Pharyngula

Posted by: Kobra | June 5, 2009 5:24 PM

That's horrible, but what's even more horrible is that I'm anticipating the phrase "crispy critter" in Cuttlefish's inevitable comment.

I need to stay off /b/ for a while. =\

Posted by: Glucagon | June 5, 2009 5:26 PM

Yet you trash PETA, when this is the type of message they try to propagate???

Posted by: Sili | June 5, 2009 5:29 PM

A colleague today told us about someone he'd visited as a kid whose father raised chicken.

This kid had said something along the lines of "pssst, wanna see something fun?", taken five chickens, dug them into the ground, head sticking up and proceeded to run over them with a lawnmower. The oldfashioned, handpushed cylinder kind.

My colleague never visited again.

Of course, I've pulled the legs off my share of bugs of various kinds. I remember being very fascinated with bumblebees, and I didn't take nearly as good care of my guppies as I should have.

Horrible to recall now.

Of course, yesterday I had to yank the head off a blackbird. A very different feeling when one can feel the warmth and fear.

Posted by: Michelle | June 5, 2009 5:29 PM

I've got a really strong stomach - I work in a research hospital/university where they do animal research - but this sort of random, meaningless, pointless act of absolute cruelty is even turning my stomach. I've got pets... and I would kill anyone who did something like that to one of my pets.

Those girls are sick, and I hope this haunts them for the rest of their lives. I hope they have nightmares for years about being thrown in an oven and baked alive.

I think I need to hug my cat now.

Posted by: Michelle | June 5, 2009 5:31 PM

I've got a really strong stomach - I work in a research hospital/university where they do animal research - but this sort of random, meaningless, pointless act of absolute cruelty is even turning my stomach. I've got pets... and I would kill anyone who did something like that to one of my pets.

Those girls are sick, and I hope this haunts them for the rest of their lives. I hope they have nightmares for years about being thrown in an oven and baked alive.

I think I need to hug my cat now.

Posted by: Kate | June 5, 2009 5:32 PM

Read this, burst into tears.

My heart hurts.

Posted by: Cuttlefish, OM | June 5, 2009 5:33 PM

Anyone with cats
Could not make light of this act.
Cuttlefish has three.

Posted by: Linnorah | June 5, 2009 5:35 PM

Meeep! That's disgusting, vile, cruel, evil. PZ, please post something uplifting too, this is just too horrifying. I'll blame you for nightmares.
*goes and hugs own cats tightly*

Posted by: Paula Helm Murray | June 5, 2009 5:36 PM

those so called 'humans' should be put where they cannot hurt anything else small and helpless.

I cringe when I think they might have a baby. "We're bored! Shove baby in the oven for fun!"

And it is pretty much a behavior predictor that people who are cruel to small animals don't care much for other people either.

A kitten is just about as innocent a creature as any baby animal, and pretty much helpless against anything that might hurt them.

I hope these girls get prison time.

Posted by: Naked Bunny with a Whip | June 5, 2009 5:37 PM

Yet you trash PETA, when this is the type of message they try to propagate???

No, he trashed PETA for being ghouls who gleefully leap onto a tragedy to promote their agenda.

Posted by: Linnorah | June 5, 2009 5:38 PM

Meeep! That's disgusting, vile, cruel, evil. PZ, please post something uplifting too, this is just too horrifying. I'll blame you for nightmares.
*goes and hugs own cats tightly*

Posted by: Lonewolf | June 5, 2009 5:38 PM

Those girls sound like sociopaths in the making if you ask me...isn't animal cruelty one of the first signs of serial killers and other deviants?

Posted by: Paul | June 5, 2009 5:40 PM

Sickening lack of empathy.

Posted by: akshelby | June 5, 2009 5:41 PM

And, no, this is not what PETA tries to prevent. PETA would have have killed the kitten immediately.

This is what the ASPCA tries to prevent. You will note that it was the ASPCA that investigated this and made the arrest. It's time to donate to the ASPCA.

Posted by: ProudCynic | June 5, 2009 5:43 PM

Good (fictional) god... I can't imagine what the poor girl who lost little Tiger Lily is thinking. What could drive a someone pulling a prank to toss a helpless kitten in an oven? Why do such a thing?

My condolences to the victim.

Posted by: Linnorah | June 5, 2009 5:44 PM

Ack, sorry for double posts! Got several error messages, site told me to hit Back and submit again.

Posted by: Sadness | June 5, 2009 5:46 PM

I am just moved to tears by this story. Last night, I saved two stray kittens by feeding and placing them in a very loving home. This doesn't cancel out the actions of these sociopaths in any way but I somehow feel better for helping these very innocent kittens. I hope others have been doing what they can to help the helpless.

Posted by: Fred the Hun | June 5, 2009 5:48 PM

Agree with lonewolf @23

This kind of behavior is pathological pure and simple.
As for PETA it is still an organization of lunatics.

http://blog.worldvillage.com/family/the_link_between_sociopaths_and_cruelty_to_animals.html

According to the FBI, a history of cruelty to animals is one trait that appears over and over in serial killers and even rapists. The one group of animals that suffer the most by abuse is companion animals. Family pets, such as dogs and cats, usually suffer at the hands of children who are afflicted with a mental disorder, as they tend to take their aggression out on these defenseless creatures. Just as with a domestic abuser, the animal abuser needs to show dominance. If this behavior is not dealt with effectively during childhood, then as an adult, the perpetrator could move on to human prey.

Posted by: FosterDisbelief | June 5, 2009 5:49 PM

My guinea pig died today, from old age, as I held him. His name was Frankie. He used to sit on my shoulder while I read for hours. Our other cavy, named Isis, is devastated. She's been a basket case since Frankie got sick. In fact, it was Isis squeaking and running that alerted us that something was wrong with Frankie. After he died, I took him out to my favorite spot in the woods, and buried him. Isis just started eating and drinking again, the first time in over 20 hours.

Is there a point to this? I don't know. These animals have feelings. Right before Frankie died, he looked up at me and did his happy squeak one last time. And these are just guinea pigs, generally considered a much lower form of animal than felines.

To put a cat in an oven and turn it on? It's enough to almost make me wish Hell existed, just so this person could burn in it.

Excuse the rambling.

Posted by: wvtechie | June 5, 2009 5:52 PM

This makes me sick to my stomach.

Posted by: Sasha | June 5, 2009 5:53 PM

Truely sad and unneccessary. Can't believe she did it for thrills.

Fortunately, I don't have any moral queasiness when I eat at McDonald's, knowing factory farmed rised animals kept in cages, rised in squalid conditions, and forced to breed and take drugs will eventually be humanely killed (lol) because I like the taste of their meat.

Posted by: LE | June 5, 2009 5:54 PM

What could drive a someone pulling a prank to toss a helpless kitten in an oven?

It's actually kind of telling that these girls also thought that breaking into and trashing someone's apartment, splashing bleach on the walls and slashing the pillows, oh and don't forget stealing DVD's, qualified as a "prank."

The poor kitten was the most horrifying part, but not all that they did. They didn't seem to even realize that even without torturing a cat to death, everything that they set out to do was a crime, not "just a prank."

Posted by: peaches | June 5, 2009 5:59 PM

I wish I could un-learn about this. What a heartless monster. I hope she's thoroughly evaluated psychologically to figure out what the hell is wrong with her. She is not fit for society, at least not in her present condition.

Posted by: Watchman | June 5, 2009 6:03 PM

Sociopathy generally fills the space where the empathy isn't.

Posted by: Ian A. A. Watson | June 5, 2009 6:09 PM

#1, it's been proven that /b/ may hate anything and everything, but they love cats.
Read: http://www.kenny-glenn.net/

The words "4chan" and "/b/" aren't anywhere on that page, but they're the "internet community" which tracked Kenny down and brought him to the attention of authorities.

If anything, I think /b/'d be more likely to harass Cheyenne Cherry than to joke about the cat.

Posted by: Matt H. | June 5, 2009 6:12 PM

Oh fuck. That's the most awful thing I've read this week.... it's absolutely vile. The thought of the pain that poor cat went through as it was cooked to death....

I was actually down at my local duck pond just a month ago watching some of the newly hatched ducklings, and a fear suddenly came over me that one of the local yobs could come down and kill them for fun. There are lunatics everywhere, who don't give a damn about others and certainly not about animals.

Posted by: Kate, you know, that other one | June 5, 2009 6:15 PM

I don't care much for people and this kind of crap is why. I was raised by a wonderful cat...

Okay, well, everyone thought she was evil but me, but that's beside the point. Never in a million years would it occur to me that this kind of thing is okay to do to any animal including the perpetrator of the crime.

And yes...PETA tends to be mysteriously silent or absent when things like this happen, but when a new Butterball Turkey farm goes up in Iowa...what do you think we'll get, a billboard near the Tama Mesquaki settlement comparing it to internment on a Reservation? An add in the Register comparing the shipping of the live turkeys to thier new barns to what the slaves went through on the Middle Passage? Another comparison of the farm to Dachau?

That's just one of the many things that makes PETA worthless for actually fighting cruelty, you know...that whole inconvenient "fighting cruelty" part. Takes so much time away from destruction of property and attention-whoring yourself into TV news coverage and HBO specials about your non-founder who actually drove the real founder away from his own orginisation (which she seems oddly proud of.)

Posted by: Angel Kaida | June 5, 2009 6:16 PM

I'm nauseous from reading this. I don't have my pets here to hug, but this makes me want to go hug the duck who's hanging out in the backyard. PZ, seriously, need unicorn chaser. Now.

Posted by: kryth69 | June 5, 2009 6:21 PM

This shit just makes me sick and mad. I would like to take a power sander with 50 grit sand to their hides, until there was nothing left. Then soak them in a brine bath for a couple hours, then roast them in a oven for a few hours, but not enough to kill them.

Posted by: Felix | June 5, 2009 6:23 PM

I wish I had those legendary hacking abilities the people at ED/b/ supposedly have to go after these people. I read they can get anyone's social security number and do a lot of unpleasant stuff to their lives. Provided the law decides not to be unpleasant enough.

Posted by: Janice | June 5, 2009 6:27 PM

Anyone who is mindlessly capable of an act such as this and justify it as a prank that's okay because "I hate cats" really, really, really ought not to be released into the world until a thorough psychiatric course of care has been accomplished and verified by a second medical expert. This behaviour sounds sociopathic!

Of course, animal cruelty charges carry very little weight in most jurisdictions so I'm not sure what the aggravated cruelty to animals charge might get her in NY. (Okay, I just looked it up on animallaw.info and that's a felony with a maximum of two years.) I'll bet that the DA downgrades some of the charges or goes for a plea-bargain.

I hope that the pet-owner and former roommate, whose place she trashed, presses civil charges since I'm pretty sure that the criminal charges won't amount to much in the end. If nothing, hitting her in the pocketbook might make her think twice about what she's done. A full-scale shunning in her community would also be a start!

