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http://arzone.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-meat-eaters-would-the

Is there be any intelligent life there?
Link

There are some fierce and powerful forms of stupid at work there...

>>There are some fierce and powerful forms of stupid at work there...

I know I should have stayed in academia. Get paid to ramble on about stuff like this, as opposed to actually producing results.

There was one (and pretty much only one) sentence that was pretty good, though:

"Our ignorance of the potential ramifications of our interventions in the natural world remains profound."

That's a pretty accurate statement.

From those that for the most part call themselves good God fearing Christians...is that unending need to modify and change the Laws of Nature [in so many ways]...that natural balance already in existence, put in place by some higher power, long before Man's appearance onto the scene.
jsc
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"As hard as I've tried, just can't NOT do this"
John Crickmer

That idiot has been talking about the "carnivore" issue for some time now. No one outside of the vegan group takes him seriously.

I think he has a small......um....appendix.

Did I miss something or am I just naive?
I guess my question is why would Rutgers or any university allow someone like this to be on their staff and publish such nonscientific nonsense that would never get through peer review ? Don't they consider him an embarrassment to their institution?
After reading his article, I would not consider applying for admission to Rutgers.

Next up the pitiful scream of broccoli...
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Rhac 'n Roll Reptiles deadrats.net

Here's a fascinating website that reveals:

"Our viewing of plants

is changing dramatically away from passive entities being merely subject to environmental forces and organisms that are designed solely for accumulation of photosynthate. In contrast, plants emerge as dynamic and highly sensitive organisms that actively and competitively forage for limited resources, both above and below ground, organisms that accurately compute their circumstances, use sophisticated cost benefit analysis, and that take defined actions to mitigate and control diverse environmental insults. Moreover, plants are also capable of a refined recognition of self and non-self and are territorial in behavior. This new view sees plants as information processing organisms with complex communication throughout the individual plant. Plants are as sophisticated in behavior as animals but their potential has been masked because it operates on time scales many orders of magnitude less than that operating in animals."

Source: www.dowebsites.net/linv/linv_about.php

This is so true. Super slow motion time lapse photography shows this.

As a Bamboo grower, I can tell you Bamboo has a strategy and is a very skilled survivor.

Bamboo = World Class Grass...King Weed...very interesting! I've long called it the plant with a brain.

jsc
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"As hard as I've tried, just can't NOT do this"
John Crickmer

The worst is the silence that falls when a lettuce is decapitated.

...how he briefly mentions that herbivores without predators MIGHT die slowly from starvation...and then totally forgets about that very real fate for the remainder of the article. It is especially relevant considering that is EXACTLY what happens to deer on the fringes of many northern cities every time there is a severe winter. Predators have been removed, so deer often starve when they outproduce their food supply.

I don't remember him mentioning any beneficial effects of natural selection from prey removing the weak or slow members of the herd. After many generations without predator pressure, I would expect a prey species to become generally weaker in many ways. If they were suddenly subjected to some natural disaster, more individuals might succumb than previously, possibly endangering the species if they had changed sufficiently, and the disaster was widespread.

I would imagine that humans already show some of this change, since we are able to protect and medically treat our weaker members who would have never survived to procreate in previous generations. (I am not saying this is a bad thing for humans. We have a lot more ability to protect our weaker members than deer and other herbivores do. But there could be some long term consequences to the gene pool - just a choice we choose to make).

Right on! The evolution of Homo sapiens to marsupialdom. Third trimester in an incubator...when defective infants survive to proliferate the defect. Going to extreme medical means to save every child, regardless of quality of life is a very very inefficient strategy. And in the end, who pays? You pay. That Nanny State safety net is getting pretty big! Does anyone really wonder why Health Care is so expensive?

And what about all those deer in the road and in the garden...spreading Lyme Disease. More human death, injury, and property damage than any other North American Mammal...Thanks to Human environmental modification and selective extermination of wildlife...A case of native wildlife becoming harmful and invasive.

When Man plays God...

jsc
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"As hard as I've tried, just can't NOT do this"
John Crickmer

This is a great example of how animal rights people just don't really think things through. All animals, nay, all life, kills to survive but animal rights people can't seem to see past direct forms of killing such as predation and butchering. But anytime a vegetarian animal eats a plant, it is eating food that could have been used to support(either as food or as shelter/habitat) another animal, be it another of it's own kind or another individual of an entirely different species. Since no animal other than perhaps humans has the ability to exercise foresight and restrict reproduction the end result is always one of three things, 1) They get thinned by predation, 2) They get thinned by starvation and/or disease, or 3) They expand at the expense of another species.

Here's a few related but somewhat random thoughts. What about carnivorous fish and carnivorous insects, how would they engage a planned extiction for those species?

What about the quality of life of a carnivorous species if they were to use sterilization? If animals can suffer(and I believe they can) wouldn't they experience some sort of stress and/or suffering from experienceing stillbirths? Reproduction, including the raising of young, is a hardwired instinct. For example, a pack animal like wolves, if the pack, which functions as a unit, was not experiencing recruitment and excercising all the behaviors that go along with recruitment(ie teaching young to hunt, sparring for dominance with younger males) I think it's certain that individual animals within the pack would experience great stress. If you sterilize them you take away a huge set of behaviors and not being able to exercise those behaviors is likely going to severely reduce their quality of life.

This all just goes to show that the animal rights people are driven mostly by emotion, they don't really have anything beyond a supeficial understanding of animals.

Vegetarianism and veganism also kills alot of animals. Just growing vegetables takes habitat away from animals, both carnivors and herbivors. Even the simple acts of planting and harvesting has the potential to kill untold numbers of insects, worms and small creatures like lizards, frogs, rodents and ground nesting birds. Cattle raised on grassland, while not a very space-efficient source of protien, does allow a whole host of species to survive alongside them that cannot survive in habitats that are more severely altered for the purpose of raising vegetables.
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www.hcu-tx.org/

More of this premiss from the animal rights website "The Abolionist Project":

Blueprint for a Cruelty-Free World -- Reprogramming Predators

........and pass me the plate of bacon

Does the author not realize most aquatic life is made up of predators? Even the whales feed on small animals. Technically coral is an animal, so fish that feed on coral are predators as well.
Without scavengers (which many predators double as because of opportunistic feeding) the water will be too toxic for life, let alone consumption.

the author is obviously eating way too many mushrooms.

And so is Coral a predator...of plankton.
jsc
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"As hard as I've tried, just can't NOT do this"
John Crickmer