f13.net

Jose Tomas, matador, gets gored by a bull and requires nearly 10 litres of blood in transfusions. (http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/0426/breaking56.html)

I've got no issues with blood sports when the terms are equal for each side, but I don't think bullfighting meets that requirement.

Isn't the chap fighting the bull armed only with a towel? Seems pretty fair to me.

I don't mind bull fighting if it is just man with sword and pillowcase vs bull. But they basically beat the shit outta the bull and stab the back of his neck with these hooked rods, thus wearing the bull down before the prissy even starts the "dance."

However, every so often you get shit like this happening and it makes me smile a bit.

I've been to a bullfight.  Bull didn't seem to have a chance.  Struck me more as ritualized slaughter. 

My parents enjoyed bullfighting and were even friendly with a couple of famous matadors.  They knew a lot of celebs of some nefarious fame or another and almost always not of the kind most people wouldn't want around their kids.  Anyway, I hate it.  Hate, hate, hate.  It's sick.  Not just that they go stabby on the bull first, and then mostly toy with it before they kill it, but I hate that some sick person even thought up a thing like bullfighting.  I'm sorry but I think people who can enjoy a "sport" that is centered around watching an animal suffer only to be killed anyway, are also sick.  It's the same as dog fighting to me.  Steeplechase racing is up there, too.

Also, we don't even HAVE 10 litres of blood in our bodies, do we?   :ye_gods:

This.  Bullfighting is a sport about as much as deer hunting with a high powered rifle is. 

It's a tradition, not a sport.  Just like ritualistic human sacrifice, only that went out of vogue. 

This calls for an experiment! Quick, round up a pile of bullfighting enthusiasts and some sharp things!

Not typically.  Average human volume is ~ 5 liters, but it's not uncommon to pump more than that into someone with a puncture wound.  At least until the hole is plugged. 

Perhaps they should swap it out for Minoan bull jumping.

The matadors would agree with this. The bull is going to be killed, as a spectacle. They have no pretence of sport, it's about how artfully and daringly the matador can tire the bull before killing it with a sword. It's simultaneously fascinating art and revolting cruelty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oqku0vDpbHY

Once a bull wins against all those odds and the fucking Matador survives? There really is no god.

Righ, it's only cruelty if you care about bulls.

They're not cute animals. And they'll get turned into a great leather coat, for sure.

Let's not get too self-righteous about this, considering how we still allow veal meat in this country. Those bulls lead a blessed life in comparison to the average American cow.

Don't know about American cows, but around here there are rules how animals for consumptions have to be slaughtered, and that has to be painless and quick.

hmm... Well I guess if you look at the bull's life up until he enters the ring and then gets stabbed in the neck repeatedly till he can barely manage to pick his head up for any length of time at which point he is taunted a few times while bleeding out before the "final" sword strike. If done right, the bull dies pretty quick - but that usually only happens with the best of the matadors. Other times the bull just gets skewered repeatedly. But yeah, blessed life - shit end. I guess your comparison sticks if you hold up the veal industry's practices to the entire life cycle, but that is not the topic at hand.

The topic at hand, I believe, is the humane treatment of animals. Or is it just this one specific instance gets your goat?

Don't get me wrong, I was raised in Spain, and hated the stupid hick tradition of bullfighting as much as any Spaniard who wishes his country would evolve past this.

Isn't the topic at hand ritualistic killing of Animals?

Or we could talk about those perverted people who consider the torture, suffering and killing of animals "fun".

Veal tastes good, so there is no equivalency.

Steak tastes better when penetrated by high carbon steel.

I think the distinction being made is that people feel bad about how veal is treated but Spaniards that attend bullfighting enjoy the cruelty rather than feel bad and so it's clearly worse. Or did I misunderstand?

Anyone, really, not just Spaniards. (http://smileys.on-my-web.com/repository/Tongue/making-fun-020.gif)

Did none of you watch Spartacus? That bull died an honorable death, immortalizing the name Navegante among bulls.