Posted by: Darren S. A. George | June 5, 2009 6:28 PM

This is sick.

What's worse is her smug grin in the picture with the article, since she thought it was such a jolly joke.

Posted by: karen | June 5, 2009 6:31 PM

How this makes my heart hurt! The thought of the excruciating pain and fear that kitten endured makes me physically ill. I'm not certain that I could be humane to that girl if I had access to her. I hope she is found to be criminally insane and locked away from potential future victims.

And yes, I'm hugging my own cats and dog.

Posted by: CalGeorge | June 5, 2009 6:35 PM

Animal cruelty is a felony in New York.

Max jail: 2 yrs.

(Agriculture & Markets Animals) 353-a Aggravated cruelty to animals
1999

Summary: 'Aggravated cruelty' = conduct intended to cause extreme physical pain or conduct done in a depraved or sadistic manner.

Prohibits the intentional killing or causing of serious physical injury to a companion animal with aggravated cruelty and no justifiable purpose.

Exceptions: lawful hunting, trapping or fishing per Article 11 dispatch of rabid or diseased animals per Article 21 dispatch of animals posing a threat to human safety or other animals when legally authorized properly conducted scientific tests or experiments performed in labs or institutions which are approved by NY commissioner of health.

Note: Court held that the statute is not unconstitutionally vague and overbroad. People v. Knowles, 184 Misc 2d 474, NYS 2d 916 (2000).

Penalty: Class E Felony per 55.10; definite confinement of maximum two years

http://www.aspca.org/fight-animal-cruelty/lobby-for-animals/state-animal-cruelty-laws/fight-animal-cruelty/lobby-for-animals/state-animal-cruelty-laws/new-york.html

Posted by: Brownian, OM | June 5, 2009 6:45 PM

Inevitably, when stories such as these surface, somebody says something like, "And yet, hundreds of kids/women/the homeless/the elderly/some-other-oft-victimised-human-group are abused and we don't get this upset." It always angers me, even though I know they're right. I disagree that there's some finite measure of compassion we have that we need to parcel out on some priority list.

What I wonder is, why, while abuses towards many groups make me angry and ill, stories like this invoke my basest, most brutish, most mobbish thug instinct, and for a brief instance I almost think it would be a small deal for me to kill someone like Cheyenne Cherry, or at the very least, beat her severely. Is it the innocence or the powerlessness of the victim? And then I wonder if there's a very similar feeling behind the actions of people like Roeder, and if he saw George Tiller as some version of Cheyenne Cherry.

I'm not, of course, trying to justify his behaviour, but to find some context by which I can understand him, and further, understand why my visceral, angry reaction toward Cheyenne Cherry (or Scott Roeder, or the Christian Brothers, or any of the monstrous individuals highlighted here) is exactly the wrong approach.

I feel very sick now. I think I'm going to go and get drunk.

Posted by: Prof. Henry Armitage | June 5, 2009 6:45 PM

#37

My guinea pig died today, from old age, as I held him.

I know how you feel. About fifteen years ago, I was in exactly the same situation as yourself. I can remember the moment he passed away like it was yesterday. If it's any consolation, the pain will pass, but the happy memories will last forever.

Posted by: Vielle | June 5, 2009 6:47 PM

Oh, that's just absolutely wonderful. This, Air France Flight 447, and various other events will result in the loss of my hair by the end of the weekend due to manual forces.

I love how the woman attempts to ameliorate the situation by calling it a "prank" — as if the killing of an animal (as well as the vandalism of a house) can be easily justified by wanting to cause mischief.

I think I'm going to go hug my cat now (also named Tiger Lily) and maybe cry for a few hours.

Posted by: Tapir | June 5, 2009 6:51 PM

FosterDisbelief @ 37:

Condolences for your loss. Please give Isis a big crunchy carrot (or whatever her favorite treat is) for me.

{{hugs her cat - not too hard, because the cat is very old}}

Posted by: Scott S | June 5, 2009 6:53 PM

Reading that made me ill.

Posted by: Martha | June 5, 2009 6:54 PM

I agree with those who say that the girls (or at least the leader) sound like psychopaths. Interesting reading is the book The Psychopath Next Door.

Posted by: whitebird | June 5, 2009 6:56 PM

Lonewolf @23 - "Those girls sound like sociopaths in the making if you ask me...isn't animal cruelty one of the first signs of serial killers and other deviants?"

In the making? Sounds like they're already made to me. Now I must drink beer and snarfle my kitteh's belly.

:( x infinity.

Posted by: Clarie | June 5, 2009 6:58 PM

*hugs her big black cat and her small brown dog*

that's horrible.

Posted by: Kevpod | June 5, 2009 6:59 PM

PZ, I'm not one who believes consistency is the end-all, or even achievable or desirable. And of course I agree with you about this incident.

But how do you square this post with this one from April?

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/04/perversely_brutal.php

Posted by: Martha | June 5, 2009 7:00 PM

If the picture of her was taken after the incident by the press, then there is no question in my mind she is a psychopath. Comments to the article indicate that she might have tortured animals before.

Posted by: whitebird | June 5, 2009 7:00 PM

Sastra @76 - Ugh. I gotta get away from this thread stat.

Posted by: Jerome Haltom | June 5, 2009 7:02 PM

So, I'm going to kind of play devil's advocate here. Keep that in mind when responding.

So why are you all so offended by this? Can you explain why a human being values an animal like a kitten, why we find it repulsive to harm? Once identifying why, do you feel the reason is still justified?

Basically my view on it is that of evolution's aim slightly off. We have genes that cause us to feel bad or wronged when certain triggers are hit. Such as a soft body. Certain facial features, large eyes, the status of being weak, etc. These genes were favored because it caused us to care about other beings that shared the same genes (kin selection, etc).

But the aim of evolution is a bit fuzzy (it has no aim). The traits we value are equally present in fuzzy household pets. A case might even be made that the features of household pets are evolved to be favored by us. Much like the cookoo. Those of you who know what I'm talking about know where I'm going here.

So our feelings towards small warm fuzzy animals is a side effect of evolution. Does that make it justified?

As far as I see, it doesn't affect the justification. It is fact about how humans are regardless of whether it is fact or not. I acknowledge that. But does it REALLY effect teh character of an individual if that individual has more refined selection criteria? Is it not in fact possible for the neurological criteria to be set up 'ideally'... favoring humans of close relation and not other random animals. Isn't it a broad stroke to say that because these people value cats so poorly, they also must value humans so poorly? And if in fact they do hold humans in high regard, does it negate the anger towards their action to cats?

Things to think about.

Posted by: nicholas | June 5, 2009 7:03 PM

Last night I had a horrible experience. I stepped on a kitten who was sleeping in a dark room. he died. I've been thinking about it all day and I feel terrible. I got little sleep last night.

how somebody could do something like this on purpose is just so bizarre.

Posted by: Jerome Haltom | June 5, 2009 7:05 PM

@91 edit

>>>It is fact about how humans are regardless of whether it is fact or not

Meant to say something like "We are offended by it regardless of the mechanisms, and that matters."

Posted by: scooter | June 5, 2009 7:09 PM

What rampaging barbarians would throw a cat into an oven?

Any civilized person knows that Cats are best when stir fried.

Here are some other traditional and non-traditional recipes for preparing cat: http://www.ooze.com/ooze13/cats.html

Posted by: Zan | June 5, 2009 7:11 PM

I keep snakes, not the usual cute and fuzzy but I truly adore them. If someone ever did the same to my snakes I'd do sick things to them in return.

I'm going to go hug my python now.

Posted by: Zan | June 5, 2009 7:14 PM

Jerome:

No.

It's the callous and vile manner of death they chose for the creature. I would feel the same had it happened to most any living thing.

Go be concerned elsewhere.

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 5, 2009 7:16 PM

Also, Jerome's comments are perhaps a little subtler, but they really bring back memories....

Posted by: Meat Robot | June 5, 2009 7:19 PM

Psychopathy certainly seems like the favoured diagnosis in this case.

Prognosis is hard to predict given the scanty details of the incident. If this event represents a later onset pattern of Conduct Disorder (later meaning early teens), then there's more hope. If CC's behaviour predates puberty, then the prognosis is much bleaker.

If she is indeed psychopathic, there's little psychiatry has to offer. Psychopathy is one of the few true contraindications to psychotherapy. History has shown that it simply produces even more effective psychopaths.

Posted by: BobbyEarle | June 5, 2009 7:21 PM

:(

Posted by: biff | June 5, 2009 7:24 PM

Awful! Cruel and heartless at the very least. Everyone knows you have to kill kittens instantly.

Posted by: ERV | June 5, 2009 7:27 PM

Ill just leave this here... humm hummmmmm

Posted by: littlejohn | June 5, 2009 7:30 PM

They're already psychopaths; animal torture is the classic first symptom. They will eventually move on to fellow humans. The real problem is that while psychopathy is pretty easy to spot, there is no treatment and absolutely no cure. Psychopaths think nothing is wrong with them, it's the rest of us who are suckers and deserve to be their victims. I recommend the book "Without Conscience."

Posted by: MadScientist | June 5, 2009 7:32 PM

The criminals did this as a joke? I say lock 'em up for as long as the law allows; they can laugh their asses off in jail. Aside from the shocking cruelty to a helpless animal, the owner probably really loved that kitten and would be more upset about the loss and treatment of her companion than anything else.

Posted by: Meat Robot | June 5, 2009 7:34 PM

Jerome, are you for real? If so, you are one callously insensitive prick. What a shining example of the love of Christ.

Posted by: Jerome Haltom | June 5, 2009 7:37 PM

#117

What? What does Christ have to do with anything?

Posted by: Prof. Henry Armitage | June 5, 2009 7:40 PM

Also, /b/ is trying to take care of things, which makes me feel a LOT better.

Well, it's nice that they care, but do you not think that the relevant threads are a bit disturbing?

There are already calls for violence (as well as mischief), and if you replace "cat killer" with "baby killer", and "Cheyenne Cherry" with "George Tiller", it could end up being really messy.

I thought it was great when they hunted down that cat torturer, but I certainly trust them to do the right thing in all cases. I mean, most anons are okay, but it just takes one to go too far.

Posted by: Bob | June 5, 2009 7:42 PM

As we can see by the many comments here, the killing and abuse of human and nonhuman animals, simply for personal pleasure, is almost universally frowned upon. And yet it is also almost universally accepted that the killing and abuse of nonhuman animals for another of our personal pleasures, our food, is justified, even by most of those commenters here who get so angry at this. Yes, most will say that this is an extreme comparison - but is it? Some food animals are treated well, I know, but the majority are not. And everyone who uses animal products will inevitably contribute to the suffering of many of these animals, even if they sometimes try to buy "ethically", and will always contribute to the deaths of animals. And for what? A minor luxury, which we can live perfectly fine without. (please note that even vegans don't claim to be perfect. We make mistakes, and it is nearly impossible to live a life completely suffering free. The important thing is that we try and reduce suffering to the greatest extent possible.)

