Attention: "Drunk as a Skunk" No Longer Politically Correct
The animal rights war on the English language continues, reports The Telegraph...
Not only do they want us to stop using terms like pet (demeaning!) and referring to ourselves as "owners" (because that would, well, imply ownership), even our idioms are now under attack!
Prof Linzey and his co-editor Professor Priscilla Cohn, of Penn State University in the US, also hope to see some of the more colourful terms in the English language stamped out.
Phrases such as “sly as a fox, “eat like a pig” or “drunk as a skunk” are all unfair to animals, they claim.
“We shall not be able to think clearly unless we discipline ourselves to use less than partial adjectives in our exploration of animals and our moral relations with them," they say.
You're going to close this with a lecture on thinking clearly? Really?
What About Barking "Fire" in a Crowded Theater?
The attorney for a drunken Ohio man charged with barking at a police dog is saying the city's laws (which prohibit the teasing of police dogs) are a violation of free speech.
Lawyer Jim Hardin says barking may not be seen as intelligent speech but is "still speech."
[...]
The officer's report quoted Stephens as saying ''the dog started it'' and said the man appeared highly intoxicated.
Sounds pretty ridiculous, but don't get too ahead of yourself: according to the Charleston Gazette, he may have a case, as a similar citation was thrown out in 2001, on the same grounds.
Well, it looks like Mr. Stephens has a good shot at beating this thing. And I bet everybody in the city who relies upon a service dog is absolutely thrilled at the notion of him approaching them and expressing his right to free speech. Well, OK, probably not -- but the K9 unit probably is!
But they keep telling me cage-free is so much cleaner and healthier!
I'm sure you've heard the claims about how much cleaner and healthier it is to choose "cage free" eggs. New research in Europe, however, is showing that not to be the case:
They found that aviary and floor housing systems pose a greater risk of bird-to-bird transmission of Salmonella Enteritidis than traditional battery cages and furnished cages. The study also found a higher number of eggs that were internally contaminated by Salmonella in aviary systems, as compared both to cage systems and the floor system.
The study also challenges the "unrealistic approach" to studying disease transmission that was used in the previous studies that found higher levels of Salmonella in conventional housing (results can be kinda skewed if you compare a crummy, old conventional housing system to an alternative housing system full of highly innoculated birds. Gee, who woulda thunk it?)...
So let me get this straight... enriched colony housing* allows hens far more space and the ability to behave naturally -- thus addressing many of the public's welfare concerns -- and is being shown to produce cleaner, safer eggs? No wonder the idea of egg producers switching to such housing systems has HSUS in such a dither!
*A modern type of housing system Oregon and Washington egg producers are looking to switch to. A move that HSUS is trying desperately to block.