I'd also like to suggest that spectators at a bullfight are not there to enjoy the cruelty. The cruelty is irrefutably there, but that's not what's getting the public off. Its insensitivity coupled with a machismo culture, but its not thirsting after an animal's pain that draws the crowds.

I feel for the bull, but man... why's it ALWAYS the groin?  These guys wear cups right?   :ye_gods:
As much poonanny as these matadors get, it's quite the irony they repeatedly get their nads inserted into via large cutaneous horn.  There's no point to it if you have to give up the twig 'n berries I say.
Then there's the matadors who get the anal-rectal version.   :uhrr:   Ever seen that video? 

Strong like bull??  Nope.

Bulls are assholes.  Especially bulls bred for bullfighting.

They would do to you what the matador, toreadors, and those other -dors do to them, given the chance first and then laugh about it later.

Steers are fine, cows are fine too.  Bulls?  I have no sympathy.

Says it all. The humans are at fault here, so don't blame the bull for the psychosis trained into it.

Not really, because regular bulls are assholes too, and some of them will try to kill you (some of them won't but I wouldn't trust any of them).

But it's almost Roman.

You know, the guys who had such wonderful customs such as "Leave your unwanted child on a trash heap," and "If that other country has gold, invent an excuse to attack them." And who can forget such classics as, "Penis > Vagina," and "No way homo."

The only ethically consistent people in this debate are (a) vegans, or (b) people who will eat anything and don't care about animals fighting each other.

Everything in between is just an amusing exercise in "Oh noes, as I eat my ham/beef/duck triple stack AN ANIMAL THAT SEEMS CUTE IS BEING MISTREATED IN FRONT OF PEOPLE!  Join my crusade, which has no internal contradictions at all!"

Vegans are hypocrites too cause they will kill living things for their food. "Fruitists" are okay though cause fruits are meant to be eaten by animals. Unfortunately you can't survive if you only eat fruit, but hey, at least they are consistent (until they cheat to survive).

Are you counting plants or something on the vegan thing?  Because their code isn't to kill animals, not "living things", since its impossible to take a step or even take a breath without killing "living things".

Okay "living things" is probably a bit broad but why is okay for vegans to not be "cruel" to animals but cruel to plants? Huh? HUH!?

Trust me, I've worked with Vegans before.  I like making fun of them as much as the next person.  But I will say that they abide pretty strictly by the code.  You can't cause pain and suffering to a soy bean, but you can by killing a pig or exploiting a Cow for industrial milking.  They don't wear leather or use soap that in any way involves animals, etc.  While I love the taste of pain and death (mmmm steak), I can at least respect the devotion I see them show (especially if they aren't dicks to other non-vegans, like the majority I've known).  The only real argument amongst vegans is whether using Honey is wrong, or (for the even more crazy ones) if using anything that involves yeast is wrong.

I will say I became a little bit more sympathetic when on one drunken night, a vegan co-worker dragged us to a Vegan place in Oakland, and made me order a "Chicken Sandwich".  And I'll be damned if it wasn't one of the best tasting sandwiches I've EVER had.

You are a lawyer Tri. Aren't there laws in the USA how to slaughter animals for consumption? Because over here we sure have and those rules are written and enforced to make it quick and/or painless.

Killing Bulls ins a Bullfight in neither of these, hence no hypocrisy involved. So your argument is pure bullshit (no pun intended).

I quoted the relevant problem.

I eat meat. I eat whale. I think I might have eaten the cousin of a dolphin once, too. I have no problem with animals getting killed for food, to provide leather for clothes, etc.

But I don't approve of animal torture performed for the entertainment of the masses. Fuck bullfighting. And fox hunting for that matter.

I disagree with the thinking that there's a black and white choice between being a vegan and torturing animals for food and entertainment.