Even if you've read this far and just think I'm some animal rights loon, posting bullshit, please take the time - no more than 10 minutes - to read this article, which contains only a reasoned argument, and no appeal to emotion:

http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/singer02.htm

When you have done so, please post whatever flaw in this reasoning that you find, in order to justify your continued use of animal products. And if you cannot do so, consider the possibility that one of your most deeply held beliefs is wrong - and if you cannot do that, are you really more rational than the theists and creationists we atheists so criticise for their clinging to wishful thinking?

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 5, 2009 7:44 PM

What? What does Christ have to do with anything?

"Exploiting this atrocity/tragedy to try and show off how atheism and/or evolutionary theory is self-refuting" makes your behavior in this thread a little less nonsensical, albeit no less vile.

Posted by: patty | June 5, 2009 7:48 PM

Glucagon, it is a matter of public record that PETA would do away with all pet animals, as in KILL THEM.

Um, no.

I don't care for PETA, but get your facts straight. People at PETA headquarters own pets. I used to live in Norfolk, where they are located.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | June 5, 2009 7:50 PM

Instead of addressing the actual argument I put forward on it's merits (or lack of, if that's the case), we have so far seemed to stick to ad hominem. And I know most of you know better than that.

You made an argument? I must have missed it in all the verbiage.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | June 5, 2009 7:54 PM

this made me cry, and I'm gonna have nightmares of kitty scratching the oven door for weeks :-((((((((

what a vile scum piece of shit excuse for a human being... I hope she gets put in jail, and I hope /b/ will indeed "take care of things". and I don't give a flying fuck how horrible the rest of her life will be because of that.

Posted by: Sastra | June 5, 2009 7:57 PM

Azkyroth #125 wrote:

"Exploiting this atrocity/tragedy to try and show off how atheism and/or evolutionary theory is self-refuting" makes your behavior in this thread a little less nonsensical, albeit no less vile.

I could be wrong, but I don't think Jerome was trying to do that. I thought he was trying to explore concepts, not score that sort of hackneyed, rhetorical point.

Though now that Cuttlefish has skewered him with a poem, poor Mr. Halton is out of luck even if he really was just trying to analyze morality through a combination of science and philosophy. He has been s-cuttled and sunk. Give it up.

Posted by: Julie Stahlhut | June 5, 2009 8:01 PM

Anyone who would do a thing like that is very seriously disturbed. It wouldn't be surprising to me if she'd committed other cruelties against animals, or, for that matter, against people.

I feel really terrible for both the kitten and Ms. Hernandez. Sometimes there are just no more words. "Fuck" doesn't quite make it.

Posted by: JohnT | June 5, 2009 8:03 PM

what a vile scum piece of shit excuse for a human being... I hope she gets put in jail, and I hope /b/ will indeed "take care of things". and I don't give a flying fuck how horrible the rest of her life will be because of that.

It was a cat, not a human. You want her life to be miserable and destroyed because of that? No one condones her actions or isn't horrified by them, but have some perspective otherwise you look as crazy as she does.

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 5, 2009 8:05 PM

It was a cat, not a human.

It was a being capable of suffering, and apparently, more "sentient" than she was.

Posted by: Sastra | June 5, 2009 8:12 PM

John T #137 wrote:

It was a cat, not a human. You want her life to be miserable and destroyed because of that?

Even if it had been a human, I'd still be leery of endorsing the sort of 'retributive justice' which views pain and suffering as payment. Reparation and reform is better, and, when that is not possible, keeping others safe. That's one reason Hell never made any sense to me, rationally.

Posted by: Shawn Smith | June 5, 2009 8:14 PM

Sastra @#76:

It sounds like Swaggart is still living in the Middle Ages in France. I've heard Steven Pinker tell the story that they would put cats in a bag, tie the bag up, and throw them on a fire to hear the screams for public entertainment. He used that story to point out how much our culture has changed from those times.

As someone who owns two cats and a dog, I'm not sure how I would react if someone did that to any of my pets. I might be tempted to throw my life away and go to prison for the rest of my life by maiming and disfiguring them horribly. Gouge out their eyes, cut off their nose, remove their reproductive organs, but leave their ears. Mainly so that they would hear for the rest of their lives the screams of disgust from small children of "Dear god, what is that?!" Then again, I might just let the wheels of justice take over, and sue their family for everything they've got. I just don't know.

Posted by: Jerome Haltom | June 5, 2009 8:19 PM

And if you do accept the basic idea (as put into poem by Cuttlefish, at least) that it does not matter why we care for animals, we do. And accept that we do so for an evolved reason, though it might be considered being taken advantage of by cute kittens, then where does that lead?

The acceptance of 'the way we are is the way we are, and it does not matter', leads directly back to us choosing to not really care that the girls killed the kitten, because apparently 'it's the way they are, and evolution made them that way,' and we should just accept that?

Or is it that we are to say that because the majority of people are disgusted by an action (killing a kitten), and the majority of people set the rules (democracy) that whatever way the majority feels (just because) is the way it should be?

I don't like either.

I personally don't feel much empathy towards people killing animals. I cannot come up with a logical reason for valuing the life of a kitten over the life of a chicken, for instance. And I really like chicken sandwiches.

That said, I have two cats, and have had a large number of dogs in the past. And I would never harm them. And I would defend them from people who would seek to harm them.

How can I hold these two contradictory rules? Minimization of cognitive dissonce isn't required here? That's the same out creationists take.

I think I can explain it. Though it does come down to the same feel-good argument that theists use. I am simply the way I am in this case. Evolution made me care about my own cats, but didn't make me care so much about other people's cats. Probably to do with bonding. And that's just how it is.

Okay, keep in mind, I am an atheist. And absolutely starkly pro-evolution and anti-theism. But at some point, we all seem to make decisions that, at the end of the day, defy simple logic. We're all wired to do so. Is it then that wrong that theists do the same?

Simply thought games. I know.

Posted by: JohnT | June 5, 2009 8:21 PM

It was a cat, not a human.

It was a being capable of suffering, and apparently, more "sentient" than she was.

Riiiight, therefore "put [her] in jail" ... hope that some cyber thugs '"take care of things"' and that the rest of her life is "horrible."


*facepalm*

Posted by: mothra | June 5, 2009 8:24 PM

I hope that the expressed desires for pain/retribution towards 'Cherry' are simply sincere wishes that she will, somehow someday, feel empathy and so, come to understand the heinous act she has committed. I think I'm going to ill- goes home to coddle and feed two black cats.

Posted by: Sastra | June 5, 2009 8:24 PM

Hank Fox #142 wrote:

Regardless, I'd rather see some sort of treatment and long-term counseling than just react automatically to my own horror and compound the tragedy by throwing some idiot kid in prison and helping wreck the entire rest of her life after this single terrible act.

Excellent post. I agree; some of our instinctive reactions should be channeled, through reason and empathy, into better directions.

Posted by: Angel Kaida | June 5, 2009 8:28 PM

93,
Nicholas, I'm so sorry you had to experience such an accident. I can't imagine how utterly heartbreaking that would be. As someone else has said, try to remind yourself that it's not indicative of any moral failing.

126,
Was it just my imagination, or did Cuttlefish just outdo himself? You're even more brilliant and biting than usual today, O Camouflaged One.

Posted by: King of Ferrets | June 5, 2009 8:29 PM

...can we make sure she never ever comes in contact with anything vaguely resembling a life form ever again? Please?

Unlike a lot of you, I'm not hugging my cats. Do you have cats that actually like that? Because mine don't it. I am planning on petting the first kitty I see, though.

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 5, 2009 8:30 PM

Jerome:

Perhaps I've been overharsh at points, but...

Why does this matter and why do you think this is the time and place?

Posted by: Meat Robot | June 5, 2009 8:30 PM

"What has Christ got to do with anything?" That is a fantastic question.

Ok Jerome, you're not a callous, insensitive Christian prick. You're a callous insensitive prick of some other description.

Posted by: gaypaganunitarianagnostic | June 5, 2009 8:39 PM

In the environment in which I grew up, brutally killing animals was part of being a 'real he man,' or 'good 'ol boy.' My contemporaries loved to regale me with stories about wrapping wounded birds in paper and setting then on fire, or setting cats on fire. On one occasion I was waiting for a school buss by a ditch. A ribbon snake swam across the water. I was watching with delight, when other kids grabbed it and started smashing it against a chain link fence. I was outraged and yelled at them. I took a lot of abuse for a long time afterward. Obviously I wasn't a 'real man.' Well. I'm not and don't want to be.

Posted by: Zeno | June 5, 2009 8:42 PM

George W. Bush used to have some innocent childhood fun by sticking firecrackers into frogs and blowing them up. It's a telling sign.

Posted by: Jerome Haltom | June 5, 2009 8:43 PM

#156

I didn't know there was a more appropiate time and place. There was an audience here who was exhibiting a trait I found intriguing. Really, these are serious thoughts and serious questions... probing in a reality-based way at what it really means to be human and understand why we make the decisions we do. Seems very appropiate to me.

#158

Pretty much. I appreciate that you feel responsible for informing me of this fact. Thanks! Or something.

The general line from both of you seems to be to not discuss things that might offend those in your company. I don't operate this way. If I did I'd not be critical of religion. I spend most of my time in the company of religions or spiritual people of one type or another. I live in the middle of Texas. Hard to avoid them. I suspect since you're on Myer's blog, you mostly agree with this. And so your reactions are interesting. Do you shut up about religion when in the company of the religious? Do you think it's okay for Myers to post his absolutely negative views of something other people hold dear? I suspect so. So treat me the same.

Posted by: Rey Fox | June 5, 2009 8:44 PM

Hank Fox's comment should be required reading for everybody.

Posted by: SquidBrandon | June 5, 2009 8:47 PM

A happier interaction of humans with baby animals

Posted by: Kelly | June 5, 2009 8:50 PM

Sounds like a sociopath to me.

Posted by: Meat Robot | June 5, 2009 8:53 PM

Jerome, since it is apparently utterly elusive to you, I'll try and spell it out.

People are expressing perfectly natural grief and outrage over a heinous act. As far as I can tell, you're turning their natural, understandable expressions into some kind of syllogistic wankfest.

To all things, there is a season. Try and tune into the affective, not just the rational.

Posted by: Denis Loubet | June 5, 2009 8:54 PM

We created the domestic cat. We made it what it is. And because we did that, it's our duty and responsibility to look after them.

These girls have dehumanized themselves.

Posted by: rrt | June 5, 2009 8:56 PM

Which is exactly what I said, Jerome. If you're unhappy about the way are (mis)interpreted here, you might want to think about why. By "maybe you should look into that," I meant, maybe you should look into that.

