Happy new rights-holder in the Helvetic Republic

Wesley J. Smith, in the Weekly Standard, reports on Europe’s latest ethical breakthrough which extends liberal egalitarianism not merely beyond our own species, but beyond our own Kingdom.

You just knew it was coming: At the request of the Swiss government, an ethics panel has weighed in on the “dignity” of plants and opined that the arbitrary killing of flora is morally wrong. This is no hoax. The concept of what could be called “plant rights” is being seriously debated.

A few years ago the Swiss added to their national constitution a provision requiring “account to be taken of the dignity of creation when handling animals, plants and other organisms.” No one knew exactly what it meant, so they asked the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology to figure it out. The resulting report, “The Dignity of Living Beings with Regard to Plants,” is enough to short circuit the brain.

A “clear majority” of the panel adopted what it called a “biocentric” moral view, meaning that “living organisms should be considered morally for their own sake because they are alive.” Thus, the panel determined that we cannot claim “absolute ownership” over plants and, moreover, that “individual plants have an inherent worth.” This means that “we may not use them just as we please, even if the plant community is not in danger, or if our actions do not endanger the species, or if we are not acting arbitrarily.”

The committee offered this illustration: A farmer mows his field (apparently an acceptable action, perhaps because the hay is intended to feed the farmer’s herd–the report doesn’t say). But then, while walking home, he casually “decapitates” some wildflowers with his scythe. The panel decries this act as immoral, though its members can’t agree why. The report states, opaquely:

At this point it remains unclear whether this action is condemned because it expresses a particular moral stance of the farmer toward other organisms or because something bad is being done to the flowers themselves.

What is clear, however, is that Switzerland’s enshrining of “plant dignity” is a symptom of a cultural disease that has infected Western civilization, causing us to lose the ability to think critically and distinguish serious from frivolous ethical concerns. It also reflects the triumph of a radical anthropomorphism that views elements of the natural world as morally equivalent to people.

Why is this happening? Our accelerating rejection of the Judeo-Christian world view, which upholds the unique dignity and moral worth of human beings, is driving us crazy. Once we knocked our species off its pedestal, it was only logical that we would come to see fauna and flora as entitled to rights.

Complete article.

“Carrot Juice is Murder” 4:29 video

From Glenn Reynolds via Bird Dog.

Noemie Emery, in the Weekly Standard, relishes the ironies of this year’s democrat party nomination battle.

‘Strange new respect’ is the term coined by Tom Bethell, an unhappy conservative, to describe the press adulation given those who drift leftward, those who grow “mature,” “wise,” and “thoughtful” as they cause apoplexy in right-wingers, and leave their old allies behind. But no new respect has been quite so peculiar as that given by some on the right to Hillary Clinton–since 1992 their ultimate nightmare–whose possible triumph in this year’s election has been the source of their most intense fear. Lately, however, a strange thing has happened: A tactical hope to see her campaign flourish–to keep the brawl going and knock dents in Obama–has changed to, at least in some cases, a grudging respect for the lady herself. …

..she began to rouse outrage in parts of what once was her base. It is a truism that liberals think people are formed by exterior forces around them and are helpless before them, while conservatives think individuals make their own destiny. Liberals love victims and want them to stay helpless, so they can help them, with government programs; while conservatives love those who refuse to be victims, and get up off the canvas and fight. Hillary may still be a nanny-state type in some of her policies, but in her own life she seems more and more of a Social Darwinian, refusing to lose, and insisting on shaping her destiny. If the fittest survive, she intends to be one of them. This takes her part of the way towards a private conversion. She is acting like one of our own.

If this weren’t enough to make right-wing hearts flutter, Hillary has another brand-new advantage: She is hated on all the right fronts. The snots and the snark-mongers now all despise her, along with the trendies, the glitzies; the food, drama, and lifestyle critics, the beautiful people (and those who would join them), the Style sections of all the big papers; the slick magazines; the above-it-all pundits, who have looked down for years on the Republicans and on the poor fools who elect them, and now sneer even harder at her. The New York Times is having hysterics about her. At the New Republic, Jonathan Chait (who inspired the word “Chaitred” for his pioneer work on Bush hatred) has transferred his loathing of the 43rd president intact and still shining to her. “She should now go gentle into the political night,” he advised in January. “Go Already!” he repeated in March, when she had failed to act on his suggestion. “No Really, You Should Go,” he said in April after she won Pennsylvania, which made her even less likely to take his advice. “Now that loathing seems a lot less irrational,” he wrote of the right wing’s prior distaste for both the Clintons. “We just really wish they’d go away.”

