Monthly Archives: December 2009

Is eating meat more ethical than eating plants?

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In the NY Times:

In his new book, “Eating Animals,” the novelist Jonathan Safran Foer describes his gradual transformation from omnivorous, oblivious slacker who “waffled among any number of diets” to “committed vegetarian.” Last month, Gary Steiner, a philosopher at Bucknell University, argued on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times that people should strive to be “strict ethical vegans” like himself, avoiding all products derived from animals, including wool and silk. Killing animals for human food and finery is nothing less than “outright murder,” he said, Isaac Bashevis Singer’s “eternal Treblinka.”

But before we cede the entire moral penthouse to “committed vegetarians” and “strong ethical vegans,” we might consider that plants no more aspire to being stir-fried in a wok than a hog aspires to being peppercorn-studded in my Christmas clay pot. This is not meant as a trite argument or a chuckled aside. Plants are lively and seek to keep it that way. The more that scientists learn about the complexity of plants — their keen sensitivity to the environment, the speed with which they react to changes in the environment, and the extraordinary number of tricks that plants will rally to fight off attackers and solicit help from afar — the more impressed researchers become, and the less easily we can dismiss plants as so much fiberfill backdrop, passive sunlight collectors on which deer, antelope and vegans can conveniently graze. It’s time for a green revolution, a reseeding of our stubborn animal minds.

A reader comments, “Morally motivated vegetarians don’t eat beef because, presumably, cows have the same sort of desire for life that people have. The same is not true for brussels sprouts.” Why do we think this? Are we sure? As the author of the article writes, “Just because we humans can’t hear them doesn’t mean plants don’t howl.” 

Why, oh why was I not smart enough to go to Yale Law?

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I didn’t get good enough grades in college and I didn’t score high enough on the LSAT to go to Yale Law. But if I would have I don’t know how I would have turned down an offer from a super-high-powered law firm to defer employment for a year in exchange for $80k. From the WSJ:

When I witnessed the job-search drama as a student at Yale Law School, just about the most desirable placement was a spot at Cravath. It didn’t seem to matter that even summer associates at Cravath were expected to close Time Warner deals way past midnight. Nor did anyone seem to care that a new hire could regularly expect to have his viewing of Saturday Night Live disrupted by an emergency call from the office. Prestige whores will give it up for their choice currency, and Cravath carries that elite cachet.

Or at least it did. The class of associates that just joined Cravath was asked to defer their arrival for a year in exchange for a sweet deal: They would receive $80,000 to not work, plus they would get benefits and student-loan payments. This offer was optional.

Not one Yalie took the offer. I sure would have. I would have loved to do nothing for ski, backpack, and hang out at the beach for a year, all while making $80k. In fact, that’s just about my dream job. Then again, afterwards you would be a slave to Cravath, Swaine, & Moore, but such is life.

Jeremy Clarkson’s pro-capitalism rant disguised as a car review

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From the Times:

Of course, small retailers whine and complain when Tesco moves into the area because Tesco will nick all their business. Yes, it will, if what you are selling is expensive and rubbish.

 

That’s the core of capitalism. “Better” will always win the day. And it doesn’t matter what form “better” takes. Better can mean cheaper, more convenient, nicer, prettier, more tasty, more healthy. In some way, you have to be better than the other guy, or your kids will soon be presented with a bill for hosing you out of your sitting room.

 

Because the bosses of the giant corporations know this, they strive constantly to make what they sell better, and that’s brilliant for you and me. It’s why we don’t get punctures any more — because the tyre makers are constantly striving to be the best. It’s why your car never overheats any more — because the people who make radiator hoses are no longer stuck in the Seventies, believing they have a God-given right to keep on making radiator hoses, irrespective of how quickly they dissolve.

 

When was the last time you had a faulty cigarette? When was the last time your plane crashed? When did you last take a strawberry back to the supermarket because it was all covered in slime? It’s not governments or best-before dates or health and safety that is doing this; it’s capitalism.

 

And nowhere is the improvement seen more vividly than in the world of motoring.

 

In the olden days, car makers thought local, and that was a disaster. They really did think at British Leyland that the sun was still shining brightly on the empire and that people in Britain would always buy Rovers and Austins because they were British. We saw the same thing going on in Italy with Fiat. So what if the workforce had left its sandwiches in one of the doors and wired up the horn to the starter motor by mistake? The customer would be back. And the government would hand over a fat cheque if he wasn’t. But then capitalism went global and, all of a sudden, Terry and June could buy a car from Japan that didn’t explode every time there was a “y” in the day. So they did.

 

Then it got better. BMW worked out that if it made the X5 in America, the car could be sold more cheaply. Volkswagen thought the same about Mexico, and as Britain slithered further into the mire, we started to benefit from this as well. Toyota, Honda and Nissan didn’t come here because their executives liked our weather or the golf courses. They came because they were drawn here by capitalism, the need to be cheaper.