Posted by: Angel Kaida | June 5, 2009 8:59 PM

Jerome,
Self-important "research troll" is self-important. Kindly fuck off. Your discussion is unwanted here. Our anthropomorphising of and cultural/social/biological insistence on empathizing with and wanting to protect animals may find an appropriate home in an open thread, at a later time. Here, you're just making yourself out to be, to borrow a perfectly accurate term from an earlier poster, an insensitive wanker.

Posted by: emote_control | June 5, 2009 9:00 PM

@5:

Yeah, I've had to euthanize cowbirds. It's the worst feeling in the world to have something die in your hands. It makes me feel like I've got soot in my lungs.

Posted by: SteveM | June 5, 2009 9:02 PM

Ack, sorry for double posts! Got several error messages, site told me to hit Back and submit again.

No it did not. Next time read more carefully, the error message reads, "do not resubmit, hit 'back' and 'refresh' and see if your comment is there before trying to resubmit"

Posted by: cyan | June 5, 2009 9:05 PM

If this has been said by a poster previously, please skip, because I'm skimming to prevent vomiting.

How can we trust that this person will not to something similar again.

If one lacks for any reasons whatever neural pathways that prevents acting in this way, how can those pathways be generated after actions like this.

Some people have suggested, although its their gut reaction and not as their later rational reaction, to do to her as she has done, but of course we don't do that because it would serve no purpose but that of transient revenge, and then would result in revulsion of ourselves for doing the same action she did.

It would not do a thing to change her way of thinking, it would not do a thing to ameliorate the suffering that she caused, and it would not do a thing to prevent others like her from doing this.

And of course, putting her to a more humane death would also not accomplish any of the above.

Both of those things would prevent her, personally, from doing another act like this on other animals, and eventually on humans. (I'm not going to cite studies, because virtually all are aware that this type of behavior often escalates into similar acts on humans.)

The only option that is humane to the welfare of those she could do similar acts on in the future, while still knitting integrity into our society the treating of all the best we can, seems to me to be that she be surveilled the rest of her life, whether that means incarceration or some other option.

Psychiatric treatment: however aggressive, what if she became your next-door neighbor?

If there are data that show that treatment for individuals like this are mostly successful, then have her undergo that program of treatment.

If the data show that results vary quite a bit, then when the good of the individual must be weighed against the good of many others, restrict the individual from having the freedom to potentially do more of the same harm they have shown to have done in the past.

Her lack of empathy of others' suffering must be due to either it never having existed in her or to a blocking-out of it due to her previous experiences; either way, the suffering she has caused is monumentally larger, comparatively, than any she has experienced.

Posted by: Lunacrous | June 5, 2009 9:07 PM

Jerome, please look into the body of research that shows a link between cruelty to animals and other violent or antisocial behaviors directed towards humans. Then please come back here and make your points, if you still can, with more in the way of evidence and less in the way of thought-experiment noodling.

Expecting strong, immediate emotional reactions to be logically consistent is just fucking silly. Now expecting our analysis of reality, our ethical judgments, and the actions that (ideally, though sadly only rarely in fact) flow from these things to be consistent is more reasonable, but again the known link between animal cruelty and future violent behavior is, I would say, sufficient cause for a negative reaction.

Posted by: Sir Craig | June 5, 2009 9:10 PM

To no one in particular:

For me, what tugs hardest on my heart is the cruelty shown to such innocence. (For any anti-choicers out there trying to read something into this statement: Sentient innocence.) This kitten was completely innocent, completely dependent, and completely trusting on the large lumbering bipeds to ensure its safety, health, and well-being. The biped known as Cherry violated that trust in a way no sane person could (or should) ever imagine.

I have seen similar cruelty in my 44 years, all done by people who went on to find larger yet no less vulnerable targets to direct their insane rage. One kid I knew in elementary school found sick pleasure in ripping the heads off newborn chicks; a couple years later he went on to bash a schoolmate's head in with a can of juice his mother had put in his lunch.

I've been an animal person all my life because h. sapiens to me is the only species that finds it possible to accept a measure of satisfaction in creating misery for others. Animals are honest beings, period: They will never sidle up to you with the intention of robbing you or taking your life (they tend to be very direct in that regard).

These feelings are not biologically evolutionary, they are societal. We place a premium on trust and honesty because both are so rare among our species, and our animal companions are the best reflections of us as people. How we treat them is a good indicator of how we treat each other. Cherry reminded us of the dark side with which we still must deal.

My three cats are my children, and I'm sure they wondered why daddy was crying as he hugged them all...

Posted by: Nova | June 5, 2009 9:11 PM

Such disregard for the horror, she thought of it as a joke... It is true that psychopaths often torture animals in their youth and move onto people later in life so this girl is very dangerous and needs a close watch after a long stay in a secure mental unit (not prison).

Posted by: GodlessHeathen | June 5, 2009 9:15 PM

I find this kitten incident deeply horrifying and disturbing, but not surprising, condsidering the fate of the ten billion animals killed for food each year in the US. As a vegan, I've looked into factory farm animal production, and this degree of cruelty is commonplace. I hope that everyone who feels outraged at the awful death of this kitten would extend their compassion to the other equally sensitive birds and mammals that may suffer their entire short lives to provide environmentally harmful, often unhealthful, unnecessary food.

This is a slaughterhouse worker's quotation from the book Slaughterhouse by Gail Eisnitz:
"Hogs get stressed out pretty easy. If you prod them too much, they have heart attacks. If you get a hog in the chute that's had the shit prodded out of him and has a heart attack or refuses to move, you take a meat hook and hook it into his bunghole (anus). You try to do this by clipping the hipbone. Then you drag him backwards. You're dragging these hogs alive, and a lot of times the meat hook rips out of the bunghole. I've seen hams — thighs — completely ripped open. I've also seen intestines come out. If the hog collapses near the front of the chute, you shove the meat hook into his cheek and drag him forward."

Ignore PETA's ridiculous antics. But do question how we can look at this poor kitten so differently from this terribly abused hog. Their nervous systems are like ours. Granted, this degree of cruelty does not happen to every slaughtered animal, but the worker Eisnitz interviewed assured her that it was commonplace. Other investigations have shown that slaughtering animals at high speeds, which is standard at large slaughterhouses, regularly results in living animals being skinned, boiled, or dismembered alive. The only thing that will put an end to these egregious cruelties is a boycott by consumers. Not partaking in the products of this awful industry is hardly self-righteousness, it's just a natural extension of our compassion for cats and dogs to other, quite similar animals.

Posted by: Tom | June 5, 2009 9:16 PM

It wasn't in the name of science this time, so that makes it wrong, eh? In your lab you shamelessly sever spinal cords of fish just to see what happens. How is this any different than putting a cat in an oven? The only difference is you do it in the name of research, while they did it in the name of vengeance. Both, however, have immoral conclusions. Hypocrite.

Posted by: genesgalore | June 5, 2009 9:19 PM

one sick human, who doesn't even deserve your recognition PZ humanoid.

Posted by: unGeDuLdig | June 5, 2009 9:21 PM

I'm convinced that the girls' horrible behaviour stems mainly from her thoughtless lack of empathy. In this moment she could be sitting in an interrogation room, being yelled at and wondering a) why she doesn't feel bad about what she's done (except for the annoyance of having been caught) and b) lacking the slightest clue about why she did it. It is almost a nice thing to say that she should suffer for her deed, because I assume that someone capable of such a heartlessness doesn't actually feel very much. Remember Lyndie Englands stupid, self-pitying face? It's about the same ballpark, just a few leagues further. We must acknowledge that our society tends to produce sadists and sociopaths, of whom we get to recognize just the extreme ones. In this scandals (also school shotings) we tend to get distracted from the coldblooded, alienated and sickening "normality" we all kind of live in.

Posted by: Anon | June 5, 2009 9:31 PM

It wasn't in the name of science this time, so that makes it wrong, eh? In your lab you shamelessly sever spinal cords of fish just to see what happens. How is this any different than putting a cat in an oven? The only difference is you do it in the name of research, while they did it in the name of vengeance. Both, however, have immoral conclusions. Hypocrite.

I have killed animals in labs; never once was the method "put in oven, turn to high". There are very clear standards; your ignorance of these is the first difference. Another difference is that of the cognitive capabilities of zebra fish vs. cats. Yet a third difference is context; I wonder how much science and human understanding was advanced by the slow death of this kitten...

Posted by: Laurel | June 5, 2009 9:33 PM

No, Benjamin, PETA doesn't advocate killing companion animals--that's why they hide their victims in dumpsters. Here, however, is what they do believe:

"The cat, like the dog, must disappear... We should cut the domestic cat free from our dominance by neutering, neutering, and more neutering, until our pathetic version of the cat ceases to exist."-John Bryant, Fettered Kingdoms: An Examination of a Changing Ethic, PETA 1982, p.15.

Spoken like a true cat lover, huh?

Posted by: JessSnark | June 5, 2009 9:36 PM

One fact in the story I didn't understand is that it said she was arrested by the ASPCA. I thought they were a private nonprofit, not a police force? How can they arrest somebody?

Posted by: AlexG | June 5, 2009 9:43 PM

Am I the only one who finds it ironic that us (mainly ) Atheists are so upset by this, but many Christians (and others) believe this and worse awaits us for eternity after we die?

Odd.

PS This is truly disgusting. I cannot imagine the mindset that would want to do this. Disgusting.

Posted by: Susan | June 5, 2009 9:46 PM

Cat rescuer here. In the rescue world, the most common statement heard and said by fellow rescuers is "I hate people." And we mean it.
"If a cat could be crossed with a man, it would improve the man, but deteriotate the cat. -- Mark Twain

Posted by: Robster, FCD | June 5, 2009 10:04 PM

I understand Anonymous is already on the case.

They are heartless except when it comes to kittens.

Posted by: SquidBrandon | June 5, 2009 10:09 PM

Perhaps the earlier posters should have included disclaimers with their posts?

*Disclaimer: Please excuse my irrational, visceral comments above. These were brought on by an empathy for certain defenseless animals, or more specifically their young. As this empathy may have evolved through natural selection, it is not real and therefore invalid. Please give me a moment so that I can transcend my inner irrationality to a more cerebral state of logic free from the cognitivie dissonance resulting from evolutionary baggage. Beep beep boop.

/snark

Posted by: JoshS, Official SpokesGay | June 5, 2009 10:15 PM

@Jermome

See this is interesting. And I'm a bit suprised about the style of replies so far. Instead of addressing the actual argument I put forward on it's merits (or lack of, if that's the case), we have so far seemed to stick to ad hominem. And I know most of you know better than that.

Fuck you. Are you even human?

Posted by: genesgalore | June 5, 2009 10:24 PM

so seriously einsteins, what don't you get about the FACT the we are in the midst of, at least, the "sixth" GREAT KNOWN EXTINCTION??? oh, that right, dinosaurs didn't "learn" to fly cus they didn't screw up the homeland.

