can call the police and have a bomb squad come detonate it. I don't have to quit my job.

I'm not saying that the person who puts the bomb in my computer gets off -- rather that he should be charged with every crime there is. However, if my employer says 'I don't care what some caller says, you have to turn that computer on' then I'm willing to swing the culpability over to the employer for the injuries that follow.

What Charley said.

I'm not convinced. I'm an abortion doctor killer. I call all the clinics in the city and say I'm planting a bomb there.

Director says, we hear these threats all the time and tells the nurse she has to show up to work tomorrow or we find another nurse. Nurse shows up to the one clinic in the city where Evil Calamastermind actually placed the bomb. Boom!

I don't think it's the director's fault, even though she knew there was a threat and told the nurse to go to work anyway. It's different if she knows there's a bomb in the office. But I don't think she knows, and I don't think there's a way to tell which trees are spiked (that's why it works as a tactic.)

This is a reason that timber companies aren't responsible for worker injuries, that they aren't concerned with worker safety in the first place?

No, the point is that when their continuing to cut is pretty much a certainty, you don't get a moral pass for saying they could stop cutting.

It's my sense that timber companies don't cut without making sure that the spikes are found. I've admitted that my position on this is a moral failing.

I'm not saying the hypothetical non-specific warning tree-spikers should be off the hook entirely, just that the timber companies should be on there with them. (And from a little googling, environmentalist tree spiking doesn't seem to be a significant cause of actual, rather than hypothetical, worker injury.)

But I'm arguing to argue -- I really don't support it.

And Charley, your analogy doesn't work. Leaving your computer off until the bomb squad arrives costs maybe a day's work. Giving Earth First a veto on timber cutting would pretty much shut down the timber industry as it exists today. Would you still see the moral analysis the same way if someone called your office to say they'd shoot one of your associates if you don't stop representing clients they disapprove of?

If we're all Googling, you've probably already seen this, but if anyone missed it, it's pretty good. (Do biscuits count as pastry?)

264: I gather that they do what they can to find spikes, but they're going to cut no matter what. So you have a tactic that's ineffective, dangerous (though less dangerous, apparently, than timber-company PR wants us to believe), and pisses people off.

265: I don't think I'm arguing that the timber companies aren't culpable. I'm just saying that they're acting in accordance with their nature and the strategic imperatives of their situation.

252

An interesting article about tree-spiking which discusses the George Alexander case. It is unknown who spiked the tree that nearly killed him but as the article points out if you make a big deal about spiking trees it is a bit disingenuous to object when people assume you are responsible when a spiked tree hurts somebody.

249: Who did it isn't the point. However, because their motives are pure, if they come wearing big name tags with their affiliation, a certified analysis of the crap they intend to throw, and give me time to take my contacts out, I might be persuaded not to send them to the ER.

Let's get real. It's a physical assault pure and simple, and the consequences are not predictable for any of the people involved.

I don't really support it either.

I am somewhat sympathetic to the underlying cause; altogether too many trees have been cut in a lot of places. Frankly, spiking doesn't shut down the timber industry, and it wouldn't especially once everyone involved has been fined to the end of all the money they'll ever have, and jailed until they are old. There are few enough people willing to do it, and the consequences under my formulation are sufficiently stringent, that if a timber company allows its employees to be put at this risk, it deserves substantial blame.

269: The point is still that throwing a snowball at someone isn't throwing a grenade at them, regardless of whether the target knows which it is beforehand. It's obnoxious, it's criminal -- assault and battery at some level -- and people shouldn't do it, but it's not terrorism.

236 and 260 have it right, IMO. I don't favor tree-spiking, but I'm willing to bet it's going to stick around as a tactic in an environment that tolerates obnoxious, anti-democratic phenomena like SLAPPs. The more peaceful avenues of protest are ignored or closed off, the more the extreme avenues of protest will begin to recommend themselves.

As for paint-throwing, the "it could have been a nastier substance" argument would carry more weight if there were actually some reasonable expectation of and precedent for protesters putting sulfuric acid (or whatever) into the mix. "The mafia did it to Victor Riesel in '56" doesn't really cut it.

I'm trying to come up with some analogy to coating one sheet out of a big document production with poison, but end up getting into legal firms with only one big client who they can only bill for reading documents, not scanning them for health cases, and it all falls apart.

269: Of course it's assault, and vandalism, and a stupid tactic, and if somebody threw paint on my leather jacket I would beat the shit out of them. What it's not is terrorism. When Peta starts planting bombs and shooting fur-wearers, that will be terrorism.