And what caused this display of intense irritation? She’s running a right-wing campaign. She’s running the classic Republican race against her opponent, running on toughness and use-of-force issues, the campaign that the elder George Bush ran against Michael Dukakis, that the younger George Bush waged in 2000 and then again against John Kerry, and that Ronald Reagan–“The Bear in the Forest”–ran against Jimmy Carter and Walter F. Mondale. And she’s doing it with much the same symbols.

“Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11,” the New York Times has been whining. “A Clinton television ad, torn right from Karl Rove’s playbook, evoked the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, the cold war, and 9/11 attacks, complete with video of Osama bin Laden . . . declaring in an interview with ABC News that if Iran attacked Israel while she were president,” she would wipe the aggressor off the face of the earth. “Clinton is saying almost exactly the same things about Obama that McCain is,” Chait lamented: “He’s inexperienced, lacking in substance,” unprepared to stand up to the world. She has said her opponent is ill-prepared to answer the phone, should it ring in the White House at three in the morning. Her ads are like the ones McCain would be running in her place, and they’ll doubtless show up in McCain’s ads should Obama defeat her. She has said that while she and McCain are both prepared to be president, Obama is not. They act, he makes speeches. They take heat, while he tends to wilt or to faint in the kitchen. He may even throw like a girl.

And better–or worse–she is becoming a social conservative, a feminist form of George Bush. Against an opponent who shops for arugula, hangs out with ex-Weathermen, and says rural residents cling to guns and to God in unenlightened despair at their circumstances, she has rushed to the defense of religion and firearms, while knocking back shots of Crown Royal and beer. Her harsh, football-playing Republican father (the villain of the piece, against whom she rebelled in earlier takes on her story) has become a role model, a working class hero, whose name she evokes with great reverence. Any day now, she’ll start talking Texan, and cutting the brush out in Chappaqua or at her posh mansion on Embassy Row.

In the right-wing conspiracy, this adaptation has not gone unobserved. “Hillary has shown a Nixonian resilience and she’s morphing into Scoop Jackson,” runs one post on National Review’s blog, The Corner:

She’s entering the culture war as a general. All of this has made her a far more formidable general election candidate. She’s fighting the left and she’s capturing the center. She’s denounced MoveOn.org. She’s become the Lieberman of the Democratic Party. The left hates her and treats her like Lieberman. . . . Obama is distancing himself from Wright and Hillary is getting in touch with O’Reilly. The culture war has come to the Democratic Party.

She might run to the right of McCain, if she makes it to the general election, and get the votes of rebellious conservatives. Or she, Lieberman, and McCain could form a pro-war coalition, with all of them running to pick up the phone when it rings in the small hours. The New York Times and the rest of the left would go crazy. Respect can’t get stranger than that.

And she’s right.

From a conservative perspective, it is definitely possible to argue that Hillary winning would be the best thing.

The responsibility for a new spate of liberal programs and entitlements (and their untoward consequences) would belong to the democrats, as would adult responsibility for American foreign policy. If we need to bomb Iran, the radical left and the media will be tearing away at their own Party.

Hillary additionally could very possibly be capable of assembling a more competent and responsible cabinet team than John McCain. Bill’s appointment of Richard Rubin as Treasury Secretary, and continuation of Greenspan’s tenure at the Federal Reserve, demonstrated a pragmatic commitment to a good economy.

If McCain wins, liberal Rockefeller-style Republicanism will be back in business, and any real conservative presidential candidate will face the kind of entrenched internal Party opposition that Barry Goldwater did. On the whole, the prospect of trying a come-back with a better Republican candidate four years down the road has some real advantages.

Another satisfied customer of Shearman & Sterling LLP

International Herald-Tribune:

Al-Arabiya television reports that a former Guantanamo detainee carried out a recent suicide bombing in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

A cousin says Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi, a Kuwaiti released from Guantanamo in 2005, was reported missing two weeks ago and his family learned of his death Thursday through a friend in Iraq.