I can only really speak for my posts and what I was meaning to say.   I don't have a problem with eating meat.  I'm not a vegetarian.  I don't much care about the disposition of the bull or what they do with the carcass after.  I've heard they distribute the meat to the poor in some cases.  The only problem I have is with people who enjoy watching anything being tortured - bull, dog - anything.  I don't understand the comment about animals fighting each other.

Heh. You want Spartacus bull? I'll give you Spartacus bull!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljT3hSuLt24 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljT3hSuLt24)

Long live Spartacus bull.

If anything, eating animals for food is MORE immoral than torturing them for entertainment.  Hundreds of millions are slaughtered every year for food.  A tiny fraction of that number die for our entertainment.  There's simply no contest.


I have no problem with people disliking animals fighting if they are honest about it.  If someone here said "I am ok with eating meat but I don't like animal torture, since i can't see the food animals being slaughtered and thus I don't care about them but I can see the fluffy animal slaughtered and its cute so I hate that practice."

Instead, what people do is decry animal torturers as the scum of the earth, and those same people then walk into a supermarket and subsidize the slaughter of BILLIONS of animals.  

Its pure hypocrisy and there is no middle ground.
EDIT:  Should say I don't like animal torture on an emotional, visceral basis, but I don't think my emotional dislike is a good enough of a basis to judge those who do it.

Humans are meat eaters.  It's not hypocrisy.  It is not the death that matters, it is the why and how of it.

Now I can understand arguments that we need more efficient processes, or people should see what it is like to do the slaughtering themselves, but your position only makes sense to me if you're a vegan.

I don't get this argument Triforcer - at all. Killing is not the same thing as torturing and killing. Its like saying a mercy killing is the same thing as reenacting Hostel (which I never saw, but I heard its THE torture movie, insert other film as appropiate).

And we are not even getting into the reasons for killing here, just the methods.

Our species has all the guns, we get to make the rules.

I wanna see a lion fight a polar bear. Fuck your morals. Remember that thing about forty Burmese midgets fighting a tiger or something like that, a couple years back, and it turned out to be fake? Holy shit, I wanna see that for real. Thirty baboons on PCP versus a rhino. Can a baboon learn to use a knife?

Bring it all on.

That feeling is called Psychopathy. Don't worry, its something 4% of the people have. So statstically you in the the company of 132 of your peers here. :awesome_for_real:

This is like saying, "You can't support the death penalty, but object when the manner of execution is whipping the subject to death with razorwire". A humane (or: as pain and distress free as possible) death in an animal for food purposes is not the same as a torturous death of an animal for entertainment.

Check your teeth and your stomach configuration. Chances are you'll find they're usually in the configuration of meat-eaters. What's immoral about doing what nature has set you up to do?

So you are saying Triforcer is not human? Thats harsh!  :awesome_for_real:

I think he is an Omnivore like the rest of us.

Yes, I know what you meant and it is true that without eating meat we wouldn't have a balanced diet, but arguing that what is in our nature is moral is a dangerous argument. In some cases humanity can grow out of its basic roots, as proven by the institution of monogamous marriage.

I wasn't even talking about "in our nature", but "what we're physically designed for". I'm not going to bitch at a cat for eating mice "because it's immoral/cruel", because that's what they're designed to do, any more than I'm going to bitch at some of the awesome african guys who still hunt using the age-old methods of running the quarry down for hours on end before finally killing it with a spear.

Show me someone who's rearing their cows/sheep/chickens in inhumane surroundings, and I'll happily get indignant, but just the thought of some cow being reared and executed (in what I hope is a humane/quick/painless manner) for my edification? Not a chance. I'm designed to eat meat, I'll damn well eat meat. If that causes a problem for any reason, then there are other issues at hand.

Edit: just to stay on topic for this thread, bullfighting never has been a sport I've ever even begun to understand, and never will. There are much better ways to entertain us than that.

I completely agree with you, the point in all of this is how we kill the animals we eat, not that we kill them.

