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Department of making me feel old
Twenty-five years of “Purple Rain.” Ulp! Not that long ago, my wife and I re-watched the movie, and I can’t say it holds up quite as well as the album, though there are some memorable moments (I’ve always been taken with Morris Day’s performance as Prince’s unscrupulous rival).
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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…
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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:…
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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.)
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Whence the cat?
Fascinating article about how and where cats were first domesticated. Not Egypt as you might think. I think it was Jeffrey Masson who said that cats are the only animal to truly benefit from domestication (as any cat owner can attest!).
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An outing to the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception
We had absolutely gorgeous weather here today, so my beloved wife and I decided to take a trip up to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on the campus of Catholic University and reputedly the largest Catholic Church in North America. The church is a Byzantine-Romanesque hybrid style with many side…
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Tofu-licious!
We made this Mark Bittman recipe for Mexican Chocolate Tofu Pudding tonight and it was really good. I was surprised how creamy it was. We added a bit of cayenne pepper for some kick.
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Debating Celtic Christianity
There’s a lively conversation going on downblog on the “Use and abuse of Celtic Christianity” post from a few weeks back. Welcome to any new readers! I don’t have much to contribute to the discussion at this point, but I’m happy to see it keep going.
