Re-Defining the Animal Kingdom

Whether it's dog fighting, illegal tiger killings or abandonment of kittens, stories about animal torture regularly make national news.  Interviews with outraged commentators always follow, who can't believe that people would commit such horrible acts and that anyone could do that to innocent animals.  Dogs, tigers and kittens and many other animals are well protected by the U.S. legal system and almost everyone takes animal cruelty seriously.

But apparently, chickens, cows, pigs, horses and other "livestock" are not animals under U.S. law and are therefore not deserving of this type of protection or defense.  From learning the laws of this country, I learned many things about politics and societal values.  I guess you can learn a lot about biology too.

State animal welfare laws protect all animals (all living things) but specifically exempt livestock.  Summaries of the laws of each state can be found here.  Instead, farm animals are "protected" by state slaughter laws as well as the federal Humane Slaughter Act.  These state laws allow slaughter, but purport to minimize the torture the animal experiences while being farmed and killed.  The federal slaughter act does the same thing, but does not apply to chickens and other birds.  A summary of the state laws can be found here.  Even then, violations carry low penalties, and are rarely prosecuted.

When I was growing up, I learned that an animal included, but was not limited to, any of the following:

  

 

Now I know that 50% of my assumptions about what animals are were wrong.  I now know that these categories of "livestock" or "farm animals" are not in fact animals at all.  While New York State did not test this piece of knowledge on the bar exam, I nevertheless thank the U.S. legal system for this valuable piece of education and will be sure to put it on a note card and promptly memorize. 

Granted, I got my understanding of the animal kingdom before the age of the Internet.  Today, if you Google images of  "wild animals," most of the results are photos of these animals in their natural habit, or maybe at the zoo.  The same search for "farm animals" returns mostly line drawings or cartoon imitations of a collection of animals you may find on a farm:  

     

Photographs are scarce, with only a few showing happy animals roaming free, and a few "real farm" (aka, factory farm) pictures, showing a modest amount of animal torture.  Real life images of the happy farm are long gone.

So now the animal kingdom for children looks like this:

And only a distant memory of the way things "used to be":

Nice work, animal farming industry.

Good News Every Morning

Every morning we wake up to hear and/or read about the next bad thing that happened in the world: people killed in protests that turned violent, more bodies found after devastating earthquake and little to no survivors, children swept away unexpectedly by flooding, dictator vows credibly to kill his people, another country unable to support its debt levels and needs immediate assistance, pirates hijack ship and kill hostages.  And the list goes on.  But good and newsworthy things happen every day too, we just don’t usually find out about them.  MSNBC provides the good news.  On its website, entitled Wonderful World, MSNBC reports on the positive news of the day: people winning lotteries, saving lives, finding their long lost possessions and loved ones, making extraordinary contributions to charities.  This list also goes on.  You can subscribe to the RSS feed and cheer yourself up, every morning.   

Happy Presidents' Day

The United States has the best presidents ever.  Barack Obama, the current U.S. president, is the most powerful man in the world today.  He is an accomplished attorney, politician and humanitarian, and there is no doubt he will continue to participate in politics and help solve global issues well after his presidency.  George W. Bush, who surprisingly served two terms as U.S. President, was a bit of a miss on the global and domestic political front, as he has decided to quit politics altogether.  And the real success story of our presidents today has to be Bill Clinton, who is widely believed to be the "President of the World."  Watch the Chris Matthews President of the World special with Bill Clinton tonight at 10 p.m. ET/PT.  

No Cookie Cutter Protests

The Egyptian revolution that led to the resignation of Hosni Mumbarak was successful by many measures:  It took only 18 days of relatively peaceful protests and demonstrations to convince Mumbarak, who had been in power for about thirty years, to step down.  The Egyptian military was instrumental in maintaining order and largely ensuring orderly proceedings during the demonstrations; and still the death toll ended up at around 365, with 5500 more treated for injuries.  Mumbarak has said, and it isn't hard to believe, that he initially thought he had the majority support of the people, and that the beginnings of the protest were led by some minority dissenters.  Once the contrary became apparent--that the majority in fact was out on the streets protesting--Mumbarak quickly requested that his newly appointed vice president announce his resignation, and left the country.    

The success did not go unnoticed, and countries in the Middle East and Africa--including Libya, Kuwait, Yemen, Morocco, Bahrain, Iraq, Southern Sudan, and several others--have taken to the streets to overthrow their governments.  Even China led protests and demonstrations for reform.  While some countries may be successful in overthrowing their governing regime and obtaining reform, the costs will be much higher than they were in Egypt.  