I'm sympathetic to the underlying cause, too. But I also grew up around people who work in the woods and in sawmills, so I have some sympathy for them, as well as some visceral understanding of how effective tactics like tree-spiking are at convincing rural people that environmtalists (and Democrats) don't give a shit about them.

275 to 270.

266: if someone called your office to say they'd shoot one of your associates

a) And you're saying Charley's analysis is flawed? Tree-spiking is obnoxious, but it's weird how quickly the rhetoric around it escalates into surrealism.

b) Not arguing for an Earth First "veto" or anything, but in an era where half the world's forests have disappeared, exactly how misty are we supposed to get about "the timber industry as it exists today"?

It's obnoxious, it's criminal -- assault and battery at some level -- and people shouldn't do it, but it's not terrorism.

Certainly. I think throwing paint on the wearers of fur can't count as terrorism. It's not directed towards a state, or to get a state to change its policies. It's after *consumers*, but that's not the same thing.

Whether it's paint, acid, whatever is really incidental. I'm not willing to walk areas of my neighborhood after dark due to real concerns about armed muggings, but that doesn't make the muggers terrorists even if I'm really scared and the threat is really real.

274

I think it is terrorism. If some group starts a campaign to throw paint on people wearing yarmulkes would you deny that this is terrorism?

If some group starts a campaign to throw paint on people wearing yarmulkes

Now you're just getting desperate.

277: OK, now I'm getting frustrated. I have no idea how you're reading sympathy for the timber industry into what I wrote. But if you know perfectly well that the industry is going to cut a tree whether you spike it or not, and you know that cutting spiked trees makes loggers and millworkers jobs more dangerous, you don't get to give yourself a moral get-out-of-jail-free card by telling the industry it shouldn't cut the trees you spiked. This is not a complicated analysis. I am talking about the industry's needs/desires/strategies solely to explain why they can't stop cutting spiked trees without risking their entire businesses, not to say that those business are good.

Tomorrow: why George Bush doesn't get to blame the failure of his war on bloodthirsty Iraqi militias.

277: a) How else is a white-collar worker going to get seriously injured on the job? b) last I heard, forest cover in the US was relatively constant to increasing. Deforestation is happening mainly in poor third world countries (and also Europe, oddly enough). But flying to Brazil is expensive, and most deforestation there happens for land rather than timber, so their trees don't get spiked.

278

Throwing acid on unveiled women isn't directed at a state either but it is still terrorism. Random violence is not terrorism. Organized politically inspired unlawful violence directed at specific groups is.

Also, it's a shitty tactic because it's on the wrong end of the food chain. Most likely to hurt the people least able to do anything about it.

279: Does it meet the definition given in 238 above?

I am also reflexively opposed to positions that justify violent or extra-legal behavior on the grounds of the perceived rightness of one's cause. The opposition is not absolute, but I think it's a pretty good first approximation.

282b: The issue isn't deforestation, it's the nature of the forests. Old growth or big, old second growth forests are different from small second growth that's managed fairly intensively and logged as soon as it gets to harvestable size.

I'm with you on violent, not on extra-legal.

Acid, paint. Acid, paint. Acid, paint. Nope, acid is still not paint. Paint is still not acid.

The confusion probably arises through etching.

Ah, that must be it. Acid and paint, art and terror, soup and sandwich.

And further to 277a: the point of my analogy was that Charley's analogy in 260 grossly understated the significance of a timber company decision not to cut spiked trees. I was looking for something a little closer to his own experience that would capture the "stop what you're doing or your employees may get hurt" element in tree-spiking.

Somebody way upthread seems to think a lynx is smaller than a bobcat. No. Although the Bobcat, a bit smaller, is much feistier. And the European Lynx is quite a bit bigger: because leopards disappeared from Europe centuries ago, thousands of years in the North, there hasn't been a big cat, the Panthera phenotype, as there is in No. America. So the lynx got bigger to fill the niche, and has all the phenotype characteristics, such as much bigger territories.

I remember reading years ago, in the WSJ, that a couple of workers are killed in France every year, when small scale, bandsaw timber operations cut into logs with bullets from WWII hidden embedded in them. It's the small scale, mom-and-pop nature of the French logging that makes it so dangerous. A bigger operation could set up the cutting so as to minimize risk. The article drew the contrast with Finland, a major softwood producer, with huge areas affected by WWII combat. One difference is that the Finns marked all the damaged trees and destroyed them soon after the war, when the damage was easily seen.