Posted by: Max | June 5, 2009 10:29 PM

The bottom line: cruelty, evil, if you will, of this kind, whether the victim is a human or non-human animal, makes the world a worse place in which to live.

Get out there and balance things out. Do good.

Posted by: Steven Dunlap | June 5, 2009 10:34 PM

As I understand the evolution of empathy (others more knowledgeable I trust to correct me if I'm wrong) the empathy and affinity we have for animals that resemble babies results from a kind of spill-over empathy we have for human babies. Big eyes, a large head to body size ratio and some awkward behaviors qualify as "cuteness." There then exists a logical, evolutionary reason for the irrational and emotional reaction to the horror story. But a dry, logical explanation for the feelings does not invalidate them. Nor does it invalidate certain moral questions concerning harm to harmless, defenseless animals.

As for the difference between a cracker and the kitten, I find this a false comparison. No one (that I recall) on this blog derided or made light of the suffering of the scores of heretics and other people who Pontius Pilate ordered crucified (one of whom maybe was the person later called "Jesus" in Greek).

Another false comparison I found in the supposed equivalence of the way that some posters and PZ Myers treat the devout who come to post (or troll) here and the emotional reactions those individuals have to the treatment they receive. Important distinction: we do not go anywhere near their churches. We do not deride them or their beliefs in their churches, homes, schools or (speaking only for myself) their online forums. I'm reminded of the Monty Python "argument" skit in which a guy who paid to have an argument blunders into a room containing John Cleese instead. "Oh, you wanted an argument? This is abuse."

Certain of the devout attempt to hijack publicly funded science classrooms to turn them into pulpits. We do not try to take over their churches. If they did not try to impose their religious beliefs on the rest of us there likely would not be problem. If they are offended here, why do they keep coming back? Masochism? Recall the punchline in which the bear says to the hunter "you don't really come here to hunt, do you?"

Posted by: mas528 | June 5, 2009 10:36 PM

Apropos of nothing genesgalore said,

so seriously einsteins, what don't you get about the FACT the we are in the midst of, at least, the "sixth" GREAT KNOWN EXTINCTION??? oh, that right, dinosaurs didn't "learn" to fly cus they didn't screw up the homeland.

Do you realize what thread you posted to?
I guess not, since it has nothing to do with anything at all.

Posted by: JoshS, Official Spokesgay | June 5, 2009 10:46 PM

@ Dennis Loubet, #175

Dennis, it's a delight to see your name in here. If any Pharyngulites don't already listen to the rockin' podcast Dennis and the other Atheist Community of Austin guys put out, run, don't walk:

The Non Prophets

Posted by: Ktesibios | June 5, 2009 10:56 PM

After over 25 years of being owned by cats, all of whom were strays or abandoned when I adopted them, including a kitten who was found wandering on a road at the age of 2 1/2 weeks, all I can think after reading that story is:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Posted by: windy | June 5, 2009 10:59 PM

Jerome Haltom wrote

Basically my view on it is that of evolution's aim slightly off. We have genes that cause us to feel bad or wronged when certain triggers are hit. Such as a soft body. Certain facial features, large eyes, the status of being weak, etc. (...) The traits we value are equally present in fuzzy household pets.

and

Evolution made me care about my own cats, but didn't make me care so much about other people's cats. Probably to do with bonding. And that's just how it is.

You are contradicting yourself here. Those traits are present in other people's cats, as well. Maybe you should put a little more thought into your "thought games".

I personally don't feel much empathy towards people killing animals. I cannot come up with a logical reason for valuing the life of a kitten over the life of a chicken, for instance.

As if anyone's claiming anything like that? Burning a chicken to death would be bad, too.

Posted by: Crudely Wrott | June 5, 2009 11:03 PM

Whoops. Head hanging low.

Failure to read fully. A hazard of joining a thread late.

My humble apology, Azkyroth. A grateful wave to SquidBrandon.

* i was sure it was time to zig since i had lately zagged*

Posted by: ron | June 5, 2009 11:12 PM

guess what, animals that arent pets are able to suffer too. yet nobody cares about them at all. and PETA are CRAAAZY for actually pointing this out. (i am not a member, i even support culling white deer herds rampant here in PA.)

anyway, during the summer of michael vick becoming history's greatest monster, 1000s of cattle died from heat stroke. they baked alive while standing shoulder to shoulder in a mire of their own shit while being forced to eat crap their stomachs werent evolved to digest.

so i always get a kick when someone says, "how can anyone do that to an animal?" when they do it all the time by proxy.

Posted by: luna1580 | June 5, 2009 11:14 PM

Kseniya-

yes, she's 17. i don't personally think she deserves life without parole, but in the US you can join the army (with parental permission) at age 17, where they will provide you with a weapon and training to use it. we also let 17 year-olds drive cars and, in many states, choose to get married (usually with parental consent).

so, going by the standards of our society, 17 is plenty old to know that burning any sentient creature alive in a fucking oven is wrong. if fact, we'd expect our 7 year olds to (by and large) know that this was wrong and why.

unless this woman suffers from extensive physical brain damage and massive developmental delays, she was most assuredly old enough to make a rational decision about roasting people's pets alive.

Posted by: Cara | June 5, 2009 11:17 PM

What else can you say? That girl is already well on her way to being a sociopath.

I'd say she's there already.

This is absolutely horrific.

Posted by: luna1580 | June 5, 2009 11:19 PM

232 "the combustion byproducts probably asphyxiated the kitten before it even got into scratching."

unless it was an electric oven of course.

Posted by: windy | June 5, 2009 11:22 PM

Jerome:

Keep in mind that your reactions might themselves be the by product of evolution on the side of cute animals taking advantage of you. Your anger is caused specifically because cute fuzzy creatures have evolved to make you angry at these people. As a protection mechanism. Selfish.

Even Jonah Goldberg (!!!) understands how this type of reasoning is fallacious:

Why does canine affection have to be a trick or a con? After all, according to the very same logic, I love my wife and daughter because I have strong instinctive attachments for them grounded in my genes. But even if the genetic explanation is absolutely true, it doesn’t change the fact that I love my family.
Why should it be different with dogs? It’s not as if dogs have a Terminator-like computer screen inside their heads that says “run fake-love subroutine now” when their masters come home from work. Dogs don’t pose in front of the mirror practicing their tail-wags like lines from a script so they can make it convincing. If it is true of any living thing, it is true of dogs: They are what they are.

Posted by: Anon | June 5, 2009 11:27 PM

Ron, please, you are hurting your cause through hyperbole. "Baked alive" is usually metaphor--including your usage. Not with PZ's OP kitten.

There is very good reason to have humane conditions for cattle and other livestock; please do not dilute this by pretending it is more than what it is.

Cattle, swine, chickens, etc. can be treated inhumanely, and I fully believe that is a serious problem which should be addressed. None of that is the same thing as a kitten being killed in an oven. It is too easy to dismiss animal rights concerns as unwarranted; not all deaths are equal, and not all wrongful deaths are the same.

Whether or not cheeseburgers are immoral, what happened to this kitten is beyond anything I can conceive of as acceptable . We should, I hope, all (ok, except for the sociopaths) agree on that.

Posted by: Julia | June 5, 2009 11:31 PM

What a horrible way to die.

I volunteer regularly with a small animal rescue (rabbits, cavies, chinchillas, hamsters, etc... www.smallanimalrescue.org) and I wish I could say that type of behaviour was extremely rare, but unfortunately I've learned it's not, particularly for the "lesser" pets. For those that may be moved to action, you undoubtly have a local animal rescue that would be thrilled to have a little extra help in caring for animals until a 'forever' home can be found. Please consider helping out.

Posted by: Inky | June 5, 2009 11:32 PM

btw, applause to Cuttlefish #194.

Posted by: Citizen Z | June 5, 2009 11:43 PM

Jerome: Keep in mind that your reactions might themselves be the by product of evolution on the side of cute animals taking advantage of you. Your anger is caused specifically because cute fuzzy creatures have evolved to make you angry at these people. As a protection mechanism. Selfish. Even Jonah Goldberg (!!!) understands how this type of reasoning is fallacious: Why does canine affection have to be a trick or a con? After all, according to the very same logic, I love my wife and daughter because I have strong instinctive attachments for them grounded in my genes. But even if the genetic explanation is absolutely true, it doesn’t change the fact that I love my family. Why should it be different with dogs? It’s not as if dogs have a Terminator-like computer screen inside their heads that says “run fake-love subroutine now” when their masters come home from work. Dogs don’t pose in front of the mirror practicing their tail-wags like lines from a script so they can make it convincing. If it is true of any living thing, it is true of dogs: They are what they are.

They're called "companion animals" for a reason. No sane person keeps an octopus or a chicken as a companion. As a curiosity, maybe, but not a companion.

Posted by: Timebender13 | June 5, 2009 11:49 PM

I just don't understand what would compel a person to harm a helpless creature. I mean, I can understand killing insects because they are destructive pests. And also the killing of animals for food and other resources. But a kitten? NO!!!! Seriously, why would you do that? This girl needs help. Isn't killing small animals an early warning sign of a serial killer?

Posted by: DocAmazing | June 5, 2009 11:50 PM

Okay, this is somewhat OT, but I think it speaks to someone having a demonstrable lack of compassion: http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/06/obama-taps-anti-abortion-activist/

The opening grafs:

"President Barack Obama has tapped an anti-abortion activist to a senior Health and Human Services "faith-based" position just a week after the murder of prominent abortion doctor George Tiller.

Alexia Kelley is executive director of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good (CACG), and will head the Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships at the Department of Health and Human Services."

Lack of empathy...yeah...

Posted by: Dan S. | June 6, 2009 12:01 AM

Re: #22"

Posted by: Alex | June 5, 2009 5:38 PM
[link to anti-PETA website]

You certainly don't have to agree with PETA's ideology or tactics - I often don't, to say the least - but speaking as someone in an animal welfare-related field, let me just say that when it comes to this sorta stuff, you do want to pay attention to who's saying it, and why (and of course, how accurate it is, if that's accessible!) Alex's link, for example, is produced by an industry front group, the Center for Consumer Freedom, which has also gone after quite different animal organizations - they're currently attacking the Humane Society - as well as MADD, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, menu labeling laws, any sort of warning about mercury levels in fish, etc. . . . for the obvious reason, of course; such things reduce profits. (See for example this (older) NYTimes op-ed dissecting that website and "the interests it serves" , or the CCF's sourcewatch entry . To get another side of the story, PETA has a general response here (nb: graphic, painful pictures):

"If anyone has a good home, love, and respect to offer, we beg them: Go to a shelter and take one or two animals home. The problem is that few people do that, choosing instead to go to a breeder or a pet shop and not "fixing" their dogs and cats, which contributes to the high euthanasia rate that animal shelters face. Most of the animals we took in and euthanized could hardly be called "pets," as they had spent their lives chained up in the back yard, for instance. They were unsocialized, never having been inside a building of any kind or known a pat on the head. Others were indeed someone's, but they were aged, sick, injured, dying, too aggressive to place, and the like, and PETA offered them a painless release from suffering, with no charge to their owners or custodians. . . "

(As for the horrible story, I can't (or more accurately, it's probably best if I don't) say anything; I just hope, fwiw, that atomjack is right in #232. )

Posted by: Citizen Z | June 6, 2009 12:04 AM

""Yet you trash PETA, when this is the type of message they try to propagate???" Glucagon, it is a matter of public record that PETA would do away with all pet animals, as in KILL THEM. As a person owned by four cats I am nauseated by this." Lies. Plenty of PETA member are caretakers of dogs and cats. They encourage adopting rather than buying companion animals, and certainly do not want to exterminate everyone's animal friends.

