As pointed out by the Worst Horse, here’s a cool article on Team Tibet, a group of protesters who attended 11 major league games in early August.
A depressing article on cage-free eggs: cage-free doesn’t mean cruelty-free. The message of the article is, people in the egg industry think consumers looking for cage-free eggs are basically idiots — but we’re idiots who may be willing to pay more — for a label that ultimately means little.
Cage-free: At some point we have to take people’s words for things, even if by “people” we mean a corporation. Otherwise we’ll all be hopelessly cynical. It’s about meaningful standards — “organic”, “natural”, etc. — and holding companies and people to those standards.
Animal cruelty. It used to be you were told what to eat because it was bad for you — now it’s bad for the world. Interconnectedness is unavoidable, folks. Get used to it. In May PepsiCo said they would stop all animal testing. Does this mean anything? When will they stop? What do they do now? Here’s PETA’s list of the ten cruelest labs for animal testing in the U.S. Just FYI. Write them an angry letter. Speaking of animal cruelty, things look bad for Michael Vick: no Nike deal, probably no NFL season this year. Soon: no job. Next, jail. How rare and interesting to catch someone so privileged torturing animals! There was a mean neighbor when I was a kid who threw rocks at dogs. Later I felt bad for him. Eventually I’ll feel that way about Vick. Maybe this will put a spotlight on the dogfighting trade, at least. It’s how we treat the least and most helpless of us that shows what kind of people and what kind of a society we are.
Blue Egg is a cool new site for people who are (or are trying to be) mindful about the environment. They have a good article about pedestrian pollution, the phenomenon I read about that annoyed me so much last week. Blue Egg goes deeper and better. Keep an eye on them.
– Philip Ryan, Webmaster