Look, the guys who murdered tens of thousands of people in Bhopal are free, and what's more, they're millionaires. Can you imagine how they chuckle to themselves when they read stuff like this? "Heh, heh, heh, we've really got them good. All of these over-educated middle-class First World dupes think they have to be worried about ceramic rods in trees, or a cup of pink paint getting thrown at them, while we go on profiting from cutting every corner and pumping poisons into the environment like there's no tomorrow! Divide and rule -- that's the way to go!"

We've got hermaphroditic, legless frogs and 7-legged deer running around, and y'all are worried about the environmentalists?!? Just how much atrazine did you eat today, anyhow?

I have no idea how you're reading sympathy for the timber industry into what I wrote.

I guess my point was just that of course such tactics are meant to negatively affect "the industry as it exists." That is the whole point. If the industry as it exists is doing things that drive people to tree spiking, maybe the issue of culpability is not that... ummm... clear-cut.

But if you know perfectly well that the industry is going to cut a tree whether you spike it or not,

You do not know this. Tree spikers in various places in North America claim, with some plausibility, that the spiking has in fact deterred planned clearcuts. (I've seen Grouse Mountain cited as such an example, though I can't recall where.)

The argument from logger safety arguably is only valid if the logging companies in question aren't following proper safety procedures. The real target of spiking is equipment, not the loggers -- it's meant to cost money and time to the sawmills. It seems to me that arguing that this attacks the wrong part of the food chain is mistaken.

Jake notes that forest cover has in fact increased in the US, where there has been a history of tree-spiking, and that no-one spikes trees in poor third world countries (where illegal logging is rampant). If that's so, that doesn't seem a very persuasive argument against tree spiking to me.

Of course we're doing all this arguing in the absence of actual data, which is a bit of a problem.

And yes, 294 is exactly right.

286: I am also reflexively opposed to positions that justify violent or extra-legal behavior on the grounds of the perceived rightness of one's cause.

Wow, you really must have been irritated on MLK day then, huh? Not to mention that terrorist Rosa Parks, who harmed those honest, law-abiding white folks with her extra-legal actions. I won't even mention the French Resistance or John Brown or Denmark Vesey, 'cause that would probably just send you into a rage too.

We've got hermaphroditic, legless frogs and 7-legged deer running around, and y'all are worried about the environmentalists?!? Just how much atrazine did you eat today, anyhow?

Where, exactly, did you get the idea that comments on Unfogged demonstrate what anyone is "worried about"?

292 -- Well, I did have some pretty substantial qualifications, and I'm not saying that tree spiking is ok. If someone spikes a stand, and calls in a warning, I want them hunted down and arrested. If there's a warning, I think the employer shouldn't cut the trees without subjecting them to very close scrutiny (maybe including a metal detector) and I've said that the spiker ought to have to pay for this.

To go to your shooting associates, my first thought was 'do I get to pick which one goes first?' Seriously, it's very different. First, because the act that causes the harm is direct. Aiming a gun at someone and pulling the trigger is sufficient different from driving a nail into a tree that the parallel is just not possible. Second, if one assumes away this difference, my response would be the same as a timber company's: I'd call the police, and take measure to protect the associate. If the client representation could be suspended for a day without injury to the client, I'd consiuder that. While the person is hunted down. What I wouldn't do is say 'screw you, I'll represent anyone I choose,' and hope someone gets shot so I can score some PR points.

To go to your shooting associates, my first thought was 'do I get to pick which one goes first?'

See, I knew partners think like this.

Of course. And all the typos in comment 299 are -- must be -- the fault of associates. Who therefore deserve to be shot.

See, I knew partners think like this.

Not me. I want to shoot many of my partners. It's the associates I like.

299: but the person doing the spiking is presumably a dirty hippie, who's ability to pay for this kind of thing is limited.

295: tree spiking is a much more recent development than US reforestation, which is largely due to reversion of agricultural land in the Eastern half of the country. Similarly, most of the deforestation in the Third World is to clear land for agriculture, and has little to do with logging.

The argument from logger safety arguably is only valid if the logging companies in question aren't following proper safety procedures. The real target of spiking is equipment, not the loggers -- it's meant to cost money and time to the sawmills. It seems to me that arguing that this attacks the wrong part of the food chain is mistaken.