Individual PETA members may own pets, even though PETA's official position is that "that it would have been in the animals' best interests if the institution of 'pet keeping'—i.e., breeding animals to be kept and regarded as 'pets'—never existed." And though saying "[they] do not want to exterminate everyone's animal friends" maybe be strictly, technically true, doesn't address PETA's gusto in killing the pets in their shelters.

I've actually met and known quite a few animal welfare professionals (I'm sure I've met ASPCA assistant director Joe Pentangelo, quoted in the article, and some point.) None of them has ever had anything nice to say about PETA. If you care about animals, I'd recommend the ASPCA, the same organization that arrested Cheyenne Cherry and provided evidence in the Michael Vick case.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | June 6, 2009 12:16 AM

I think you're the third person to fully understand what I'm saying! Yay! Unfortunately, it means that a good deal of people here are in fact NOT aware that they are being irrational. That's too bad!

Being horrified at the senseless, cruel death of a kitten is irrational. Thanks for telling us this. We obviously would never have known this until you were nice enough to inform us. Now kindly fuck off.

Posted by: Deiloh | June 6, 2009 12:22 AM

Slow to anger today... too tired. Immensely sad about the kitty.

I have a cousin that lacks empathy due to a chemical imbalance. She has to take medication for it and tends to land in jail anytime she skips doses. Don't know if this girl has the same thing but while she pays for the damage, I hope her family takes the time to have her tested.

Posted by: Susan | June 6, 2009 12:27 AM

To Kellogg #256
You are calling the killing of a kitten by burning it to death in an oven "foolish" or "childish???" You must not have learned English as your first language. Those words do not even begin to properly describe what this 17 year old did.......

Posted by: luna1580 | June 6, 2009 12:32 AM

Jerome Haltom-

as a final note, it's been noted in several studies that humans as a whole appear to be instinctively hardwired to find an emotional appeal and desire to protect any creatures with large rounded faces, large eyes, short noses and several other basic visual cues that remind us of our own infants. this effect is intensified if those critters are also small, warm, and dependent on us for their survival.

this instinctive desire -to protect human infants- has an obvious evolutionary advantage in helping those infants, and thus our species as a whole, survive. the fact that it can even be "falsely" triggered (in terms of aiding human reproductive survival) by non-human creatures doesn't prove it is "faulty" or "with sloppy aim" merely that it is strong enough that visual cues reading "baby" can override even our logic which tells us that a kitten living or dying means little to the survival of our own species. in short, it is yet another proof of evolution (which i realize you've expressed no desire to argue against).

so, if you need an answer from pure biology for why we like kittens, well, there you have it.

on the other hand, if you don't see why condemning a living creature to the pain of being roasted alive, is in and of itself (and when it won't even be serving as food or anything else we need for our human survival) wrong on an ethical level, then no one here can help you.

Posted by: Nominal Egg | June 6, 2009 12:37 AM

Unlike a lot of you, I'm not hugging my cats. Do you have cats that actually like that? Because mine don't it.

I do, actually. And he's always the one who initiates it.
My other cat, not as much.
I guess that just goes to show that not all cats are exactly the same, huh?

Posted by: ScienceCat | June 6, 2009 12:41 AM

Our part of the (unwritten) pact with domestic animals is that we owe them a reasonable life and a quick death when needed, as the price for controlling their lives. This is beyond vile - poor kitten :(. Why didn't she just steal the kitten and raise it herself or give it away if she didn't want this woman to have it? Her human victim would still have suffered but the kitten would not have. If she wanted to kill so badly (to punish her human victim?), why didn't she have the guts to pick a fast, humane method? Vicious, vicious coward!

As for those who think having empathy for a kitten that suffered horribly for *nothing* is somehow inconsistent with opposition to PETA - frak off. I can agree with the "love thy neighbour" bit without being Christian, too.

Posted by: Bride of Shrek OM | June 6, 2009 12:56 AM

"A kitten is a small thing in the world…but it seems to me that how we treat the small and helpless is a measure of how we see ourselves."

Huh. Yet you are pro-abortion. funny, that...

Congratulations for the biggest quantum leap of asshat logic I've seen so far this year. Take your attempt at moronic thread-highjacking and shove it troll.

Posted by: John Morales | June 6, 2009 12:57 AM

It is no exaggeration to say I find this appalling.

I'd like to claim it's inhuman, but it's not, is it?

I haven't read this thread, I shan't say more.

Posted by: Katie Joy | June 6, 2009 1:07 AM

This article has a slightly different wording, which completely throws any possible empathy out the window:

"She didn't want to hear the cat crying and scratching at the oven door," Pentangelo said of why Cherry turned on the oven.

She turned on the oven because she didn't want to hear the cat trying to get out. It wasn't a matter of leaving because the mewling made her feel guilty; she burned the kitten alive because its cries annoyed her.

Posted by: Mark | June 6, 2009 1:13 AM

Thought you might like to know she's on MySpace:
http://www.myspace.com/shortypopoff11

I'm sure she'd love to hear from you. Let her know what you thought of her throwing a kitten in an oven.

Posted by: rohit | June 6, 2009 1:20 AM

PZ, you yet again disappoint by being a hypocrite of sorts. A kitten is somehow more valuable to you than the chickens, cows, pigs who you indulge in eating...just because the kitten is cuter?

Posted by: luna1580 | June 6, 2009 1:25 AM

NoGurus-

"We don't feel sorry for starving people, we feel sorry for starving -- kittens. "

first off, you have no proof that the commenters here don't "feel bad" for human suffering, even if some humans appear not to care.

secondly, as i noted above, our particular affection for kittens appears to be instinctually tied to our desire to protect any small warm creature that has a face that triggers our instinct to protect human infants.

perhaps we lack this same purely biological drive to protect adult humans? (although a long history of many different societies choosing to help keep infirm or aged members alive may belie this assumption).

does it suck that many members of many human societies today seem to ignore/refuse to emotionally process great social, human evils like child abuse and genocide? of course. does it follow that the same individuals who are distressed at cruelty to a kitten are also the individuals who write off cruelty to other people? no.

in fact, it seems that most humans who want to protect children and animals want to protect adult humans from cruelty too. now, why this desire to protect our own isn't universal remains a mystery.

Posted by: Blake | June 6, 2009 1:33 AM

Wow, I never would've guessed that at a place like this, such a huge number of whinging, irrationally emotional shameless crybabies would come out of the woodwork over such a thing. Let's see, so far we have people calling for this girl to be burned alive with gasoline, thrown in jail for life and other such wacky solutions. While people who dare question the laughably infantile emotionalism in some the posts above, are deemed as unforgivable inhuman filth and invited to "kindly" fuck off. Nice reasoned, level headed arguments there.

Was what this girl did appallingly cruel and greatly disturbing? Yes. Does that mean you are now entitled to throw an apoplectic, bawling wankfest over it and refer to everyone who points this out as being a piece of inhuman shit? No, I'm afraid that makes you appear a silly twat. Approximately 20,000 cats and dogs were euthanized via lethal injection today alone, a not insignificant fraction of those likely did not die quick and painless deaths and suffered what could be at least somewhat comparable to dying in a hot oven over a period of probably not more than 10 minutes. Where's the outrage over this daily suffering on a massive scale? Your disproportionately large measure of concern should not lie with a single very dead kitten. It should lie with this girl, who by all accounts is displaying classic characteristics of psychopathic behavior. She needs serious psychological help right now, before she potentially causes harm to something more self-aware. In the words of Richard Dawkins, "something is faulty with this unit". Stop with the irrational, sentimental whimpering and focus on the real problem and its pragmatic solutions.

Posted by: luna1580 | June 6, 2009 1:37 AM

blake is a jerk who is too lazy to read all the comments. go away trolly-dude.

Posted by: Richard Hendricks | June 6, 2009 1:41 AM

My condolences to the pet owner for this senseless act of cruelty.

@Jermone - This type of mental masturbation is exactly why Coyne gives such little respect to evolutionary psychology. Why do you claim that humans-loving-young-fuzzy-animals is an evolutionary wrong? Given the human situation thousands of years ago when cats and dogs were first domesticated, isn't it obvious that any human who found a young dog and/or cat adorable, and was able to raise it to adulthood, would have a significant evolutionary advantage over non-animal lovers? I mean, wolves/dogs can offer many services to the average proto-man, being able to call on one at any time must have been "teh hotness" back in the stone age. And cats, while not as physically formidable as early dogs/wolves, would definitely be useful around the campfire against rodents, and even as low-level food providers. Humans and tribes able to tolerate cats definitely would have had an advantage over others who did not.
So there, take your evolutionary argument and stick it in your ear.

Posted by: Kseniya | June 6, 2009 1:53 AM

I don't know, Luna, I'd cut Blake a little slack on the ~ 280 comments. I haven't read them all, either. He may not be covering all the bases, but his points are valid, and for the most part, I agree. The kitten part of the story is sad and disturbing, of course, but I'm more worried about the perpetrator.

specially with the Jackass/Punk'd/Viva la Bam-generation.

Oh? Has their been an up-tick in cat-incinerations perpetrated by people under 25? I don't think so. We're dealing with a single 17 yr old female and her probable psychopathological issues. Both objectively, and as a member of the demographic you address, I don't think your generalization is valid or useful.

Posted by: Kseniya | June 6, 2009 1:59 AM

thusly making "cuteness" a feature of some pet animals that we have artificially selected for.

One word:

"Schnoodle"

:-)

Posted by: Sami | June 6, 2009 2:02 AM

As someone who had her (adult) cat tortured by some sicko and left screaming on her driveway (so we had to have her put down ourselves, by a vet who was traumatised herself, because she'd never seen such terrible injuries)...

... I hope the subhuman scum who did this feel the pain they deserve to feel.

I hope, too, that they realise how truly wrong their actions were. I hope they're tormented by guilt and self-loathing for the rest of their lives.

But I want them to suffer however that comes about. And I want them to suffer hard.

I know I keep posting here on the "As a Christian..." line. I know that saying this isn't me being a good Christian. Right now, I find it hard to live those ideals of Christian forgiveness, because I want them to burn. Not in hell. I want them to burn here, and now, in the real world, with every nerve screaming. And I want them to survive, and spend very long lives in a living hell of unceasing pain.

