A recent post on One Green Plant by Leslie Irvine, a scoiologist at the University of Colorado, outlines three options for companion (nonhuman) animals, specifically related to what we feed them. Irvine provides her rationalisations to the ‘difficult position’ in the context of ‘ethical veganism’ (for me there is one form of veganism, and coming up with labels such as ethical is as problematic that for vegetarianism — see the redicularity of the term ‘pescatarian’ for example. To create a demarcation here, anyone who is not an ‘ethical vegan’ is not a vegan: they adopt a plant-based diet). Thr…

I have followed reactions to Ruby Roth’s That’s Why We Don’t Eat Animals, seeking to both gage and reflect on underlying assumptions and rationales. Some of the more recent responses, the rationales on which they are based, piqued my interest. I think I have come up with an interesting basis on which to reflect. From the number of written responses, (mis)representations, and attempts at dismissing Ruby Roth’s, there appears a common rationale. This rationale is based on rationality both in the sense that masculine rationality is the dominant western approach to epistemology and ontology — how…

Today I listened to an interview with the outspoken US commentator David Horrowittz. He is a self described moderate conservative – I am not sure what the moderate refers to. He considers his very vocal and forceful critic of the ‘left’, which encompasses, it seems, everyone espousing a semblance of progressive ideas, to be based on passion. The left is mistaken and he adopts the tactics of the radical left in attacking them. The left is ‘a religion and delusional’… He was a member of the radical left in his youth, later converting to conservatism, apparently in respon…