The cousin, Salem al-Ajmi, told Al-Arabiya on Thursday that the former detainee was behind the latest attack in Mosul, although he did not provide more details.

Three suicide car bombers targeted Iraqi security forces in Mosul on April 26, killing at least seven people.

Mosul is believed to be the last urban stronghold of al-Qaida in Iraq.

His Wikipedia entry lists the US Military’s Administrative Review Board’s Summary of Evidence

A Summary of Evidence memo was prepared for Abdallah Salih Ali Al Ajmi’s Combatant Status Review Tribunal, on (redacted) . The memo listed the following allegations against him:

The detainee retreated to the Tora Bora region of AF and was later captured as he attempted to escape to Pakistan.

On September 2, 2003 (just under two years after 9/11), four of Shearman & Sterling‘s finest Thomas Wilner, Neil H. Koslowe, Kristine A. Huskey, and Heather Lamberg Kafele filed a Petition for writ of Certiorari on behalf of Al Ajmi and eleven others.

Mr. Wilner wrote:

All these prisoners have asked for is a fair hearing, one in which they have the chance to learn the charges against them and to rebut the accusations before a neutral decision maker.”

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Subsequently, the prisoner denied everything:

Al Ajmi denied participating in Jihad.

Al Ajmi stated he went to Pakistan to learn and memorize the Koran — he never traveled to Afghanistan.

Al Ajmi denied any contact with the Taliban. He acknowledged that he had previously confessed to the allegations he was being asked to comment on — but those were false confessions:

“These statements were all said under pressure and threats. I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t bare [sic] the threats and suffering so I started saying things. When every detainee is captured they tell him that he is either Taliban or Al-Qaida and that is it. I couldn’t bare [sic] the suffering and threatening and the pressure so I had to say I was from Taliban [sic] .”

Al Ajmi denied participating in military operations against the coalition.

Al Ajmi denied being placed in a defensive position by the Taliban:

“I am not an enemy combatant. I said this only because I was under pressure and threats and suffering.”

In response to the allegation that he admitted spending eight months in the front line at the Aiubi Center in Afghanistan, Al Ajmi responded:

“I never entered Afghanistan. I never fought with anyone. My intentions were to stay four months only but under the circumstances I had to stay for eight months. I never fought. My intentions were never to go to Afghanistan my intentions were to go to Pakistan.”

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Appearing again before an Administrative Review Board, he responded to board member questions:

Al Ajmi My role was [sic] in this Tabligh [sic] to call people to pray, to do good. To let people know that there is an end to this world so they can pray and do well.

Board Member Is it a religious organization?

Al Ajmi Yes it is.

Board Member Al Ajmi I believe that your dedication to your religion is genuine, what direction or path will that dedication take should you be released?

Al Ajmi For peace.

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Al Ajmi was repatriated to Kuwait November 3, 2005, where he was freed on bail, while he awaited trial. His trial began in March 2006, and he and five others were acquitted on July 22, 2006.

On April 26, in Mosul, seven members of the Iraqi security forces were killed by suicide car bombing, thus proving the excellence of the legal services provided by leading American law firms like Shearman & Sterling.

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Hat tip to Major DRH.

As the Journalism industry opens a Washington museum dedicated to its own glory, Andrew Ferguson notes the symbolic role played by Walter Cronkite, whose misreporting of the 1968 Tet Offensive did more for the cause of Communism in Southeast Asia than General Giap.

If Walter Cronkite’s mom was going to put together a scrapbook of her son’s career–well, it would be a miracle, because she’d be about 125 years old by now. But if she did, I doubt that it would contain more admiring images of the former CBS newsreader than you’ll find in the Newseum, the new journalism museum that held its boffo grand opening this month in Washington, D.C. Cronkite is everywhere in the Newseum. He hovers over it like a guardian angel, or a patron saint. You can’t turn around without hearing his phlegmy baritone rumbling out from a hidden speaker or see some grainy footage of him announcing President Kennedy’s death or wiping his eyes at the moon landing or definitively pronouncing the Vietnam war a “stalemate.”

And that’s the way it is–at the Newseum, anyway. But why?