Ehhhh....Even good safety procedures don't generally include 'assume your equipment will fail due to sabotage.' I know people who work with plastic explosives who have to have safety meetings every morning and need to get licenses; it's all nice and safe, but they're still pretty fucked if someone decides to sabotage some equipment.

And I'm not sure that the intent being the equipment, not the loggers helps when it's the loggers or sawmill workers that get hurt. There's a principle about this lurking somewhere, but I don't really care that much to bother fleshing it out.

302: It's purely a coincidence that the partners share in the firm's profits, and associates do not, right?

DS, put yourself in the position of a timber company executive. You cannot allow there to be an x such that if Earth First! does x, your company won't cut. If you do, Earth First! is going to keep doing x until you're out of business. That's not a moral point, just a practical one.

All the work in your argument is being done by the belief that too many trees are getting cut. I agree with that. But the argument isn't over whether the timber companies are bad, it's over what tactics are acceptable to make them stop what it's doing.

The argument from logger safety arguably is only valid if the logging companies in question aren't following proper safety procedures. The real target of spiking is equipment, not the loggers -- it's meant to cost money and time to the sawmills. It seems to me that arguing that this attacks the wrong part of the food chain is mistaken.

All I really know is that the loggers and sawmill workers disagree pretty strongly. And that big saws and big logs are pretty dangerous even before you start doing stuff that breaks saw blades and makes chainsaws kick back.

Jake notes that forest cover has in fact increased in the US, where there has been a history of tree-spiking, and that no-one spikes trees in poor third world countries (where illegal logging is rampant). If that's so, that doesn't seem a very persuasive argument against tree spiking to me.

Give me a break. Is it possible that other differences in the legal and political environments between U.S. and Third World might be significant enough that differences in tree-spiking practices might not be the likeliest explanation?

what we need are more of the naked ladies on billboards.

It's purely a coincidence that the partners share in the firm's profits, and associates do not, right?

Actually, that mostly has nothing to do with it. But moving on . . . .

299: Close enough to comity for government work. I'll resist the urge to tweak the analogy.

295 299

So if someone threatens a chain of bookstores if they continue to carry books by Salman Rushdie and they ignore the threat and one of their employees is hurt then the bookstore chain is morally culpable?

James, I'm opposed to Ogged's "no analogies" rule on principle, but you're really making me acutely aware of its value.

310 -- If someone calls the chain, and says 'I put a bomb in one of your stores in Maryland and it is magically rigged to go off next time someone buys a Rushdie book' -- assume the magic -- then yes, the bookstore should stop selling the book until it has defused the bomb.

Why is this so difficult?

312: I really, really shouldn't do this, but what if the threat was tied to "any work of fiction"?

313 -- Call the police and get the bomb taken out. For chrissakes don't open the store.

Most jurisdictions don't talk about Last Clear Chance anymore. It's not a totally wacky idea, within its context.

312

Actually they say, "I have rigged a Rushdie book in one of your stores to explode when opened and I will go on rigging Rushdie books as long as you continue to sell them". What can the chain morally do besides stop selling Rushdie books?

Set up a brick to fall on the bomber when he opens the door?

315 -- Get rid of the ones in inventory, buy more and hire security. Set up a sting with police to catch the bomber. Have the store dusted for prints and the prints run against a database of likely suspects for this sort of thing.

There are plenty of things to do. Shrugging and saying 'we're going to sell that book no matter what' and taking no actions to avoid the consequences makes the store morally culpable.

316 -- Well, I'm not going to endorse mantraps.

I see "spring gun" as an associated link, the name by which I remember that doctrine.

This case (pdf) explains last clear chance, for those of you who were wondering how it works. The facts are certainly a mess.

I should have left it at the first paragraph of 306, which is the only point I was trying to make in 313.

Hmm... does all of this last-clear-chance/contributory-negligence/comparative-negligence stuff apply when it's not the plaintiff's negligence, but rather another defendant's deliberate act?

317

The timber companies aren't taking no action at all, the workers have protective equipment and metal detectors are sometimes used. But this can't reduce the chance of injury to zero. Similarly the bookstore chain could not reduce the risk to zero. Perhaps there is a duty to warn as with other non-obvious risks but other than that I see no moral culpabilty. Businesses go on operating in high crime areas, are they morally culpable when criminals hurt their employees?

322 -- It's different. I suppose the act of a co-defendant could be an intervening (or supervening -- I forget whether there's a difference between them) cause. Or a superceding cause. Depending on the time sequence and forseeability.

