Animal rights group: Replace Punxsutawney Phil with robot
PUNXSUTAWNEY, Pa. — An animal rights group wants organizers of Pennsylvania’s Groundhog Day festival to replace Punxsutawney Phil with a robotic stand-in.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals says it’s unfair to keep the animal in captivity and subject him to the huge crowds and bright lights that accompany tens of thousands of revelers each Feb. 2 in Punxsutawney, a tiny borough about 65 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. PETA is suggesting the use of an animatronic model.
But William Deeley, president of the Inner Circle of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, says the animal is “being treated better than the average child in Pennsylvania.” The groundhog is kept in a climate-controlled environment and is inspected annually by the state Department of Agriculture.
Mr. Deeley says PETA isn’t interested in Phil from Feb. 2 on, and is looking for publicity.
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10027/1031375-100.stm?cmpid=MOSTEMAILEDBOX#ixzz0dy2kX0rW
Here’s the issue from PETA on their blog, plus the letter they sent to the Groundhog’s handlers here
Excerpt:
“The popularity of using technologically advanced electromechanical devices such as animatronic animals instead of live animals is rising. Performances such as “Walking With Dinosaurs, the Live Experience”—a theatrical show in which animatronic dinosaurs roar, stomp, and chase each other around an arena—have been taking audiences by storm. Other popular exhibitions have featured robotic penguins and dolphins who swim and communicate just like real animals do, and we think that an animatronic groundhog would similarly mesmerize a crowd full of curious spectators in Punxsutawney.”
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Well, I can see this coming. Punxsutawney has told PETA to bugger off, and now PETA will show up next Tuesday and make some sort of idiotic protest to get news media attention.
In other news, I hear Phil Jones may soon be available. If he saw his shadow it would be six more months of avoiding FOI requests.
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I’m not waving it away, I’m telling you it’s off topic, as the mods should have done. It’s not a wider scale, it’s a completely different scale.
To me plants and animals were made to be eaten. That is how energy and resources are transfered from one generation to the next. I think using as many parts of the animal, like the fur is respectful of this. The fur that was used to keep the animal warm, continues on in its usefulness keeping another creature warm. The alternative is to let it rot into the earth, it is far more useful as a coat then more dirt.
All of nature is a constant transfer of resources. Mankind is different from all the animals by our intellect and soul. As Mark Twain would say, “Mankind is the only animal that blushes or has need to.” It has been taught for millenia, that man was made in the image and likeness of God, so the body is honored by burial because of it. We tend to bury pets because of their relationship with us. Everything else is food, what isn’t buried becomes part of the food chain.
Wow, didn’t know I had turmoil and stress. It would be nice if you could actually comprehend what I wrote.
involuntary servitude… having to use a paper shredder on my mountain of junk mail.
When does hunting season on animal rights activists open?
Reading Anton’s comments, I can only say this:
Man is far less brutal in his treatment of animals than nature is.
http://tinyurl.com/yzj7vqs
Not to say that pointless brutality is defensible, but when it comes to matters of eating, most people lack the desire to be vegetarian, but also have most likely not had to kill their own food. I can describe inter-species interaction in the biosphere in four words: Life feeds on life.
When the brutality of the natural order is taken into consideration, the plight of the groundhog is hardly a noteworthy concern. Same goes for most other issues PETA raises. I really find it a testament to the success of man that we even have the time to worry about the morality of the way we kill our food.
No coppers on his case.
katlab said (20:25:44) :
“Mankind is different from all the animals by our intellect and soul. As Mark Twain would say, ‘Mankind is the only animal that blushes or has need to.’ It has been taught for millenia [sic], that man was made in the image and likeness of God, so the body is honored by burial because of it. We tend to bury pets because of their relationship with us.”
Thank you for proving my point. You cannot defend your position without invoking your religious beliefs, which you cannot back up with evidence, and which, in the case of supposedly exclusively human immortal souls and divine image replication, I regard as obnoxious and incredibly self-serving. It has been taught for millennia? Who cares? And taught by whom? The world’s largest and oldest religion, Hinduism, doesn’t teach anything of the kind. Neither does its offshoot Buddhism, one of the most benevolent religions.