Because anyone who could do that, anyone who could set a kitten to die in agony and walk away?

Deserves it.

Posted by: Nominal Egg | June 6, 2009 2:03 AM

Sorry, PZ, I can't go for your easy play for the heartstrings.

Well, aren't you just the emotionally superior one.

PZ, you yet again disappoint by being a hypocrite of sorts. A kitten is somehow more valuable to you than the chickens, cows, pigs who you indulge in eating...just because the kitten is cuter?

False equivalence. The kitten was never intended to be eaten. Take this back to the PETA thread.

Posted by: Ichthyic | June 6, 2009 2:08 AM

">The evolution of cuteness

Posted by: Nominal Egg | June 6, 2009 2:15 AM

Why are they trying to determine the sex of the kitten? I mean the person owned a cat. There's a cat in the oven. And someone confessed to killing it. Is determining the sex really that important?

I was wondering that, too. Didn't the owner know the gender?
But then, maybe they just need to verify that it was, indeed, Tiger Lily.

Posted by: luna1580 | June 6, 2009 2:19 AM

Kseniya,

"Schnoodles"! i just googled them! cute!

my personal favorite of the dog variety are black-n-tan Pomeranians around 10 pounds each, love those dogs! my parents are on their second of the breed, and oh how i love her! and i myself are a chelonian enthusiast. turtles rock! (and they're not even warm and fuzzy...)

why do humans love pets? i don't know, but that doesn't make me love them any less...

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | June 6, 2009 2:21 AM

ungeduldig, you're still wrong. western civilization, with all its fuckuptedness, is still a lot less brutal, cruel, and dehumanising than what came before; and it is getting increasingly less so. you can say that such a mass-culture as we have it makes it easier for individuals to get lost and turn psychopathic, but maybe that's the price we have to pay for constantly increasing our "in" group and minimizing out "out" group.

Western civilization is not perfect and is full of flaws, but saying that it's getting worse is dishonest

Posted by: King of Ferret | June 6, 2009 2:22 AM

I do, actually. And he's always the one who initiates it. My other cat, not as much. I guess that just goes to show that not all cats are exactly the same, huh?

Yup.

Posted by: Ichthyic | June 6, 2009 2:32 AM

grr.

trying again...

The evolution of cuteness:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/03/science/03cute.html

Posted by: Alan Kellogg | June 6, 2009 2:35 AM

Katie Joy, #260

You do have such a need to be right.

Posted by: MaleficVTwin | June 6, 2009 2:36 AM

When I read this, I picked up my cat, hugged him and cried.

This is sick, and I really hope Ms. Cherry gets justice, but not the kind she's hoping for.

Posted by: Alan Kellogg | June 6, 2009 2:41 AM

Susan, #263

Yet you grossly underestimate the depths to which the foolish and the childish can go, because they are foolish or childish. Never trust a small child with weapons, because the child can not understand the harm the weapon can do.

Posted by: Scrabcake | June 6, 2009 2:44 AM

Oh man. I'm going to have to drink some warm milk and think happy thoughts in order to sleep tonight. Thanks for that. I'd really like to say I can't imagine the suffering that poor animal went through, but I can, and it makes me sick to my stomach.
How can you judge a psychopath? A person with no empathy. It's not like Cheyenne was there when they were handing out minds and was like "yeah, I'll take THAT one". She didn't ask for a lack of empathy or to be totally selfish.
It would be a hell of a lot easier if there was a devil. It would be so much easier if people like Cheyenne had just sold their souls to him and then we could say "oh, that person is an evil bastard and will rot in hell" and move on. I think the hardest thing about atheism for me was accepting that no, that kitten did not go to a better place. Yes, the person that killed it is evil, and there's no divine justice that's going to rain down on them. Plus that, how can they be truly evil if they never chose to be evil? There is no way this situation will ever not exist or be made right.

I think sometimes that religion is an easy and comforting way out of thinking about these problems that present a huge moral dichotomy: people who are evil but don't understand that they are or why. It's unpleasant and confusing to think of because the solution is simply accepting that at this point, there is none and that's a hard thing to do.

Posted by: luna1580 | June 6, 2009 2:45 AM

Ichthyic-

yea! your new link does work.

and confirm that humans love the "cuteness" because we are wired to do so.

Posted by: Katie Joy | June 6, 2009 2:48 AM

@ 309

Abnormal psychology is all about extremes. Everything from telling your parents you hate them to running away from home and/or having unprotected sex with strangers might fall within the normal range of "young and stupid." Cooking a kitten alive because its cries annoyed you isn't even in the same league.

Sure, I'm pretty damn sure I'm right about that.

Posted by: luna1580 | June 6, 2009 2:51 AM

Alan Kellogg 313-

but this particular case has nothing to do with "childishness" as the perpetrator of the cruelty was a 17-year-old-adult. if you doubt this conclusion please bother yourself to read al the comments before your own.

Posted by: Nominal Egg | June 6, 2009 3:00 AM

I'm curious as to how many people who are taken aback at the thought of baking a kitten to death are paradoxically fine with, say, a crawfish boil.

And I'm curious as to how so many people can still be missing the point. Cheyenne Cherry did not cook the cat in order to eat it. She tortured it to death because it annoyed her, and she didn't like the woman that loved it. Can you not understand the difference?
Seriously, if Ms. Cherry had gotten some kittens from her local shelter, taken them home, and made a casserole, we might still be horrified, but it would be debatable whether a crime had been committed.
If she had boiled the crawfish from her neighbor's fishtank, that's a crime.
Get it? No paradox.

Posted by: Noadi | June 6, 2009 3:10 AM

There is also a significant difference in A: the nervous system of a cat and a crawfish and b: dropping it into boiling water and slowly heating in an oven, a difference of a few seconds until death compared to possibly up to an hour until death (depending on how fast the oven in question heats up).

That's still beside the point as we're talking about a loved pet and the disregard not just for the cat's life and suffering but also for the owner. I might be disgusted if someone ate their own cat but that's my cultural bias and I'm aware of that, but that's much different than killing someone's pet. It's an attack on the owner as well as the animal.

Posted by: Don't Panic | June 6, 2009 3:16 AM

Sami@293: You're as broken as the girl in the story. If you are serious about what your wrote: Get help. Because I don't want you loose in my society if you honestly want to inflict such suffering on anybody.

Because anyone who could do that, anyone who could set a kitten to die in agony and walk away?

The same type of person who could write

[...]because I want them to burn. Not in hell. I want them to burn here, and now, in the real world, with every nerve screaming. And I want them to survive, and spend very long lives in a living hell of unceasing pain.

If this isn't just a passing flight of irrational rage that you recognize as pure fantasy that you really don't mean then you're are certainly as fucked up as this girl or the person who did that to your cat. But then again perhaps it's just me, I have a low threshold for torture [fantasies].

Heck, even if you only wished them to burn in hell and truly believed in hell (which I don't) I think you're a sicko.

And I hope this story will put paid to the fucking obnoxious slagging term "die in a fire". Fuck that. I've complained about that term on this blog before and people have blown me off, but ... screw that, it's just plain unacceptable.

I'm afraid this story didn't quite have the impact it had on some because bad as it was our local paper has been covering a story about a man who (for whatever reason) doused himself and his wife in gasoline and set it aflame. Killed them both and his 12 yr old son died of smoke inhalation; the 11 yr old & 6 yr old managed to get out.

Okay, now I've got to track down the cats and give them a good petting. Perhaps the dog will let me pet him as well (he, like the rest of our pets, is a shelter/stray animal and still has issues [cowers, looks scared] with me... though not with my wife.)

Posted by: rhonan | June 6, 2009 3:28 AM

PETA, you mean the organization that euthanizes 95% of the pets brought to it in the assumption that they'd find them good homes? The same organization that prefers to kill pets rather than transfer them to no-kill shelters in their area? The same organization that will, no doubt, compare my consumption of free-range chicken meat to the heartless bitch who roasted that kitten?

Posted by: Don't Panic | June 6, 2009 3:38 AM

On this particular issue, I have to agree with Alan Kellogg@328: a 17 yr isn't (necessarily) mature enough to fully understand the consequences of their actions or to control their impulses. Of course this varies from individual to individual, so those who disagree based solely on their own experiences should look at the research. For instance
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/july-dec04/brain_10-13.html and http://www.abqtrib.com/news/2007/mar/30/brain-doesnt-mature-until-20s-experts-say/ (mass media reports of research). That doesn't absolve the individuals, but it should be taken into consideration as a mitigating cofactor.

Posted by: Katie Joy | June 6, 2009 3:46 AM

I realize that normal people are capable of committing "really foul deeds." But normal people do not typically torture helpless animals because their cries are annoying and then show no remorse for doing so. That's textbook Antisocial Personality Disorder. There may be other psychological explanations, but they all fall under ABNORMAL in capital lettering.

Also: Don't infantilize young adults; the average 17-year-old is perfectly capable of empathy. Children far younger can be diagnosed with aggressive/violent disorders (Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Conduct Disorder). You obviously don't know the first thing about child development if you think a 17-year-old doesn't know exactly what they're doing when they put a small animal into an oven and turn the heat up. Even a child half that age knows what an oven does and can probably imagine pretty realistically what would happen to a living thing if it were put inside one.

Really, how old do you think someone needs to be before they understand that concept, provided they aren't mentally disabled?

Posted by: Gordon S | June 6, 2009 4:10 AM

I checked out 4chan /b/ earlier, they were extrapolating the location of Cheyenne Cherry's apartment by comparing photos from her myspace page with skylines in Google Maps.

When I was there, they had narrowed down her building, found her (out of service) phone number, were working on hacking her myspace account, had Ms. Hernandez' phone info and were discussing asking her for Cherry's contact info, and lining up a few thousand free catalogues and UPS boxes, pizza deliveries and organizing a 24/7 phone harassment campaign.

They were also saying a whole lot of racist BS, which kind of tarnished the hilarity of it all.

Posted by: Muffin | June 6, 2009 4:26 AM

That's seriously sick, yes.

I'm a staunch opponent of things like the death penalty myself, usually, but animal cruelty is one area where I might actually make an exception. It WOULD be satisfying to execute them in the same way.

Oh well. I guess we still can't help but choose to not sink to this same level, can we?

Posted by: Katie Joy | June 6, 2009 4:38 AM

I can't condone any kind of vigilante justice, even (or especially) /b/'s style. I recall the kids who thought it was funny to post youtube videos of themselves punching and throwing their cats around earlier this year; they received numerous death threats and were even visited at their home by angry /b/tards. That is NOT acceptable.

There was also a notable difference between that case and this one - the anonymous posters of /b/ were the ones who actually figured out the identities of those kids and contacted their local sheriff's office. Had /b/ not been involved, those kids might never have been caught. In this case, Ms. Cherry has already been identified and has confessed. She's been charged.