If you look at the Maryland case I linked, you'll see that LCC requires a specific temporal arrangement, which, it seems to me, would be impossible where there's an intervening cause.

Comparative negligence would still apply if the co-defendant was negligent, but I don't see what happens if the co-defendant's act is intentional. That might just put the co-defendant all the way in the soup.

323 -- In the face of a specific and avoidable threat, yes. I'm not saying that an employer has to reduce risk to zero. But that they have to take measure that are reasonably prudent in the circumstances.

Man, sometimes Charley makes me swoon, ever so slightly.

326 -- Wait'll you get the bill. The swoon will be real.

Night all.

324 - sounds reasonable. I'd imagine that an injured worker would probably end up going after his employer, if only because they have more money than the tree-spiker, in a similar manner to someone who gets rear-ended by a drunk driver going 60 miles an hour suing GM for faulty fuel tank design. But that's "joint and several liability", right?

There's some interesting bits on the Wobbly site of all places about tree spiking, starting here. Summary: it doesn't work - spikes mostly get found and pulled; and it pisses off workers. Although apparently the one person who got injured did sue his employer and got some piddling settlement.

271, 289: Two points to consider: a) Any substance thrown at someone is likely to evoke physical retaliation in those capable of it, with little or no regard to the "harmlessness" of the substance [imagine the reaction of your average armed rapper...]; and b) any paint that must be removed by paint thinner is quite likely to cause damage, possibly permanent damage, if it is splattered into someone's eyes or throat.

PETA's pretty much lost any credibility since it was discovered that its employees had killed - and illegally dumped - thousands of animals.

306: Is it possible that other differences in the legal and political environments between U.S. and Third World might be significant enough

Of course it is. I'm simply saying that a tree-spiker looking at that set of coincidences could easily find justification in it.

At least, I think that's what I was saying...

Anyway, I'm happy to concede the point. I think Jake's Wobbly link goes some way to putting the specific issue of tree spiking in perspective. Spiking bad.

329: I don't know about gauging paint-throwing based on the likely reaction of "your average armed rapper," and I guess it's just possible there's been a case of someone suffering permanent damage because of it, but I've never come across one. There are way better reasons to harsh on PETA, like this one:

PETA's pretty much lost any credibility since it was discovered that its employees had killed - and illegally dumped - thousands of animals.

Proof if ever it was needed that they really are more an organization about grandstanding than for "ethical" treatment of animals. Then of course there's the habit of false propaganda.

PETA's pretty much lost any credibility since it was discovered that its employees had killed - and illegally dumped - thousands of animals.

Neat: I was wondering what this was about so I googled for "PETA kills animals" and found a website called...petakillsanimals.com. But something seemed a bit odd and, sure enough, they're run by the "Center for Consumer Freedom". Damn, I hate astroturf.

289: Anthrax, talc. Antrax, talc. Anthrax, talc. Nope, anthrax is still not talc. Talc is not anthrax.

Run "white powder abortion clinic" through Google. I just can't figure out why they're so upset by a little white powder. It's not as if anthrax had ever been used against an abortion clinic.

331: PETA is fairly forthright about its euthanasia practices, calling them a "quick, painless death" as opposed to a "slow, uncomfortable death." It's not just coming from astroturfers.

332: So what you're alleging is that there are paint-throwers who've said "Ha! I just threw acid on you!" and/or some known history of the use of acid by paint-throwers, in some sense analogous to this use of anthrax?

I can't help but think at some point James is going to post a comment revealing that the PETA paint-thrower's actually strapped to a chair from an airplane and the bomber hanged himself by standing on a block of ice and finish it with a small flourish and a quiet tah-dah!

334: I'm saying the argument that "It's only paint" is an after the fact bullshit justification for assault, and those justifications would apply to white powder, toy guns, rubber knives, and foam baseball bats too.

The pie and paint-throwers are taking someone by surprise. The reaction to that might be surprising one of these days.

I'm not much enamored of any side of these debates, but I fully believe that if you throw paint (or a pie, for that matter) at somebody, they are completely within their rights to beat the living hell out of you.

333:PETA is fairly forthright about its euthanasia practices, calling them a "quick, painless death" as opposed to a "slow, uncomfortable death." It's not just coming from astroturfers.

Err...yeah, "X is astroturf" does not mean "X is not true". But:

1) It's still astroturf.
2) I still hate astroturf.

Hey, to each their own. I just think any definition of "assault" that would embrace an entire Hindu festival doesn't make much sense.

