A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Animal Rights and Issues

  • “Humane”

    Nearly all vocal critics of animal rights/liberation insist that they are absolutely in favor of the “humane” treatment of animals. It’s simply the radical claims or agenda of animal liberation that they oppose. Assuming they’re arguing in good faith, then, it should to be possible to construct an agenda for improving the treatment of animals Read more

  • Looking beyond the labels

    James McWilliams, author of the forthcoming Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly, looks at the lives of free-range pigs. While emphasizing that they’re far better off than their factory-farmed counterparts, McWilliams finds some serious ethical problems with the practice. McWilliams’ conclusion is a measured one: As responsible Read more

  • Cognitive ethology, the Left, faith, and dominion

    A long but worthwhile essay that to some extent recapitulates the argument made by John Gray in Straw Dogs. Gray’s contention was that the secular Left has largely jettisoned the metaphysics of Christianity but held on to its anthropocentric outlook and belief in a progressive history. Echoing Nietzsche, Gray argues that the scientific, secular outlook Read more

  • Creation’s travail

    To hear some anti-green conservatives tell it, you’d think that nature-worship and radical environmentalism were making major inroads into our society. Of course, the opposite is much closer to the truth: the general attitude toward the natural world that underlies most of our daily activities is one that regards nature as little more than a Read more

  • Think of the children!

    United Egg Producers, a trade association for the egg industry, has begun churning out “kid-friendly” propaganda aimed at free-range egg producers: Who knew stuff like this was simply intended to keep the poor things dry and warm? Story here (via). Read more

  • VB6 (DTW)

    Lately I’ve been trying–with some success–to follow Mark Bittman‘s “vegan before six” (or vegan before dinner) regimen, with one qualification: only during the week. On the weekends I like to leave open the possibility of eggs for breakfast or a grilled cheese sandwich with fresh tomatoes from the farmers’ market for lunch, or what have Read more

  • Violence and social change

    I didn’t think I had anything to say on the murder of Dr. George Tiller, but one issue that has come up repeatedly is whether pro-lifers are being hypocritical in condemning the murder. After all, the reasoning goes, didn’t Tiller’s murderer simply take the pro-life reasoning to its logical conclusion? Here’s something I wrote all Read more

  • Who will stand up for the rat?

    A history of lab animals and the fitful attempts to provide them some modicum of protection. Rats and mice, by far the most widely used animals in laboratory experiments, are afforded no protection under the Animal Welfare Act (i.e., they don’t count as “animals” for the purpose of the law). Now, rats don’t exactly elicit Read more

  • The coming anti-meat tipping point

    This article suggests that we’ll be forced–by resource and environmental constraints, among other things–to give up eating meat, except perhaps the very rich, and that this will lead to a rapid moral revolution in our treatment of animals. It’s an interesting argument and pretty much the reverse of how we usually imagine these things go: Read more

  • Animal-blogging elsewhere

    Some new blog finds dealing with, inter alia, animal issues: Theoria Critical Animal (Not sure how active that second one is, but there’s lots of interesting stuff there.) Read more