Time to kick this thread into awesome.


More like you're an Auschwitz guard objecting to a few dozen convicts getting whipped to death each year. Jeez, at least the gas chambers are more humane than razorwire whipping, amirite?

 :why_so_serious:

But really, I have a hard time wrapping my head around an ethical system that views the suffering of one X as terrible but the relatively painless death of a million X as inconsequential. What the hell is the value of X in that case? Let the Spanish skewer a few bulls, who gives a crap? Sure I'd make them do it without stabbing the bull in the neck first, but that's just because I like a fair fight.

One argument is that glorying in the pain and suffering of another creature encourages us to find enjoyment in each other's suffering. Now I'm not going to argue that watching a bullfight is like playing a violent videogame that trains killers but it certainly fosters a disdain for animal life.

As for slaughtering millions of animals every year to feed ourselves, there is more meat consumed than is really necessary in the Western world but if the animals being killed have lived pleasant lives and die painlessly I haven't got huge moral qualms about it. If there was an alternative to killing them (vat grown meat of a decent quality) then I think we should stop. However I don't think a pleasant life followed by a painless death, for an animal with no real conscious thought or understanding of the situation beyond immediate discomfort and needs, is a terrible thing. I suppose the distinction I'm drawing is based primarily on the fact that those animals are genuinely having an enjoyable life and don't really realise what's up (more importantly are incapable of realising what's up). I'm sure if there were any vegans on this board they'd make some argument about farming or just euthanising the mentally handicapped at this point, which I think is a different matter simply because humans tend to have a greater awareness of one another or even if not 'noramlly' functioning still possess greater levels of self-consciousness than animals.

Triforcer is making moral absolutist statements and you can't really argue with people who believe that way.  It doesn't work.  You'll just frustrate yourself.  They only makes sense to each other.  As for Windupatheist - I never know what he's on about!

I gathered that he wants to watch midgets fight tigers and teach baboons to use knives. That's how monkey uprisings get started.

I just figure cows either have intrinsic value as beings or not. If they do, you should quit eating them. If they don't, then let the Spanish have their fun. Concern for the comfort of a creature combined with a lack of regard for it's continued existence is... curious to me.

It's much easier for me to just admit that my attitude toward animals is arbitrary and predicated upon how much I do or do not empathize with any particular creature on a case-by-case basis. Killing puppies is bad because I like puppies. Killing chickens in a meat factory is okay because chicken are delicious but not very cute. A guy strangling kittens to death just for fun is sick in the head, but making a lion fight a polar bear and putting it on Youtube is okay because holy shit dude that would be awesome.


Mostly I wanted to troll the thread by sticking up for Triforcer and doing it with a Godwin. Any actual discussion I take part in is mere happenstance.  :oh_i_see:

You can probably troll the thread up quicker by posting stuff like http://www.toxicjunction.com/get.asp?i=V2792 and ask who's in the wrong in that situation. :grin:

It's like throwing a feeder mouse to a snake. Only cooler.

Whether or not WUA actually means this- Bingo.  This, exactly.  

And as to the "its HOW you kill them argument"- well, two main problems with that.  First, again quoting WUA, animals either have some intrinsic value or they don't.  Even if the slaughter of food animals was "painless" , there has to be SOME weight given to the numbers involved.

Second, food animals aren't treated humanely.  Or killed that painlessly.  If any of you had to choose between years dying a slow death in a cage barely bigger than your body and a few minutes of active torture, I think most of us would pick the second any day of the week.  A Spanish bull is treated better his entire life (except the last few minutes) than a food animal dying by inches in a cage.


Look, I don't have a problem with different societies, who ascribe different cultural values to animals, treating those animals differently  We don't eat horse in the USA, but there is no moral or empirical reason that must be so- we just think they are cute.  Ditto with dogs and cats.  So we outlaw eating dogs and cats- no problem here- different strokes for different folks.