336: jeezus, can this be over? I never suggested that paint-throwing was anything but criminal, as you will see if you look at comment number 124. My only point was, I'm sick of hearing every goddam violation of the law described as terrorism, since terrorism is used as a justification for, as I also said above, every encroachment on liberty our executive branch cares to make. I believe there are degrees of criminality, and throwing paint is criminality of a different and less serious order than planting bombs.

Nobody sends white powder through the mail for any reason except to create an anthrax scare. Last I looked, red paint and acid didn't look anything alike. This acid obsession is more than a little disturbing.

If you actually honestly want to argue that throwing paint and throwing acid are morally equal, okay. I disagree.

I think throwing paint and spiking trees are deserving of legal punishment (the latter more than the former), but also that they are not necessarily terrorism, for all the reasons mcmc states. And despite the fact that I am fundamentally sympathetic to the underlying causes, I am fairly unmoved by anonymous and escaped acts of protest. I have an acquaintance who is currently sitting in jail--on and off for many months--- for his refusal to turn over outtakes of a protest video because he does not agree with the Patriot-Act style machinery underlying the request. As far as I can tell, he gains nothing in particular for doing this--the video probably isn't even of the incident supposedly being investigated---and is sitting there, in jail, entirely out of a stubborn desire to make a stand for what he believes in. You may disagree or agree with him, but it's really a textbook case of "throwing one's body upon the machine." If someone dropped the dead racoon (where the hell did they get a dead racoon anyway? racoons are animals too!) on Wintour's soup and *sat there and waited to be arrested*---and if this kept happening day after day, and if each of these people made a coherent, consistent statement about how deeply it upset them that animals were being clubbed and trapped for the sake of beauty and fashion, so deeply they were willing to risk jail to make a statement--well, maybe then someone would listen. If an env. activist stayed by each tree and said, "Yes, I spike a tree on this hill. You can go ahead and try to cut them and hope you don't find it, and you can arrest me for trespassing and destroying your property and creating a dangerous situation, but you can also see that I value these trees and what they do for this planet so much I am willing to risk jail to save them,"--well, that might move someone. As it is, it strikes me as more cowardice.

Or maybe it wouldn't work, who knows.

I'm a lifelong lacto-vegetarian from a long line of lifelong vegetarians and I'm so. Not. Anemic. Parsley alone will do the trick on that count. Mung beans and rice do very well on others. There was a psych prof at Stanfurd who did a study on how defensive meat eaters get around vegetarians that always comes to mind in cases like this. It's very simple--if you live in developed society and eat meat or wear fur or leather you are willing to take on a certain, perhaps unknown, amount of animal suffering (and systematic consequences) for a certain amount of pleasure and convenience and savings. I am not. If that doesn't matter to you, I don't believe throwing paint on you will make it matter, but some people might believe it will make it matter to you, and if the amount of suffering involved seems so great to them, well, that's why they do it. I simply disagree with them. That doesn't mean I give up my right to hold a little disdain for someone who promotes fur. (Inherited coats are another thing entirely, one more reason I dislike the paint throwing at random in particular. A fashion show makes a little bit of sense at least. Fur is more aggregious b/c it is so totally avoidable--and leather least so, bc it oftentimes is really hard to get nonleather versions of certain goods.) Fashion is greatly about what people think of you--your status in the world, your aesthetic--and I freely declare that your aesthetic and status plummets greatly in my esteem if you value a trend or a sensual pleasure more than kindness to a living, feeling creature. I also freely acknowledge that you probably don't care about my esteem at all. So we are at an impasse, but an honest one at least.

At the same time, weasels and mink are nasty, smelly, mean little carnivores, and who can feel sorry for them? Perhaps we're teaching them to be less weasely in the future.

341: There was a psych prof at Stanfurd who did a study on how defensive meat eaters get around vegetarians that always comes to mind in cases like this.

I've always been curious about what drives this. When I stopped eating meat, I noticed that in any situation involving food consumption I was suddenly imagined to be silently disapproving of everything around me. It's consistently worse than watching alcoholics in the presence of teetotallers.

I've had a soft spot for mink ever since one of the gluttonous little shits hung out in the bushes by my feet while I cleaned fish and dragged about a dozen sets of trout guts back there for later enjoyment. Kind of a cute little bastard.

341 is a really good comment.

I'm a lifelong lacto-vegetarian from a long line of lifelong vegetarians and I'm so. Not. Anemic. Parsley alone will do the trick on that count. Mung beans and rice do very well on others.