Humans tend to bury dead humans because of their relationship to them as well. Do you make a point of burying dead strangers in other countries? Do you know how many dead people without families end up on medical school slabs?
To other posters above responding to my earlier comments, what does the cruelty of Nature have to do with justifying the cruelty of humans, especially of those who insist they are better and more intelligent than everything else in the Universe?
_Jim said to me (19:50:01) :
“Are you hiding ‘proof’ to the contrary (because, in a situation like this the burden of proof is on you since you assert the proposition) ?”
The burden of proof is not on me. If you claim you are superior to all other life-forms in the Universe, it’s up to you to prove it. So where’s your Superman cape?
Those who say humans have immortal souls but animals do not should have to validate both parts of that statement. Quoting the bible does not constitute proof of anything, other than the superstitiousness and dreariness of the person doing the quoting. When it comes to scary stories, falsified texts, and consensus thinking, bible-thumpers have few rivals. But, since they see themselves as God’s Mini-Me’s, this is only to be expected.
Anton
As you are clearly intolerant of religion, lets keep religion out of it and look at husbandry of animals by H. sapiens from a purely evolutionary perspective.
Dogs evolved social interaction and a kind of symbiosis with humans – evolving from wolves. Being deeply social animals with complex social rules, they hung around human habitations initially maybe for food scraps but eventually some of them made a switch exchanging interaction with other wolves with interaction with humans, becoming companion animals, showing the same kind of subservience to the human (with the same canine body-language) as wolves do to the pack leader or any wolf above them socially.
Rodents are also deeply social animals and surprisingly intelligent, as anyone who has kept them will know. They have a psycological need for social interaction. And they like canines are also able to substitute interaction and handling by humans with interaction with other rodents. (They still interact with eachother but the human beomes essentialy a big family member.)
This is why in pharmaceutical work with animals it is god practice to regularly handle caged rodents – it is given the term “gentling”. Once so accustomed to handling, they respond positively to it. Once this stage is reached, it would represent abuse of the animal to withdraw such handling – loss of social contact is always a negative for a social animal.
(Lab animals are treated infinitely better than many wretched household pets.)
Puxatawney Phil is also a rodent (Marmota monax, of the family Sciuridae). So once Phil is accustomed to his yearly groundhog day ritual including handling, it would cause him something equivalent to confusion and loneliness to withdraw this handling from him. In fact it would be abusive toward him to do so.
In terms of evolution and cladistics and historic branching rodents are closer to us than the large group including dogs, cats, deer, whales, bats etc (Laurasiatheres). Only primates are closer to us than rodents. (Note their pentadactyl limbs and opposing thumbs.)
From the evolutionary perspective, animals that have become pets, farm animals and laboratory research models have all achieved a highly successful evolutionary radiation into a large and inviting ecological niche. They have got us humans pandering to all their biological needs from “cradle to grave” (so to speak). In exchange they provide humans with companionship, food, clothing, medical knowledge and other benefits.
No such thing as a free lunch Anton.
From the perspective of these animals being husbanded by humans, it is a huge success. Their numbers and more importantly their genes (with occasional modification) are becoming dominant and successful. Evolution and natural selection do not care about suffering. (You need some sort of religion for that.) They care only about survival, numbers and gene propagation.
Your own affected concern for animal welfare also has an evolutionary – natural selection origin – you no doubt feel that makes you a chick-magnet.
Therefore, to be honest and consistent you would have to oppose not only use of animals for research, but keeping of animals as pets, farm animals and any of the many naturally evolved human interspecies symbioses. You would have to carry out something analogous to a genocide to eliminate all these practices and life-styles. A mouse in a lab cage is an animal occupying an ecological niche in the same way and any other animal in “nature”.
By the way, there is a “chick-magnet” theory of human evolution by sexual selection, which explains our main distinguishing features – bizzare hairlessness and grotesquely bulbous head and thus intelligence. Just to wind you up since you love religion so much – chapter 1 of Genesis is an accurate biological account of human evolution. The increase in cerebral size attained for us the knowledge of good and evil, and for partaking of this forbidden fruit God punished us with difficulty in childbirth. (Hyenas have the same problem but for a different reason.)
corrections:
“in pharmaceutical work with animals it is good practice” – not “god practice” (Freudian slip?)
