h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

*joins G7 for *

That's a good story. I'll remember that one.

When I look at the animal activists and the vegans, I can't help thinking that it might have been different if it hadn't been for the urbanization - so many people moving away from the countryside into cities and *not* making their living from farming...

...thus changeing the food production from household level to big industry - and some of the details of said industry are just gross!

My grandparents used to have *one* pig, which was slaughtered at Christmas - and meanwhile, the pig had quite a decent life. Same thing goes for reindeer (one of my uncles has a small herd). You slaughter one when you need food, and you use every part of the animal - fur, bone, horn...

We suffer from an extremely rabid form an animal-rights activist in these parts. Last summer a group of them freed some animals from a corporate laboratory. Sort of a nice idea, if the poor caged animals had the survival skills to live in the wild, and if the corporate laboratory had been located in the wild, instead of on one of the busiest sections of US Highway 1.

Later that summer the same group raided a small, community bank, doing minor vandalism in the lobby and generally causing a ruckus. Why they picked the local bank instead of one of the several big corporate banks on the same street is beyond me. Their point was to call attention to large-scale financial sponsorship of cruelty to animals.

While I support our the Humane Society, was a vegetarian for four years, boycott fur, and buy cruelty-free products I do go hunting. I don't consider that hypocritical. Treating others, of any species, humanely is something we all should aspire to. But when we lose our connection to the land and lose sense of our place in the food chain we give rise to the sort of people described in your stories who have no problems purchasing meat in the supermarket--meat from chicken, cows, or pigs who have spent their lives caged in s**t-besmeared pens with beaks and feet removed and pumped full of hormones and chemicals--, wearing leather Birkenstocks and designer belts, and building their multi-million dollar trophy homes in a subdivision that was prime wildlife habitat. Not to mention driving their 3mpg SUVs (plastered with pro-enviroment bumper stickers) for which President Bush will drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Give me an honest fair-chase elk hunt any day. At least I know the animal was healthy, who it was killed by, and how the meat was prepared.

Changing the subject for a moment (sorry, FG), it's World Book Day next Thing (Thursday). The BBC is reading Catch-22 to mark the occasion. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_1854000/1854150.stm

Shall we join in or have an Atelier book of our own?

Back when I was editing the newsletter for NagSIG, a Mensa horse lovers' special interest group, we started getting letters from an animal rights activist accusing us of cruelty to horses because we ride and drive them. And castrate them. He then began quoting bible at us, which made it easy to make him be quiet, because he hadn't known that oxen are neutered bulls.

He felt that animals exist only to be loved and admired, and even sitting on one, or harnessing it, or putting shoes on it!!, was a serious blasphemy.

It's only been a little over a hundred years since the horse was superceded as the main means of transportation, a task shared by oxen, burros, goats, reindeer, llamas, dogs and elephants. But the horse, because of its speed and strength, deserves more credit than any other animal for the spread of civilisation (about which you may have mixed feelings, but still...).

Titania is right, leaving the farm has bereft a lot of people of common sense regarding our historic relationship with animals. The loss of a horse or a cow could be a killing blow for the economy of a farm family. Learning to ride or drive or plow were essential skills, but so was husbandry, the art of caring for animals. And, as FG points out, we have lost a great deal of essential lore to the institutionalised cruelty of the battery farm.

Has anybody read Adam's Task by Vicki Hearne?

Simulpost, Amy, but the last sentence of my rant is apropos to your post!

It's a book about animals, training them, our relationship to them, our responsibilities to them. Given what we're discussing, I'd nominate it for an atelier book.

Atelier book? In the light of recent events: Brothers Lionheart or Mio My Son

In keeping with the animal theme, I'd recommend either of the dog training books put out by the monks of New Skete. They provide a complete, pack oriented training method, along with insight into a dog's frame of reference.

*sips *

[op]

Sounds like a book Zeppo could get into, G7.

I like the idea of an Atelier book. I'll have to finish my current book first though. Right now I'm reading "Time and again" by Jack Finney. It's excellent. It's been on my to-read list for ages and I saw it mentioned in another thread (What's the best book you've ever read? - on ask h2g2) the other day and so I ordered it up from the library.

Morning all. I'm reading a book about the origins of the Bow Street Runners, (the western world's first organised police force) of which an ancestor of mine was one. I wonder if he arrested any of the Atelier's ancestors

Make that: visitors to the Atelier's ancestors

Oooooo Garius! That was me who recommended Time and Again in the best book forum. I love that book--and I love the fact that such an adult (not in the pornography sense) book has illustrations. You should read its sequel From Time to Time, which Jack Finney wrote just before his death. Sy takes on the Titanic.

And here's that very forum ;-): http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/F16034?thread=109653&post=961571#p961571

If we're going to pick an atelier book, such a large and literate group is never going to agree unless we narrow our criteria.

Are we going to nominate based on animal training/rights/activism themes?

Big dust storm in Lincoln today -- white gypsum dust from the White Sands monument down by Alamogordo. It's like a dry fog obscuring the hills. Must be almost unbreathable down in Alamogordo itself.

Lil, I really do think we have the same cold. Could it have been transmitted over h2g2?!??!?!

I have to say that Time and Again was not my favorite. Best book I ever read would have to be a tie between ....oh, shoot. I can't even come up with a best book...a list will have to do
(in no particular order)
1. Emma (Jane Austen)
2. The Once and Future King (TH White)
3. The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Milan Kundera)
4. Another Roadside Attraction (Tom Robbins)
5. Sense and Sensibility (another Austen)
6. Foucault's Pendulum (Umberto Eco)
7. The Name of the Rose (ditto)
8. The Eight (Catherine Neville)
9. Lord of the Rings (the whole thing)
10. any book other than Tailchaser's Song that Tad Williams ever wrote. By this I mean the Otherland series (creepy fun) and the Songs of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn.


oh, yes. Green Eggs and Ham....I love that book.

Well, I will be unavailable for a few days...Compaq sent me the "right" driver, and lo and behold, when I downloaded it, my modem disappeared altogether. So the machine is going in and getting a new modem (hardware, not software, apparently), and everything will be great. Thanks for your help Marv, but I'm afraid I have to go thru a local professional at this point, since you live too far away to fix it yourself....rats.

Once and Future King would be good. There's a great bit about ants.

*Sighs at the thought of all those activists.*

Hardly a clue... Hardly a clue...

My own stance on furs agrees with the general feeling here: fur should only be acquired from animals that are being used for meet purposes. That is, they can be killed for the fur, but not /just/ the fur.

Hmm... An Atelier book, eh? I'm afraid that I, personally, would not read anything about activists or such themes. Comedy is my favoured area.

Atelier book. Activism, rights and all that.
Perhaps it's time I got a copy of and read No Logo then.