I don’t know how the Newseum’s curators would explain Cronkite’s omnipresence (I do know they would use the word “iconic”), but I have an explanation of my own. Cronkite is a kind of synecdoche for American journalism. His career traces the arc of the news business over the last 70 years, from the grubby, slightly disreputable trade of the early 20th century to the highly serious, obsessively self-regarding profession it has become, here in the first decade of the twenty-first. A college drop-out, plucky but unimaginative, Cronkite knocked around a series of newspaper jobs in the 1930s, followed the troops into Normandy, worked for a wire service after the war, and filed workmanlike copy all the while that was notable for nothing in particular. Then came television, and celebrity, which he acquired thanks to the unprecedented reach of mass media rather than through any peculiar merit of his own. From the 1960s onward Cronkite was transformed by some mysterious process into a figure implausibly larger than a newspaper hack, a spiritual force as imposing and weightless as a dirigible. He was an oracle, a teller of truths, the conscience of a nation, “the most trusted man in America.”

American journalism followed the same trajectory into self-importance, borne aloft on the same draft of hot air and vanity. Our terrific country offers lots of ways to make a living, but with the possible exceptions of movie acting and architecture, only modern journalism would have the nerve to celebrate itself with something as gaudy and improbable as the Newseum. The Freedom Forum, a nonprofit foundation seeded with money from the Gannett newspaper chain, conceived and underwrote the museum for $450 million, and a half dozen newspaper and media companies kicked in another $122 million to pay for exhibits and other trimmings. That’s $572 million–a lavish sum by any measure. It’s especially impressive from an industry that is, according to its own incessant complaints, going broke.

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Andrew Sullivan’s brain seems to have turned still more completely into mush, as he quotes approvingly this message from a younger reader on the Left.

Your old farts really do miss the point completely, don’t they? These younger people were convinced that political involvement was useless because the system was so broken. They came of age anywhere from the second Clinton term (Lewinsky) through the disaster of the Bush years. They have no reason to believe that politics can work, or that it is possible to effect any large scale change, so they work locally or just opt out.

This is what Obama has tapped into. The reason all those thousands of young Dems registered for the first time and voted in a primary was because he made them believe honorable politics was possible. And if someone like Obama gets chewed up by the system because the forces arrayed against him are too strong — just look at the sworn enemies who are teaming up to bring him down, united by nothing more than a vested interest in the status quo — then they will conclude that the system is as broken as they thought it was.

The mistake is reading this as an Obama personality cult, in which case “grow up” would be appropriate. But the Obamaniacs I meet are nothing like that…

they don’t sing his praises, they sing their own. They are intoxicated by the idea of a politics where things they thought were not possible become possible, and people talk to each other like adults. They don’t think he’s going to fix things, they think they are.

What the old farts might want to consider is that these young people who have no particular vested interest in the current system might be seeing the rot much more clearly than the fogeys who have been entangled in it for decades. And the mature folk might want to accept that the burden of proof is on them to show why such a viscerally disgusting political game is worth playing.

Opting out of that is not immaturity, it’s intelligence.

Let’s see. These kiddies figured that if they registered to vote and campaigned for a leftist candidate, the Archangel Gabriel would show up and blow his horn, human nature would totally and completely change, the two party system and all opposition to immediate Socialism would vanish, and they would be able to do exactly as they pleased. After all, they deserve nothing less, being finer and better people and more sensitive and intelligent human beings than any other group of people or any generation which has ever lived. And if they don’t get the total and complete political gratification they are entitled to (on the basis of their youth and overall marvelousness) in this their first election, well! that will certainly prove that the American system is fatally broken and irredeemably corrupt, and they should simply opt out.

I certainly agree with the last part, as I don’t think young people so unsophisticated and self-infatuated have much of anything useful to contribute to the American political dialogue anyway.

Sorry, Mr. Gore. Maybe the Antarctic ice pack won’t be melting after all.

NatureNews:

Antarctica’s deep ocean waters are getting colder after years of warming, say researchers who have just returned from a Southern Ocean voyage aboard the German research vessel Polarstern.

And what’s this? Global Warming is stopping… temporarily?

Telegraph:

Global warming will stop until at least 2015 because of natural variations in the climate, scientists have said.