What I DO object to is elevating our specific cultural animal biases to the level of moral truths, and demonizing those who don't think "insert fluffy animal here" is as cute as we think they are.  You all who love dogs are not morally "better" than people who eat them.  

I just want honesty from people on this issue.  We mostly don't care about food animals because they aren't pet-type animals, and their killing happens behinds closed doors.  Fine.  Just ADMIT that.  But don't bullshit me that the lines you draw between different animals involve anything else than justifying your personal emotional reactions to different species.


Nowhereman- Your argument is the only one that contains any truth to it.  I think there is something to what you say, but I think you'll have to admit that when people here or anywhere express outrage at animal fighting and torture, 99% of them aren't reasoning it out that way- its again back to the emotional reaction.

Except torturing terrorists for freedom and safety, amirite?

The problem with food production is corporate responsibility and the need for oversight. Go free market!

Sounds to me like you people should tighten your animal protection laws.

Because that modus operandi is banned in Europe for all animals but cows (an exception that is running out by 2013, after farmers protested the original plan to abolish it by 2008). The Austrian law for example explicitely forbids it for calfs and adult cows must be able to go outside into the pasture for 90 days each year. For small farms up to 35 cows it is twice a week.

Edit: Seems I lied, its 2012 for chickens as well.

Yeah, see while I don't have huge moral qualms about killing animals for food I find the idea of treating them like unfeeling hunks of meat to be dealt with in the most economically expedient manner horrible. A culture that feeds its population on veal meat is certainly not doing any better than one which elevates torturing a much smaller number to death into its national sport.

See, I have no problem with holding the notion that animals have some intrinsic value. Enough that I'd want them to be treated humanely, and die for a good enough (to me) reason, such as for food - but not enough that I'll stop eating them.

Now as someone mentioned earlier, bring on the vats of good quality grown meat, and I'll stop eating animals altogether.

I'd mock you and call you names but you're just so goddamn pretty.

Well knock me over with a feather.

At least WUA's particular brand of psycho/sociopathy is highly entertaining.

Anyway, there is a clear difference to most people between not wanting to needlessly torture animals and eating meat from animals that have been responsibly slaughtered.  Problem is, and it's a good point, most people have no idea how poorly we treat food animals in this country.  It's positively shameful.  I'm trying to change my habits to support those methods that do their best to care for these animals.

I don't think it is hypocrisy to view the world in that way.  It isn't through some odd sense of shame that I want to protect those animals from needless suffering, it's because I actually really like animals.  Even the tasty ones. 

(http://jadedsouls.net/forum/images/smilies/snakesonaplane.gif)

Hoss thought of himself as a Zionist who was basically doing his best to make sure Jews were treated as well as possible. Fuck he even talks at length in his memoirs about those that he helped repatriate to Israel and elderly Jews who he gave less physical work to. The worst moral aspect of things like industrial farming, in the same sort of spirit of thinking is that it encourages thinking about the animals in purely secondary senses, in terms of cost or space or profit, rather than as animals. I know this is a Godwin and I don't want to draw any equivalencies, genocide and mass murder of human beings is far, far worse than what goes on in massive industrial farms but the approach of thinking about 'inmates' only in terms of how they fit into the system is quite similar (tricky to find any terms that can be used interchangably between the two, at best these are loose analogies). I'm okay with killing animals, I'm not ok with treating them the same way we'd treat vats of artificial meat because the two aren't the same.

The Spanish bullfighting thing is wrong because while they distort the animal for the purposes of entertainment and proceed to enjoy watching a living being brutally suffer. Glorying in suffering and totally ignoring it are horrible in very different ways but it doesn't seem like someone who goes out of their way to only eat meat from animals that were treated humanely and killed relatively painlessly is being hypocritical while someone who willfully ignores the fact that suffering goes into their shitty fast food hamburger is on a moral par. Fuck, would you say Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is a hypocrite for campaigning against battery farming chickens but still being ok with people eating eggs?

Yes. 

