241–250 of 311 posts
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No it's the overwhelming ease of killing a gun offers.
Right. I think the point is, it's much better than the alternative. Which is realizing you missed your shot and the deer you were trying to kill humanely (ya know, to show respect and commune with nature) will now take eight hours to die in slow agony with an arrow sticking out of her cause you can't find where she ran off to.
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No it's the overwhelming ease of killing a gun offers.
What of it? If hunting is actually utilitarian (i.e. for food), there's no ethical issue here. How difficult it is only matters if hunting is a sport, but that's exactly the ethically dubious part of it. So even in that sense, using a bow is more "sadistic", since it amounts to causing suffering to a living being for the sake of more challenging entertainment for oneself. (And, of course, a bow would be a lot more pa…
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Not what I was saying. Eating meat is natural, it's been for cosmic ages, and to an extent I have no issue with that. The mass globalized consumption does bother me. I reduce my consumption. I might try vegan but I'll surely miss all the meat based products. Maybe I'll find a middle point by breeding, killing producing it myself so at least I did it on my own, think what you want, there's a form of respect in that. I…
Why not set yourself the challenge of only eating ethically farmed animal products? I think you’d find this ends up leading to a mostly vegan lifestyle unless you’re willing to devote considerable time and money.
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Very unlikely that any animal will swim hundreds or thousands of miles to a free food joint, there’s easier ways to eat. And there’s biologists on record saying that this imprinting does happen with handlers and they try to avoid it in research situations.
> swim hundreds or thousands of miles Some penguins can fly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dfWzp7rYR4
Edit: He seems to be particularly interested in making penguin jokes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k1ccguXiws
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Anti capitalist sentiment is actually pretty common here, both this site and the tech industry are well populated with liberals and leftists alike.
Wait ... I can't be a liberal and a capitalist? I have to be a full on caricature of a capitalist? Can I take a liberal position, say LGBT equality, and be a capitalist?
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I think they posted on March 31st for April 1st? (April fool's day?). Just the fact that it's an advertisement for BBC.
Correct, the BBC has a long tradition of presenting a fake documentary clip on April Fool's day. Not sure if it was the first one, but you can find a very old BBC April 1st clip on the "traditional yearly harvesting of spaghetti", where you see villagers pick fresh and ripe spaghetti from the spaghetti trees, carefully laying them in the baskets they carry... Not sure if this is the best clip: https://www.youtube.com…
"At the time (1957) spaghetti was relatively little-known in the UK, so that many Britons were unaware that spaghetti is made from wheat flour and water; a number of viewers afterwards contacted the BBC for advice on growing their own spaghetti trees."
> It's technically illegal to have a wild animal as a pet in Brazil, as officials want to ensure vulnerable creatures don't get separated from their families and that they can be reintroduced into the wild after injury. Same where I am. I've wondered, though. What constitutes a pet? For example, I give peanuts to the wild squirrels around my house. This is not illegal where I live. It is illegal, however, to keep a w…
I'm going to say something that people probably won't want to hear, but I hope to justify it and convince others of it as well. Don't feed wild animals. The difference between a pet, and a wild animal is that a pet owner takes responsibility for the wellbeing and actions of a pet. Feeding wild animals is detrimental to their wellbeing. They become accustomed to people, and not all people are nice to animals. You won'…
This is emphatic behavior, but do know that in almost all circumstances the result is that the animal rescue centers will euthanized animals that is not endangered, has protected status, or has local biological diversity benefits. Seagulls and feral pigeons in particular are very unlikely to leave the center alive.
This also happens for larger animals like seals pups that end up separated from their mothers. From the mouth of a animal rescue centers here in Sweden, if one is lucky a eagle will see it and nature will take care of it. Only if sufficient numbers of day has passed and the pup is in clear agony will they pick it up to then have it euthanized at the center.
That said, animals should not suffer unnecessary so "rescue" in that context is still a good thing.
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Even gun hunting feels too sadistic to me. If you think it's sadistic to hunt with the stopping power (and typically quicker death) of a rifle, you're not going to like bow hunting much.
No it's the overwhelming ease of killing a gun offers.
Firstly one has to get in the right position to get a good shot. Of course bad hunters could take carefree pot shots, but they would be widely condemned by their peers. The right position means you have to be:
- close enough. Many forms of hunting will take all day to carefully track an animal and if you're lucky at the end of the day take one careful shot
- from the right direction. You wouldn't take a shot from behind the animal
- able to fire safely. You wouldn't fire at an deer on top of a hill as you have to think about where the bullet will go afterwards
Some forms of hunting, like a driven bird shoot can involve just standing and waiting for birds to come in your direction then take careful shots at them. With this type of shooting I can see more resonance with your objection but hitting a moving target is easier said than done and etiquette on these considers a well execute hard shot much better than going for easy ones.
For many other forms of hunting the actual shot is a very small part of the whole activity and whatever weapon is being used makes much less difference.
Then one also has to remember that there are many different types of gun. Take for example using a large caliber rifle and distances over 1km vs hunting with a handgun. Both require huge amounts of skill in handling the weapon on top of the other general hunting skills.
Some countries require a permit to go hunting, which follows a lot of study and then an exam. This material goes into a lot of depth, and actually discharging the weapon is a surprisingly small amount of this material.
Technology-wise a gun is an improvement on exhaustion hunting, or using more primitive projectile weapons, but is far from making the whole process overwhelmingly easy.
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Correct, the BBC has a long tradition of presenting a fake documentary clip on April Fool's day. Not sure if it was the first one, but you can find a very old BBC April 1st clip on the "traditional yearly harvesting of spaghetti", where you see villagers pick fresh and ripe spaghetti from the spaghetti trees, carefully laying them in the baskets they carry... Not sure if this is the best clip: https://www.youtube.com…
And context: "At the time (1957) spaghetti was relatively little-known in the UK, so that many Britons were unaware that spaghetti is made from wheat flour and water; a number of viewers afterwards contacted the BBC for advice on growing their own spaghetti trees."
I doubt many Britons know that now to be fair. I could easily imagine this jape catching people out today.
When I was a child, a school teacher showed me this hoax video of flying penguins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dfWzp7rYR4 . Unfortunately, for a brief period of my childhood, I was under the assumption that penguins could indeed fly. By the time I had uncovered my teacher's subterfuge, I had already made a fool of myself by publicly positing that such penguins existed. Admittedly, my teacher was only playing a p…