Researchers studying long-term changes in sea temperatures said they now expect a “lull” for up to a decade while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions. …

Noel Keenlyside of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, Kiel, Germany, said: “The IPCC would predict a 0.3°C warming over the next decade. Our prediction is that there will be no warming until 2015 but it will pick up after that.”

He stressed that the results were just the initial findings from a new computer model of how the oceans behave over decades and it would be wholly misleading to infer that global warming, in the sense of the enhanced greenhouse effect from increased carbon emissions, had gone away. …

Writing in Nature, the scientists said: “Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic [manmade] warming.”

The study shows a more pronounced weakening effect than the Met Office’s Hadley Centre, which last year predicted that global warming would slow until 2009 and pick up after that, with half the years after 2009 being warmer than the warmest year on record, 1998.

Commenting on the new study, Richard Wood of the Hadley Centre said the model suggested the weakening of the MOC would have a cooling effect around the North Atlantic.

“Such a cooling could temporarily offset the longer-term warming trend from increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

“That emphasises once again the need to consider climate variability and climate change together when making predictions over timescales of decades.”

But he said the use of just sea surface temperatures might not accurately reflect the state of the MOC, which was several miles deep and dependent on factors besides temperatures, such as salt content, which were included in the Met Office Hadley Centre model.

If the model could accurately forecast other variables besides temperature, such as rainfall, it would be increasingly useful, but climate predictions for a decade ahead would always be to some extent uncertain, he added.

So, bear that in mind, the earth getting cooler does not mean that you are not causing Global Warming. And though scientists can’t predict anything accurately about the future climate, you are not entitled to reject climate modeling’s conclusions.

Residents of the Aegean island of Lesbos are suing a gay organization in Greek court over use of the name “Lesbian.”

AP:

One of the plaintiffs said Wednesday that the name of the association, Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece, “insults the identity” of the people of Lesbos, who are also known as Lesbians.

“My sister can’t say she is a Lesbian,” said Dimitris Lambrou. “Our geographical designation has been usurped by certain ladies who have no connection whatsoever with Lesbos,” he said.

AP reports:

David Blaine set a new world record Wednesday for breath-holding — 17 minutes and 4 seconds — fulfilling what he said was “a lifelong dream.”

The feat was broadcast live during “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and the studio audience cheered as divers pulled the 35-year-old magician from a water-filled sphere 8 feet in diameter. Less than two years ago, Blaine went into convulsions during a similar attempt.

“A lifelong dream,” a relaxed-looking Blaine told Winfrey immediately after setting the record. “I can’t believe that I did that.”

While still underwater, Blaine worried his heart rate might be too high, saying he “actually started to doubt that I was going to make it” as a result. A lower heart rate helps minimize oxygen consumption.

The previous record was 16 minutes and 32 seconds, set Feb. 10 by Switzerland’s Peter Colat, according to Guinness World Records.

Before he entered the sphere, Blaine inhaled pure oxygen through a mask to saturate his blood with oxygen and flush out carbon dioxide. Guinness says up to 30 minutes of so-called “oxygen hyperventilation” is allowed under its guidelines.

Since he’s a professional magician, it seems more than possible that this alleged record may really have been a trick.

Albert Hoffman – 100 Birthday Commemorative Blotter Acid by Wes Black

The Guardian reports the sad news.

Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered the hallucinogenic drug LSD, has died aged 102.

Hofmann, known as the father of LSD, died yesterday at his home in Burg im Leimental, Basle, Switzerland.

His death was confirmed by Doris Stuker, a municipal clerk in the village where Hofmann lived following his retirement in 1971.

The California-based Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (Maps), which republished Hofmann’s book on LSD, said on its website that he had died from a heart attack.

Dieter A Hagenbach, a friend of 40 years, last spoke to Hofmann on Saturday. “He was in good spirits and enjoying the springtime,” said Hagenbach.

Born on January 11 1906, Hofmann discovered LSD – lysergic acid diethylamide, which later became the favoured drug of the 1960s counterculture – when a tiny quantity leaked on to his hand during a laboratory experiment in 1943.

He noted a “remarkable restlessness, combined with slight dizziness” that made him stop his work. “At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant intoxication-like condition, characterised by an extremely stimulated imagination,” Hofmann wrote in his book LSD: My Problem Child.

“In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight too unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colours. After some two hours this condition faded away.”