You confuse and worry me.

Fixed.

Also, go look at the resources it takes to produce meat versus non-meat foods. Eating meat already means you don't care if some Third World people starve because bacon is tastier than soy bacon. Growing meat in magic vats isn't likely to be any less resource intensive, and likely it would be vastly moreso.

Be a vegan or STFU about how our resource-squandering animal holocaust could be a little more ethical.

You know that's like saying you've got a choice between growing up and living in a modern country and basically being no different from Hannibal Lecter or moving to Somalia as soon as you're 18. It's not like there's some ethical divide between true adherents to Jainism and everyone else and that's it. As much as someone like Kant might love to think it, there isn't a magical dividing line that has everyone who's wrong on one side (with some varying degree of hypocrisy) and everyone who's right on the other.

Though now I've written this I begin to think you're having fun. My reply still counts for Tri though. Damn WUA's willingness to let his inner psychopath out in order to generate entertainment for himself. And damn me for dancing like a monkey in a tophat. I'm not Paelos damnit.

If everyone quit eating meat, and got their protein from peanuts or something, there would be a lot more food to go around and we'd spare the environment a lot of damage. Do you know what sort of vast toxic shit-oceans a hog farm with a few hundred thousand hogs produces? You don't care about that, though. You're just going to keep shoving pork chops into your maw while some dude in Malawi eats the flies off his sister's face.

Then you're going to scoff at some bullfighters who at least kill their animals themselves and even take a few shots in return occasionally, and invent some convoluted ad hoc ethical system with no real purpose except to validate all of your convenience-based lifestyle choices.

Me, I'm gonna go have a hamburger. What you lookin' at? You all a bunch of fuckin' assholes. You know why? You don't have the guts to be what you wanna be. You need people like me. You need people like me so you can point your fuckin' fingers and say, "That the bad guy." So...what that make you? Good? You're not good. You just know how to hide--how to lie. Me, I don't have that problem. Me, I always tell the truth. Even when I lie. So say goodnight to the bad guy!

Goodnight bad guy!

You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna get myself a 1967 Cadillac El Dorado convertible. Hot pink! With whale-skin hubcaps and all leather cow interior and big brown baby seal eyes for headlights! Yeah! And I'm gonna drive around in that baby at 115 MPH, getting one mile per gallon, suckin' down Quarter-Pounder cheeseburgers from McDonalds in the old-fashioned non-biodegradable Styrofoam container and when I'm done suckin' down those grease-ball burgers, I'm gonna wipe my mouth with the American flag, and I'm gonna toss the Styrofoam containers right out the side, and there ain't a goddamn thing anybody can do about it.

--Dave (If I wasn't supposed to eat animals, they wouldn't taste so damned good)

Because we got the bomb, OK?

I'm a proud member of People Eating Tasty Animals, and I'd buy what WUA says if they eat the bulls after they kill them, but they don't. What a terrible waste. I bet they taste delicious.

His own amusement.  :grin:

I'm all for bullfighting if they'd make it more fare.  The bullfighters almost always wins!  That shows it's not setup right.  They should give the bull spiked armor and giant sword blades that protrude from its side.  Make it a real fight, then it would be awesome to watch.  I want to see the Sparticus version of bullfighting!

And if it's okay for a human to face a bull in a fair fight, why can't a lion face a bull? Or a polar bear? Why can't we teach a baboon to use a butcher knife? Why can't forty midget humans fight a tiger? Welcome to the Dark Awesome Side.

But yeah, scarfing down all this meat is pretty indefensible as far as animal cruelty, animal death, resource consumption, and environmental impact. But everyone just goes "Aw shit, meat is delicious, I don't care about animals that aren't cute, and fuck the rest of it." Then some of them conjure up tortured ethical houses of cards that just coincidentally lead to everything they do being okay. "Yeah, this creature is important enough that we should be concerned with it's suffering, but it's okay to kill a billion of them as long as it's done humanely. Which it isn't, but I feel bad about it for five minutes a month on the internet and that's good enough so gimme my bacon." Get the hell out with that bullshit.