Egypt had a unique combination of factors that led to its successful revolution: a non-corrupt military, a leader who through he was doing what was best for the people, and a united people with the same end goal in mind.  Because no two countries are the same--and most don't have the factors present in Egypt--cookie cutter protests can't be expected to have the same results worldwide.  Repressive leaders are even more determined to fight back after seeing what happened in Egypt.  Protesters may rebel because they are unhappy, but it's unclear that all of them want the same outcome for their nations.  Most importantly, there isn't anyone readily available to take charge and maintain peace in a non-dictator way once a government has been overthrown in most places.  The protests happening now are likely to have devastating death tolls and disruption, with unpredictable consequences for the state of each country involved.  But there is a point when people are left with no other choice, and that time may be now.

The power of Facebook

CNBC aired a TV special right before Obama's State of the Union Address--entitled The Facebook Effect--which was based on the book by David Kirkpatrick.  It detailed the full true story of the way Facebook began and developed, where it is now, and where it could potentially go in the future.  At first I watched the show because of its close parallel to the Social Network movie.  Basically everything in the movie, aside from the Mark Zuckerberg's love drama, is more or less what actually happened.  And when the show started to go into details about where Facebook could be in the future, changing the way the world works forever, I began to get slightly skeptical.  As if a website could really fundamentally change human interaction?

But here I am, posting a blog, which is linked to my Facebook account, which is linked to my 680 Facebook friends.  If you're reading this, there's about a 50% chance you found it through Facebook (I know because Blogger shows me these statistics; and don't worry, it doesn't actually show me who exactly viewed the blog).

More importantly, modern day Facebook helps start revolutions.  On January 25th, the Egyptian people successfully formed the first protest through Facebook in which about 30,000 people ultimately participated (60,000 people signed up on Facebook).  The government retaliated, and shut down Twitter use and many cell phone towers.  And still, this was the largest protest in the past 30 years and likely will not be the last of its kind.

Meanwhile, Obama's Facebook page is one of the most "liked." The White House has its own page too, and for the first time ever there's a person who's job it is to monitor that page, post updates, and respond to regular people's comments. So it's most appropriate that Obama's speech, and his call for more investment in technology and higher education in it, would follow the amazing Facebook story.

When Mark Zuckerberg made Facebook, as he said many times, he didn't know what it was, or what it could be.  It's pretty clear now that nobody really could have predicted all of this.  So maybe Facebook really does have the power to change lives, if we decide that's what we want to do with it.  And that is the real power of Facebook.

African Cats arrive on Earth Day

Earth Day, April 22nd of every year, is intended to remind everyone of the importance of caring about the environment, and celebrating everything it has given us.  In modern days, it's usually celebrated with a bunch of hippies getting together to listen to music, dance and party.  

Davis, California throws a weekend-long Whole Earth Day festival in May, which brings people together and commits to having zero-waste and alcohol-free entertainment.  The festival is great because it manages to entertain with just about no externalities to the Earth.  

Disney will participate in Earth Day this year too, by releasing its film entitled "African Cats."  African Cats is about...big cats in Africa: lions and cheetahs.  The movie airs in theaters beginning April 22nd, and Disney will contribute $0.20 of every ticket sold during the first week to save the Savannah in Kenya, where the movie was filmed.  Disney guarantees a donation of at least $100,000 to the program.  With great cinematography and lots of human interest, the movie shows lion and cheetah families trying to make it in the wild lands of Africa--and is guaranteed to be awesome.

See the big wild cats April 22-28th, play with the hippies in Davis May 6-8th, and the Earth will be a happier place.  I'm looking forward to it already! 

Elderly Wisdom Circle

As each year of life passes us by, most people progressively become more refined, better judges of character and situations, and generally better people.  Things they learn from past events are irreplaceable, and make them much wiser than before.  But who wants to wait for life to go by to learn to make good decisions?  What "young" people like us need is some advice from the generations who have gone through our stages of life, so that we can make less misguided choices due to our inexperience.

Now, there's a website for that.  Elderly Wisdom Circle offers free and confidential advice from the elderly generation, ages 60 to 105--the people who have seen it all.  The website was founded in Walnut Creek, California in 2001 and connects people who need advice the most to those who have the best advice.  Users, who are usually between ages 15 and 35, submit questions, and elderly advice-givers respond via email.  The forum acknowledges the value of knowledge the older generation has, and creates a modern and efficient way to share it by connecting people online.  

Because many people don't have their own grandparents whom they can ask personal questions--and not everybody wants to--elderwisdomcircle.org/ bridges the generational barriers.  It can help all of us benefit from the wisdom of others' life experiences, and become better people, sooner.