For iron, yes. Pernicious anemia is B12 deficiency, and you ain't getting that from parsley and beans.

345: Note "lacto-vegetarian." Dairy products are a source of B12.

Dairy products are a source of B12.

Note "Parsley alone will do the trick on that count."

Alright, point taken, but I'm also far from suffering from pernicious Anemia as well, probably for the reasons DS notes. And in the developed world there are plenty of fairly inexpensive vegan alternatives to even that. So you can stop worrying about me, thank you very much.

Thanks, DaveL.

Note "Parsley alone will do the trick on that count."

Yes, Saheli, grovel for your minor and inconsequential factual error! Grovel, I say!

(Also note: "how defensive meat eaters get around vegetarians")

Some relatives of mine were in Earth First and knew Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney. By the way the lawsuit was won and D.C. got several million from the FBI for the wrongful death of J.B.

Earth first's normal tactics included chaining themselves to trees and getting in the way of logging equipment. They are emphatically not cowards. Tree spiking was always a real outlier in their methodologies, not a typical one.

By the way the lawsuit was won and D.C. got several million from the FBI for the wrongful death of J.B.

Didn't she die from cancer? I'm pretty sure that suit was for other stuff.

You are right and I realized I had explained it wrong right after I typed it. She died later from cancer, they sued the FBI over how they conducted the investigation (basically they just decided to assume that the earth firsters were carrying the bomb themselves and did no investigation at all). And they won.

It is amazing how "earth first" has become shorthand for all sorts of stuff most of which is really exaggerated to the point of being unrecognizable as being about the same organization. Not that I was actually a member of the movement but I was sympathetic to them back in the 80s and I have relatives who were in it and the tree spiking thing was really atypical and, as I remember, was never actually done as an EF activity, but carried out by individuals within the movement who did it on their own initiative, though EF did refuse to categorically condemn it.

Yes, Saheli, grovel for your minor and inconsequential factual error! Grovel, I say!

(Also note: "how defensive meat eaters get around vegetarians")

I could give a flying shit if someone is vegetarian. The point is that if someone reading this stuff decides to give it a whirl and spends a year or two not eating animal products they should do it right or they might get a nasty surprise in the form of a vitamin deficiency.

to give it a whirl

Dinner with my son will usually get me trying something besides my Variation on Dead Cow + Carbs. I've had some good stuff, he's been doing the vegan thing long enough to have screened out the inedible.

All B12 is originally vegetable sourced (well technically bacterial activity on the surface).

You get plenty without any trouble so long as you eat vegetables (many kinds) that haven't been processed harshly (surface borne), or you eat flesh of animals whose feed hasn't been processed harshly. Ruminants, usually.

North american agricultural practices can make it difficult to get enough B12 as a pure vegetarian, true. But this is an issue with the way we process and deliver food, not with veg diets per se.

The real problem with B12 is that you don't need a lot of it and you store it for a long time. So people can (less likely to be missed these days) get really sick from a B12 deficiency without any obvious connection to a change in diet....

I certainly agree that anyone looking a major shift in diet of any kind really should learn a bit about nutrition.

On the other hand, I find it quite amusing the way people, particularly in north america, call out a change to vegetarian diet as a particular problem. We are swimming in diet related disease; but *vegetarianism* is a problem? Sure, some people do silly things to their bodies this way, but the numbers are miniscule compared to other dietary problems. I'm all for avoiding that, but to pretend there is something particularly difficult about good nutrition with a vegetarian (particularly lacto-ovo) diet is laughable.

Just defensiveness, soubzriquet.

Oh, I'll wholeheartedly agree that vegetarianism is both healthier and more environmentally sound. I can even see the moral arguments, though my moral code deals with eating animals without any problems. I just couldn't bring myself to give up meat short of a life-threatening health condition. It's too delicious.

But this is an issue with the way we process and deliver food, not with veg diets per se.

Still going to be a problem for a North American vegetarian, unless she's planning on moving.

But yeah. I'm not a vegetarian, but I've reduced the amount of meat I've eaten in the past five years, and the trick is just to learn to prepare new things that aren't as meat-centric as the average North American diet. A lot of people's resistance to vegetarianism is just that they can't figure out what to eat instead, and imagine vegetarianism as swapping the steak for a slab of tofu.

358: me.