Say it with me.

Meat is delicious.
I don't care about animals that aren't cute.
Fuck the rest of it.

And in the mean time, misc animals are put down just because they break a leg to "end its suffering", while people with uncurable cancer and immesurable chronic pain are disallowed to kill themselves, and women taking abortion is frowned upon. Why? "All life is sacred (as long as it's not human). Because humans are speshul, see?".

I'm perfectly fine with both of those scenarios.

How do you feel about apes with knives?

But seriously, why would you be against assisted suicide? I'm all for it. I literally (gently, obviously) talked someone out of doing it last year, and they're actually doing a bit better for now, but I'm in favor of them having the option.

Are you suggesting monkey with a knife assisted suicide?

(http://www.doomedmoviethon.com/images/articleimages/phenomena-monkey.jpg)

No, that's for the next capital punishment thread.

In the TV forum.

Another point for the bulls (http://deadspin.com/5544844/bullfight-goes-horribly-right-for-bull)

Picture is pretty graphic, be warned. WS, but brutal.

They should give the bulls cocaine.  For it's analgesic effects, of course.

Holy shit  :ye_gods:

Makes me fear the dentist a little less knowing this guys entire bottom jaw could have been ripped off...

Good on the bull. Obviously I pity the matador, but he still asked for it. :why_so_serious:

Here's a nice video of the guy getting gored in the face:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKkoslTNU6k

Plants show physiological changes to damage, including the release of airborne warning chemicals for some species. That's probably about on a par with the 'pain reflex' (not) show by a lot of invertebrate species.

So either plants aren't okay to eat either, or vegans are hypocrites.

Thank you. I went looking for that last night and gave up. It didn't occur to me to type in the search terms in Spanish ^^

That doesn't make for a good avatar...

Better?  :awesome_for_real:

Nope, I'd eat the vat meat. Because it's an easy change, that would result in my net enjoyment remaining unchanged.

That's pretty much all there is to it. We know our governments kill innocent people, we know we're polluting the planet, we know torture happens etc etc. But doing something real about it means getting off our arses, so we don't. I can condemn bullfighting because it costs me nothing to do so. I can eat the vat meat because it also costs me nothing. With the balances of effort being roughly equal, I'll press the 'moral high ground' button and feel good about it. Maybe I'll even occasionally write a letter or otherwise tip the balance slightly.

We're not that complicated.

Edit: If everything we did, or thought, had to balance equally with everything else, we'd never leave our houses. We all compartmentalise our thinking to some extent, because that is the only way to deal, short of living as a hermit.

So you'd pay a hundred dollars a pound for vat meat but won't just go vegetarian?

Not that I really know anything on the topic, but why are you assuming vat meat would be more expensive?  I thought the point of vat grown meat would be that you could mass produce meat for incredibly cheap to feed the mass's.  As it is, it takes alot of time, money, and resources to raise a cow.  Seems if they could just grow the shit in some factory it would be much cheaper (I realize that at this point its still science fiction, but making it reality is the goal).

So if the bull wins, do they let it go?

Yes.  They let it go....on to round two!  Fight!

One would think that for a bull the chance to gore your killer would be the obvious choice (as compared to a humane death), winning and getting put out to stud would just be icing on the cake.

I can't imagine how it would be less expensive. A cow comes with all the hardware required to produce and maintain meat built in. You cram food in the front, let shit out the back, and slaughter it when it's big enough. Replacing that with highly-specialized technology because dead cows make you sad wouldn't be cheap.

Sure my cows are also made of bones/skin/organs/eyeballs and all that other stuff in addition to saleable meat, so your vat is producing more meat per unit of nutrition. But I can sell the skin for leather, the bones for gelatin, and the rest for dog food so it's not a total loss. And what sort of distilled nutrients are being used to feed your high-tech meat vat, and how expensive are they to produce in vast quantities? I can feed my cows swill made out of ground-up orange peels and apple cores.