Last paragraph, Genesis chapters 2-3 (not 1) – the Adam and Eve bit.
phlogiston said (15:35:56) :
“Anton
“As you are clearly intolerant of religion, lets keep religion out of it and look at husbandry of animals by H. sapiens from a purely evolutionary perspective . . .”
I love animals and treat them as well as I treat humans, and we all get along great. Since I’m a fag, I have no interest in human chicks, sorry. And I am not intolerant of religion. I am intolerant of religious people using religious arguments to justify their stupid exclusionary attitude toward animals or human fetuses or anyone else. And I am tired of some of these same people trying to hijack the AGW skepticism platform and turn it into an ultra right-wing Christian platform.
I don’t give a flip about evolution. I believe all life-forms are here for a reason (maybe they all chose to be here), and that cruelty toward any of them is repulsive. I have an exterminator who treats my yard with fipronil to safely get rid of fleas. I feel bad for the fleas, but I have no alternative. I don’t kill them gleefully. That is the difference. If you respect life, you don’t harm or destroy it indifferently, but with great regret, and you don’t harm or destroy it needlessly. Being embarrassed or inconvenienced by a pregnancy is not an excuse. Being foreclosed on and forced to move is no reason to leave animals behind.
I practice what I preach every day, no matter how difficult, and I do not apologize to any religious loon who thinks he or she is a superior being.
There are people on this site, regular posters, who are not logical, impartial, or rational, but who are partisan, lopsided, and fanatical. They come from other sites to preach their gospels. I know. I am a former moderator of American Thinker, and an editor for a popular AGW skeptics’ site.
The anti-AGW argument cannot been tainted by partisan politics or religious beliefs, or it will crash. As I said earlier, everything these (religious fanatics) touch they destroy. The enemies of your enemies may not be your friends by any stretch, and AGW skeptics with brains should be very careful about the company they keep. As I said in an earlier post, these people destroyed the pro-life movement, and will destroy the anti-AGW movement if allowed to. They only reason they are here is because they perceive the skeptical position to be the conservative Christian position. If the pro-AGW side were populated by evangelical Christians, they would be on that side.
This thread is old and worn out. I started out saying that I had to agree with–pardon the expression–PETA on the subject at hand, and instantly the religious crazies showed up, claiming to be superior beings and citing religious orthodoxy as their authority. Everything I said about them has proved true. If I appear to be intolerant of religion, I apologize, but I AM intolerant of THEIR religion. I’ve spent my life rescuing animals from these people and seen firsthand, over and over, the horror their beliefs inflict on the most innocent and helpless beings. These people are beyond reason, beyond logic, and, to my mind, beyond contempt.
What on earth does this have to do with anything?
PETA is crazy and nobody likes them. Not even other AR activists. Big deal.
Anton (20:13:54)
No offense meant, apologies if I caused any. We all find on this blog people who we agree with concerning AGW skepticism but with baggage we dislike. Thats what blogging is all about. Seem to have touched a raw nerve concerning religion. Such were your comments that I looked through the thread expecting to find some extreme Evangelical statements, maybe bible quotations, even a patronising call to repentance. Maybe I missed something but all I could find were statements based generally on a Judeo-Christian worldview, people having souls, being distinct from animals, having God-given stewardship etc. Perhaps you “protest too much”?
The animal rights thing annoys me since I had to walk away from a successful business and find work overseas due to anti-vivisection politics.
For what its worth I have three mice at home in a cage that I “rescued” following imaging experiments – otherwise they would have been “sacrificed” (dreadful technical jargon with religious overtones). A black 6, a BALBc and a Swiss Webster. Our three girls enjoy looking after them, I think their quality of life is better than it was. They will achieve a rare feat for lab animals – to die of old age.
Reply: Let’s not drift into a religious discussion. I have not read any previous comments in this thread but if it already started, it stops now. ~ charles the moderator
Oh… [self snip] I have to got to bed, but this thread may require a large amount of pruning tomorrow.