A few days later, Hofmann intentionally took a dose of LSD and experienced the world’s first “bad trip”.

“On the way home, my condition began to assume threatening forms. Everything in my field of vision wavered and was distorted as if seen in a curved mirror,” he said.

“My surroundings had now transformed themselves in more terrifying ways. A demon had invaded me, had taken possession of my body, mind, and soul. I jumped up and screamed, trying to free myself from him, but then sank down again and lay helpless on the sofa. The substance, with which I had wanted to experiment, had vanquished me.” …

Hofmann and his scientific colleagues hoped LSD would make an important contribution to psychiatric research. The drug exaggerated inner problems and conflicts and it was hoped it might be used to treat mental illnesses such as schizophrenia.

For a time, the laboratory where he worked, Sandoz, sold LSD 25 under the name Delysid, encouraging doctors to try it themselves. It was one of the strongest drugs in medicine, with just one gram enough to drug an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 people for 12 hours.

The US government banned LSD in 1966, following stories of heavy users suffering permanent psychological damage, and other countries followed suit.

The president of Maps, Rick Doblin, said he had spoken to Hofmann on the phone recently “and he was happy and fulfilled. He’d seen the renewal of LSD psychotherapy research with his own eyes.”

“Don’t Eat that Hot Dog!” — 1960’s Anti-LSD Propaganda short

3:37 video

And he only lived to 102!

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Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

The New York Times’ Natalie Angier identifies yet another objectionable form of bias and a symptom of our persistently reactionary and Imperialist mentality.

The other day I glanced out my window and felt a twinge of revulsion delicately seasoned with indignation. Pecking at my bird feeder were two brown-headed cowbirds, one male and one female, and I knew what that meant. Pretty soon the fattened, fertilized female would be slipping her eggs into some other birds’ nest, with the expectation that the naïve hosts would brood, feed and rear her squawking, ravenous young at the neglect and even death of their own.

Hey, you parasites, get your beaks off my seed, I thought angrily. That feeder is for the good birds, the birds that I like — the cardinals, the nuthatches, the black-capped chickadees, the tufted titmice, the woodpeckers, the goldfinches. It’s for the hard-working birds with enough moral fiber to rear their own families and look photogenic besides. It’s not meant for sneaky freeloaders like you. I rapped on the window sharply but the birds didn’t budge, and as I stood there wondering whether I should run out and scare them away, their beaks seemed to thicken, their eyes blacken, and I could swear they were cackling, “Tippi Hedren must go.”

In sum, I was suffering from a severe case of biobigotry: the persistent and often irrational desire to be surrounded only by those species of which one approves, and to exclude any animals, plants and other life forms that one finds offensive.

It was not my first episode of the disorder, and evidently I don’t suffer alone. “Throughout history there have been vilified animals and totemic animals,” said John Fraser, a conservation psychologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society. “There are the animals you don’t like and that you dismiss as small brown vermin, and the animals whose attributes you absolutely want to own,” to be a tiger, a bear, lupine leader of the pack. …

Related to the human impulse to see ourselves in nature is the persistent sense that nature belongs to us, and that we have the right and the means to control it. “In the past, when we talked about exploiting nature, that was seen as a good thing,” Mr. Fraser said. “Now we realize that that attitude is counterproductive to human success.”

Nowhere is our sense of droit du roi over nature more manifest than in our paradoxical attitudes toward farm animals. On the one hand, they’re the beloved figures of our earliest childhood. On the other hand, many of our most pejorative comparisons were born in the barnyard — you lazy pig, you ugly cow, you chicken, what a bunch of sheep.

Conservation groups, which keep track of public attitudes toward animals, acknowledge that they are ever on the lookout for the next Animal Idol — an ecologically important creature that also happens to be large, showy, charismatic and likable. If you have two important birds from the same region of Latin America, said Mr. Fraser, one a hyacinth macaw that looks like flying jewelry and can vocalize like a human, the other a storm petrel that is brown, squawky and cakes the coastline with guano, guess which face ends up on the next fund-raising calendar.

Personally, I have every intention of continuing to discriminate, and will shoot any pigeons I catch picketing.

Strippers and zombies – that just about completely covers all one’s spiritual needs.

1:44 trailer