Vat meat might get cheap twenty or fifty years after it was introduced. Then again, it might stay a super-expensive niche product forever, if it ever came to exist.

Aside from all the bits of the cow that aren't as useful as meat, a cow wastes a lot of the energy you put into it by walking around and breathing and stuff.  What you really want is something resembling a plant that produces delicious meat directly given sunlight, water, and the minimum required nutrients.

I dream of having a steak tree in my backyard.   :grin:

I struggle to envision a world wear vat grown meat would actually taste good.

Don't forget all that methane gas it apparently farts out, which according to some will kill us all with a tornado or 100.

I foresee vat grown meat starting off as an inferior product that costs a fuck load and will probably be only consumed by fairly liberal vegetarians. As the techniques and technology improve it'll start to become more widely available and cost far less in resources. Considering how much energy gets wasted by animals in terms of doing things other than growing meat and that doesn't get absorbed I could see vat grown meat requiring less resources eventually.

Why are you fucking hippies so in love with ingestion? Vat meat? How short-sighted (and gross).

How about dermal chlorophyll, ffs?

(http://www.filedump.net/dumped/51jwngf3pilss5001274805110.jpg)

The best part: The heat from the unnaturally fast growing plant cooks the meat, so it's ready to eat!

Once again, the Bull wins. And this time it was personal (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/7953990/Bull-jumps-from-ring-into-crowded-stands-during-bullfight-in-northern-Spain.html)


Video (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvideo/weirdnewsvideo/7953449/Bull-leaps-out-of-ring-and-charges-at-crowd.html)

 :popcorn:

Except for the fact that a boy got injured and the bull was put down, this would otherwise be a great story.

After too much research, I have established that there are no funny cheese jokes.  Except for the one about the bull named "Cheese" that got even with the spectators at a bullfight.

--Dave

Mild necro for flaming goodness. I had no idea they did shit like this either. What man stood around and thought, 'man, ya know, running with the bulls is pretty fun, but what would make it even better? . . . I know, FIRE!'

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39309931/ns/world_news-europe/

WTF?

I'm not anything close to PETA but that looks like a huge combination of cruelty + ass stupid.

I don't know, the pictures make it look pretty bad ass. At first, I thought it was about setting bulls on fire. The reality is much tamer.

It's even better when you can call forth images of one of those burning torches getting stuffed up the asshole of some stupid tourist who's decided to make a run.

Call me an asshole, but I'm secretly tickled that an EU country decides to put flaming torches on a thousand pound animal, let it run wild through the city and no one thinks about public safety, or fire hazard, or anything.

Here in the US we couldn't strap a matchstick to a windup toy without 4 lawyers lined up with 3 kinds of litigation.

They are arming the Bulls to give them a fighting chance? Hell, since they can't pull a trigger on an Automatic weapon thats the next best thing. When all the retards thinking this is fun are dead we can disarm the bulls with buckets of water. Win for everyone.

My assumption is that the bulls are scared shitless to be honest. They can't rationalize "Fire won't get me up there, I am safe!" like we could.

You're right, and despite the snarky comments I made above...I find this disgusting.  Human beings fucking suck.

Maybe, maybe not. I still thought they were going to set bulls on fire, or kill them in some horrible fashion. This is neither. There are better things to get panty-bunched about in my view.

I don't think there is an animal alive that is not frightened of fire in some way. Strapping torches on a bull's horns and lighting them on fire - I don't think the bull is that unaware considering the flames are in eye-shot on either side. I just thought the idea alone is a little fucked up for people to organize an actual event around.

It's Spain. They have some weird international obsession with bulls. Also, the porn over there is free and plays in your hotel room on regular channels. It's not all bad.

You can get the porn part without the killing the bulls part in the rest of Europe. So yes its all bad.