Protest horse cruelty this weekend

I guess Los Altos will have a clean slate if they get ride of those terribly cruel animal rides once a year.

That totally is not animal cruelty. Go be around horses sometime. They are fairly strong, and they probably wouldn't even run away if you came and snipped them out of their harnesses. Why don't you go over to the Jack in the Box that the horses are walking by and protest the chickens and fish being eaten there.

nor is it censorship, it's just "hiding" things.

that's not so doubleplusungood, is it?

not cruelty, without reports of actual cruelty in this post

believe it or not, many actually believe that animals are not ours to use for entertainment, which this is (or as beasts of burden which it would have been pre-automobile)

the author probably should have been more specific in that it was exploitation of animals that this is targeting

and the point about Jack in the Box is well-taken, even from a detractor, as the largest grinder of animals in this country is definitely the meat industry (more than labs, fur, entertainment, you name it)

What about the yeast making your beer, or digesting fiber in your intestine. Are they beasts of burden?
Is it okay to kill a parasite animal?

that would mean starting with mammals and working your way down

I don't think anyone yet has made a serious case about pain felt by yeast -- besides, it's not even an animal and lacks a central nervous system, which is key to sensing pain as we understand it today

a parasite, or a symbiotic creature, is in direct competition with you and therefore not the same ethically as a separate being -- that's more akin to being attacked by a bear

and no I would not let the bear kill me, but I would try to avoid the fight until I absolutely could not, so as to avoid harm to myself and the bear if at all possible

so, there's a serious answer for you -- let the facetious questions begin again...

Well, it makes sense to most that one should address the most important problems, with attention paid to where you can do the most good with your level of power. I mean, if someone says "why are you paying attention to local transit planning when there are people dying in Iraq", because if everyone spent 100% of their energy on the problem ranked #1, then all the other problems would be allowed to get worse during that time. Rather if we rank Iraq with an index of 50 and global warming with 35, and homelessness with 30, you should spend proportionate amounts of time with each. However... this importance ranking still remains. If people are spending lots of time on trivial stuff, while other things that much more important are not receiving attention from anyone, that implies that society collectively actually doesn't consider those ignored things to be significant at all. priorities

They are a minuscule minority. They have, of course, the right to their beliefs. They have a right to put their beliefs into practice in their own lives. They do *not* have the right to put their beliefs into practice in *our* lives. Neither do the Army of God, the Phineas Priests, the Taliban, or anybody else like them, either. Keep your religions to yourselves, and nobody has to get hurt. Attempt to inflict your religion on others by force, you *will* be met with counter force, every time, no exception. This is the lesson of history.

If you don’t want to ride horses, or eat meat, or partake of the self evident benefits of animal testing, that’s your business. What the rest of us do is our business. Butt out.

tens of millions worldwide, if not more

it's not a religion -- it's very practical. the suffering is real, not imagined.

the only way you ever justify your own actions, and your sense of safety in numbers, is a BELIEF in what is Natural for humans to do. Nature is your God and you have the gall to think you alone understand it.