I'm not convinced, as I said back in 50. Almost inevitably too many carbohydrates. Or rather, I should say, the medically-recommended amount of carbohydrates, which I think is too many.

I was a vegan for years -- it was a family thing, we were all vegans and I grew up learning to cook vegan food -- before coming back to eat meat in my late teens and early twenties. I suspect it's easier to eat well and cheaply if you eat some meat or fish.

If you are prepared to put in the effort, you can eat really healthily as either a vegan or a vegetarian, but in my experience that vast majority of vegetarians I've known haven't really gotten in to cooking good vegetable based food and instead have either made standard 'Western' staple meals with the meat taken out or relied on soya based meat substitutes. And loads of cheese, and things.

'Course you can just cook Indian food the whole time, and it's all good.

356,360 : defensiveness? Just avoiding mischaracterization, and I find that tendency (avoiding the beam of bad nutrition in the general population while complaingin about the mote of bad nutrition in veg. circles) odd. I also don't understand the `inevitability' of high carbs you claim -- agree there is some disagreement about the correct amount in a diet (notwithstanding recent nonsense wrt SB or A diets) ... but I know some veg. eaters with pretty low carb intake so don't understand.

361: I think this is a real problem of path-of-least effort. A lot of people grow up with a meat based diet that may (or may not) be mediocre nutritionally, but usually isn't very bad. If they go veggie, they have to either put the effort into learning new things, or just sort of substitue as Cala says. This latter group can run into real trouble.

It depends a lot on the circles you travel in, I guess. I'd say about 1/2 the vegetarians/vegans I know are lifelong, mostly from vegetarian cultures. Obviously not much of an issue for them. I guess it rubs off or something, because most of the others I know cook pretty well. I fully believe there are a lot of people out there like ttaM describes.

360: Almost inevitably too many carbohydrates.

Nah.

The really easy way to avoid this is just buy a few vegetarian cookbooks with nutritional information in them. You get good-tasting food and none of the apocalyptic effects that meat-eaters are taught to fear.

Cala: on the other hand, in this (north american) society these days *most* places it is very easy to get bad food (expensive or cheap), takes a bit of work to get inexpensive reasonably good food, and takes a fair bit of work to get really good food. This has nothing to do with meat or veg. eating.

363- I meant defensiveness by the meateaters. And I'm overstating, sure: there are definitely ways to eat well (well meaning healthy, I have no quarrel that a lot of meatless food is delicious) as a vegetarian (vegan, I'm not so convinced, long term), but this is going to either require you to do a lot of cooking, or be blessed with a very favorable selection of restaurants. I never cook, so it didn't work. A big meal (i.e. not salad) was almost always pasta, or something equally starchy to that effect.

It is worth torturing hundreds of innocent animals just to save me the time to prepare my own food? That's obviously a judgment call. But I decided it was.

354 is true. Although there are degrees of difficulty involved, so I don't think it's fair to say it has "nothing" to do with the meat or veg. thing (depending on where one lives, perhaps).

367 should have referenced 365, not 354.

365: entirely true. I'm just allergic generally to arguments that say "X [where X is something generally challenging] isn't a problem, really, because it's only because of Y [where Y is something practically immutable for all intents and purposes] that X is a problem."

But I'm sympathetic to your general line of thought. People do worry about whether a vegetarian gets the optimal amount of some trace element, but rarely whether a diet of the typical omnivore does the same.

363: Also depends on the area of the country. It would be very easy to be vegetarian where I live now. Lots of restaurants with good vegetarian options. Lots of people who know good things to cook when people ask for vegetarian side dishes at a potluck. Where I grew up? Vegetarian would mean 'I think we can defrost a veggie burger for you.'

comity!

Seriously, both Brock and Cala raise related good points -- It does make a lot of difference where you live, and also whether you tend to cook a lot and/or enjoy it, or if you are more reliant on local restraunts or processed options.

For what it's worth, I was never trying to claim that B12 deficiency (or for that matter, related things) wasn't ever a problem, just noting that it is often mischaracterized, and is also pretty easy to deal with given a little knowledge. It does seem to be a sort of bogeyman for (some) people when discussing vegetarianism.

as for 367 ... ok `nothing much'. Depending on where you live and what your threshold for `good' is, it can be harder to get meats than good produce. I knew a guy who drove 45 minutes to a small farm butcher who happened to be halal (this guy wasn't religious) because he didn't consider any of the local supermarket meats acceptable. We had a good produce market locally though, even with locally grown `organic' stuff if that was your thing.