I love it when the bull wins

[NowhereMan]

You confuse and worry me.

[WindupAtheist]

Now as someone mentioned earlier, bring on the vats of good quality grown meat, and I'll stop eating animals altogether realize that it's a hundred dollar a pound niche industry for crazy people and make up a reason not to bother with it. After all, if I really gave a shit I'd be a vegetarian already.

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.

[NowhereMan]

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.

[WindupAtheist]

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!

[NowhereMan]

Goodnight bad guy!

[MahrinSkel]

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)

[bhodi]

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.

[UnSub]

As for Windupatheist - I never know what he's on about!

His own amusement. 

[Teleku]

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!

[WindupAtheist]

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.

[tgr]

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?".

[Tebonas]

I'm perfectly fine with both of those scenarios.

[WindupAtheist]

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.

[UnSub]

Are you suggesting monkey with a knife assisted suicide?

[WindupAtheist]

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

[bhodi]

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

In the TV forum.

[WayAbvPar]

Another point for the bulls

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

[Sheepherder]

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

[01101010]

Another point for the bulls

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

Holy shit 

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

[tgr]

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

[Ozzu]

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

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

[Simond]

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.

[Hutch]

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

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

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 ^^

[Lantyssa]

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

[Hutch]

Better? 

[Jherad]

Now as someone mentioned earlier, bring on the vats of good quality grown meat, and I'll stop eating animals altogether realize that it's a hundred dollar a pound niche industry for crazy people and make up a reason not to bother with it. After all, if I really gave a shit I'd be a vegetarian already.

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.

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.

[WindupAtheist]

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

[Teleku]

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).

[FatuousTwat]

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

[Cyrrex]

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

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

[Sheepherder]

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.

[WindupAtheist]

Not that I really know anything on the topic, but why are you assuming vat meat would be more expensive?

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.

[Samwise]

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.   

[Cyrrex]

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

[tgr]

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.

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