And the truth shall set you free. Knowledge is power. George Orwell's central premise in Animal Farm and 1984 was that the ability to remember the recent and distant past is crucial to a society’s freedom. It is the only restraint on government ambitions or other plots. Such amnesia is rampant today in North America and beyond. So this blog is here to add some historical perspective and remind people of forgotten truths.
GAIA
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Tuesday, October 26, 2010
TECHNOLOGY
All Hail Google
Google is on an ever expanding, winning streak of innovation.
For years Google has been the most popular search engine on the Internet, leading the verb “to google” to be added to our most recent dictionaries.
With Google Chrome, Google has expanded to compete with Internet Explorer and numerous others as a web desktop browser -- and is currently the 3rd most used web browser in the world.
As for Android, Google’s smart phone software, it has been chosen by so many handset manufacturers that it is on more smart phones than any other system – far surpassing Apple’s iPhone numbers.
And with Google Earth the company has gone even further afield, into the realms normally left to geographers and real estate agents. Anyone can now look up his or her home for a bird’s eye – and more recently street side – view, or comb great cities, the oceans and mountains galore.
Then, just last week, to this expanding Google universe, was added the automobile!
Google released images and a brief PR story on how it has mastered creating a driverless car!!! The vehicle can drive to preset location automatically, staying on the road and making the needed turns – even in traffic – without collision or panic. To keep passengers more at ease – and this is still the test phase after all – a passive backup human sits in the driver’s seat – so if anything seems amiss, he/she can override the system.
So far, Google says, no glitches!
While German, Japanese and American automobile companies have been working on similar robotic cars – Lexus and Ford have production models that can parallel part on their own -- no auto manufacturer to my knowledge has created anything like the Google car yet.
Another Google first? It seems so.
What will this innovative and wide thinking company come up with next?
IBM, Sony and Microsoft are past being leading edge. And Apple seems to be reaching its Zenith as a 2½ note company – iPods, iPhones and the new, but far from unique iPad.
So all hail the new innovation superstar and future world leader (Yes, I am predicting this) – GOOGLE.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
GAIA
Vegan secret agenda
A slew of recent articles are advocating the end to animal husbandry and eating flesh.
U of T Magazine’s Autumn 2010 “This Looks Like a Farm” eulogizes a farm animal sanctuary in Uxbridge, Ontario and how it has saved pigs from certain death. The 6 page spread ends with a long attack on the cruelty and barbarism of farming of pigs and other domesticated animals, and ends with a plea to end all animal farming as it is simply cruel and inhumane.
Put briefly pigs and other domestic animals have emotions and social needs, feel pain and are “not that different in kind [than we humans].” (p. 41)
The same line of attack is used in a Globe and Mail article of a few weeks back attacking the cruelty of fishing – any and all fishing. Starting with putting a live worm or minnow on a hook, hooking a living fish and battling it, often letting fish ‘drown’ in air once caught, or trapping them in nets where they can be left crushed together and unable to move for hours until the net is pulled up – at which point they are usually allowed to ‘drown’ in air –all steps too inhumane for the author’s vegan likings.
Put simply, he advocates an end to all forms of fishing – all over the planet.
Finally, articles on dolphins, dogs and other animals are appearing in magazines such as Time as researchers find more and more animals feel pain, go through emotional states and can think in more sophisticated ways than previously thought.
Put simply, the gulf between humans and the rest of the animal world is not as great as once thought.
The net result of all these scientific and humanist arguments is to piece by piece assault the human practice of eating flesh and proposing strict vegetarianism; that only fruits, vegetables and grains are acceptable food sources.
This defies human history as we have been hunters and gatherings since almost the beginning of time and this is still the norm in the cultures of tribal Amazon and Africa.
Our teeth have canines and semi-caninies specifically to tear at and eat flesh – so we are biologically designed for meat eating – among other things.
Most importantly, if these ‘bleeding hearts’ had their way, billions of people would be starving to death each year – because without the bounty of the sea and human animal husbandry, there is not enough arable land, not enough access to water and irrigation to feed the world’s over 6 billion people!!!
Think drought, think floods, think locus and you know how fragile the world’s agricultural food supply can be – and is.
To close, let me end with a response I read years ago by the late Lubavicher rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneeson. When asked if a Jew should become a vegetarian, he rephrased the question to “what is the purpose of animal life?”. His answer basically repeated standard Jewish belief that animal life is designed for mankind’s benefit and the eating of meat is a key part of this.
A slew of recent articles are advocating the end to animal husbandry and eating flesh.
U of T Magazine’s Autumn 2010 “This Looks Like a Farm” eulogizes a farm animal sanctuary in Uxbridge, Ontario and how it has saved pigs from certain death. The 6 page spread ends with a long attack on the cruelty and barbarism of farming of pigs and other domesticated animals, and ends with a plea to end all animal farming as it is simply cruel and inhumane.
Put briefly pigs and other domestic animals have emotions and social needs, feel pain and are “not that different in kind [than we humans].” (p. 41)
The same line of attack is used in a Globe and Mail article of a few weeks back attacking the cruelty of fishing – any and all fishing. Starting with putting a live worm or minnow on a hook, hooking a living fish and battling it, often letting fish ‘drown’ in air once caught, or trapping them in nets where they can be left crushed together and unable to move for hours until the net is pulled up – at which point they are usually allowed to ‘drown’ in air –all steps too inhumane for the author’s vegan likings.
Put simply, he advocates an end to all forms of fishing – all over the planet.
Finally, articles on dolphins, dogs and other animals are appearing in magazines such as Time as researchers find more and more animals feel pain, go through emotional states and can think in more sophisticated ways than previously thought.
Put simply, the gulf between humans and the rest of the animal world is not as great as once thought.
The net result of all these scientific and humanist arguments is to piece by piece assault the human practice of eating flesh and proposing strict vegetarianism; that only fruits, vegetables and grains are acceptable food sources.
This defies human history as we have been hunters and gatherings since almost the beginning of time and this is still the norm in the cultures of tribal Amazon and Africa.
Our teeth have canines and semi-caninies specifically to tear at and eat flesh – so we are biologically designed for meat eating – among other things.
Most importantly, if these ‘bleeding hearts’ had their way, billions of people would be starving to death each year – because without the bounty of the sea and human animal husbandry, there is not enough arable land, not enough access to water and irrigation to feed the world’s over 6 billion people!!!
Think drought, think floods, think locus and you know how fragile the world’s agricultural food supply can be – and is.
To close, let me end with a response I read years ago by the late Lubavicher rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneeson. When asked if a Jew should become a vegetarian, he rephrased the question to “what is the purpose of animal life?”. His answer basically repeated standard Jewish belief that animal life is designed for mankind’s benefit and the eating of meat is a key part of this.