If she's found guilty, I hope she receives the maximum sentence for everything she's charged with - aggravated cruelty to animals, burglary, arson, reckless endangerment and criminal mischief. If she's found innocent due to a mental disease/defect, I hope they lock her up and keep her in treatment for as long as possible under the law.

The final word on this case probably won't be particularly satisfying for those who hate her for what she's done, but the people who will make these decisions will be a hell of a lot more informed about the case than we are.

Posted by: Angel Kaida | June 6, 2009 4:53 AM

I can't, in good conscience, choose (e) (or, for that matter, (b), (c), or (d)), Don't Panic, because... grammar!

I'm just messing with you, seriously - it's 2 a.m. where I am, and I know my own grammar's getting a little dodgy. ;)

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 6, 2009 5:08 AM

However, for those of you that worry about what the kitten felt, it was o a lot shorter duration than you might think- the combustion byproducts probably asphyxiated the kitten before it even got into scratching.

Unless it was electric. :(

Posted by: Don't Panic | June 6, 2009 5:14 AM

Sorry about the grammar. Yes, I noticed it after I posted. It's 4:15am and I should have been in bed long ago.

Now if only the dog would stop looking so mournful and desolate (my wife's been gone for two days) and the cats would stop running around like kooks (how can two cats under 10 pounds each make it sound like a herd of elephants stampeding down the hallway) then I could probably try to go to sleep.

Posted by: Rorschach | June 6, 2009 5:32 AM

I'm with the commenter @ 334 here,
I dont quite see why we needed to know this.
Its not exactly new that teenagers can do cruel and stupid things,even without being sociopaths.

@ 344,

I have been arguing that this girl is most likely mentally ill pretty much from the beginning

Then you dont seem to know an awful lot about the definition of "mentally ill".

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 6, 2009 5:36 AM

Yet you grossly underestimate the depths to which the foolish and the childish can go, because they are foolish or childish. Never trust a small child with weapons, because the child can not understand the harm the weapon can do.

We're talking about a 17 year old, not a small child. I didn't realize neuroscience or the police state had progressed to the point where everyone could be given a mandatory lobotomy removing, with perfect precision, all but the most superficial understanding of human developmental stages and their own experiences of living through said developmental stages, once they reached a certain age.

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 6, 2009 5:51 AM

Then you have the claim that 17 year olds are mature adults. To quote an earlier commenter, "Bull fucking shit." Parents of 17 year olds, even of 20 year olds, can tell you of just how not mature their child is. Of how stubborn, thoughtless, inconsiderate, immature their child is. Young adults are noted for doing things that are foolish and childish. That's how young adults are, and all your protests shan't change that.

[Citation needed]

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 6, 2009 5:54 AM

On this particular issue, I have to agree with Alan Kellogg@328: a 17 yr isn't (necessarily) mature enough to fully understand the consequences of their actions or to control their impulses.

(Excepting, perhaps, severe specific delusional disorders, which don't seem to be the case here)...NO SEVENTEEN YEAR OLD WHO CAN DRESS HERSELF IS THE SLIGHTEST BIT CONFUSED AS TO WHETHER OR NOT PLACING A KITTEN IN AN OVEN AND TURNING IT ON WILL CAUSE AN INNOCENT CREATURE TO SUFFER AND DIE IN HORRIBLE AGONY.

People who insist against all evidence and reason on ascribing the mental and emotional traits of preschoolers to late-teenagers are that stupid, maybe. Teenagers themselves...generally not.

Posted by: Josh | June 6, 2009 6:01 AM

Well, I really fucking wish I hadn't read this goddamn thread.

Posted by: Kel | June 6, 2009 6:10 AM

And anyone who doubts that teenagers/young adults can do unbelievable stupid/cruel/immature things,is invited to spend a Saturday night in Emergency with me.

Australian society can be really fucked up at times, especially when alcohol is involved. Some people just can't handle their drink.

Posted by: dab | June 6, 2009 6:14 AM

Animal cruelty riles me the most, besides religion. I don't know enough to have an opinion on PETA, but I'll say that I'm a vegetarian/almost-vegan, and point out that equally as psycopaths et al. often have a history of animal abuse, so too are slaughterhouse workers some of the most stressed and unhappy around. No direct analogy, but perhaps related.

And while we're on the subject of heartbreaking absences of empathy, read it and rage:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/05/abortion-america-george-tiller

In a rational world, there would exist something to preemptively prevent this man from entering politics. But unfortunately, this is the opposite: a world in which the Republican Party and their network of propagandists exists. (I live in Britain, and am ever greatful that our Conservatives, however flawed, little resemble the GOP.)

Posted by: Katie Joy | June 6, 2009 6:31 AM

Well, let's have a look at DSM-IV-TR, shall we?

A. There is a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others occurring since age 15 years, as indicated by three (or more) of the following:

1. failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest
2. deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure
3. impulsivity or failure to plan ahead
4. irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults
5. reckless disregard for safety of self or others
6. consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations
7. lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.

B. The individual is at least age 18 years.

C. There is evidence of conduct disorder with onset before age 15 years.

D. The occurrence of antisocial behavior is not exclusively during the course of schizophrenia or a manic episode.

Other than the fact that the girl is a few months shy of 18, and we don't know whether she has a history of this sort of behavior (which is a very important factor, I admit, but also one that is often concealed when the perpetrator is a minor), how much of this criterion would you say she meets?

The big one is the lack of remorse. Normal people do not suddenly decide to cause excruciating pain to an animal, causing its death, and then feel nothing.

I obviously cannot say that this girl has (or, technically, "will" have) APD. This is one snapshot, albeit a pretty powerful one, of this girl's life and behavior. I do, however, feel that it IS likely that she is mentally ill, and that the behaviors she has exhibited do not fall within the range of normal teenage behavior.

Tell me: how many teenagers do you see that have purposefully caused significant injury or death to someone with no provocation and then felt no remorse for what they've done? I'm not talking about a fight that spun out of control; I'm talking about a teenager who decided he was going to torture or kill someone weaker than himself/herself, did it, and then couldn't care less that he'd done such a thing.

(Yes, I realize that this victim was a cat, not a person, and I'm fully aware that this makes it a less severe crime. Given that sociopaths often start with animal victims and work their way up to targeting humans, I don't think this is an inappropriate question.)

Posted by: Don't Panic | June 6, 2009 6:33 AM

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 6, 2009 5:58 AM

Wishing mental torment on those you detest isn't any better [...]

Those who would be shown compassion must show it to others.

Sorry, but that's not how it works in my moral framework. I try to be compassionate, understanding, etc. no matter how the other person is. You're an "eye-for-an-eye" person, huh? You've struck me over the years as better than that. Yes, in the heat of battle or the flush of righteous fury I can see how those baser responses come to the fore. But I thought such bloodthirst was an Old Testament thing (the NT being more passive aggressive with "hell" and such) and that we'd as empathetic individuals had move beyond that.

Again none is this to say the act wasn't vile and thus making it clear that the girl is a danger to society.

Posted by: Dark Jaguar | June 6, 2009 6:41 AM

If my name is not enough indication, I'm a cat person. Some like squids (and when I see one open a bottle I note there's a lot to like there), but I'm solidly cat family and I always have been.

A couple years ago I lost a persian cat to a common issue that breed has, kidney related. The blood test showed a number of toxins in his system, far more than he could handle, as his kidneys had been slowly failing. I hadn't noticed until that day how bad it had gotten, but the vet who himself didn't realize anything was severly wrong (understandable considering how fast it hits when it does) explained afterwards that there's no treatment.

I had cared for that cat since we adopted it as a kitten. I'd had it since I was a kid for a good 14 years. That cat was friendly to everyone around it and almost never had cause to hiss at anyone. It wouldn't suspect a human of any ill intent and just wanted attention. Every person that met him always told me how nice a cat he was. I've been told whenever I wasn't home, that cat would search all over the house looking for me and meowing until I returned. It got in a habbit of meowing at me if I didn't go to bed when it was used to, or if I slept in. That thing was like another part of myself, as is the way when a creature like that becomes so familiar. When it died, it hit me hard and I didn't really feel like myself for weeks. I'd walk into rooms and catch myself expecting to see that cat around. Even just thinking about him is making my throat close up.

I've gotten over the feeling of loss, but every now and then I remember him and the good times. The main thing that got me past his death, as any belief in the afterlife couldn't help, was the knowledge that I gave him the best life I could, and that for the vast majority, he was happy. At the very end, I was with him and until he lost conciousness he was looking right back at me and I'm pretty sure to him it just felt like going to sleep next to me like he always does.

Richard Dawkins has a speech about how of all the possible ways for life to exist, it surely dwarfs the sum total of all possible lives that actually have and will ever exist by such a staggering amount that just us existing here, concious and aware of the world around us, is a small statistical miracle in and of itself, that while we may not live forever, that we are able to live at all while so many possible life forms will never get that chance is something worth being happy about every day as long as you can get the most out of that one chance that will never come again.

This person... she decided without even thinking about it to take one life, a life that had the incredibly unlikely opportunity to exist, a life that had barely started to exist and was going to enjoy with it's human owner for as full a life as a cat can hope for, snuffed out far too early. But, that's not enough. Far worse than that, the last moment of awareness were spent in horrible agony and pain, in suffering. It winked out of existance forever with no companion, no comfort, only pain and fear. THAT was the end to such a short life, and for what? As a funny prank?

This person who did this, hard to describe. I have nothing but sympathy for the two victims here, the kitten and the owner. I can't even empathize with that sort of end, but my mind is trying even as horrific as it is. I don't imagine killing or torturing this person. That won't get the message across and I'm not the sort who imagines hurting people, though she might be. But, I couldn't help but imagine just now forcibly implanting a chip in her brain that forces her to have nightmares every night where she's the kitten watching herself shove her in that oven, herself as a frightening alien creature she can't stop.

It's an unhealthy thing for me to think about, but I can't stand the thought of this sort of end. It makes me happy to think that my cat died in relative comfort, and horrified to think of him instead having been burned alive when I wasn't around by some sociopathic bully.

Posted by: Katie Joy | June 6, 2009 6:46 AM

Yes,thats my point. Your feelings are irrelevant.

Yep, and so are yours... and probably also those of everyone else here.

I find it ludicrous to believe that a person who tortures little housepets to death (and, with no guilt whatsoever, rationalizes it by saying that they were an annoyance) should be considered mentally healthy.

2.1% of the adult population has APD; this is not an especially uncommon disorder.

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck...

Posted by: Rorschach | June 6, 2009 6:50 AM

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck...

Well,I woundnt want you as my Psychiatrist,thats for sure.

I dont want to come across as grumpy,but people are way too quick with their judgements of others,and fall for the temptation to put people into drawers,or base decisions on "feelings",its easier that way.But not good practice.And I dont like it.

Posted by: cyan | June 6, 2009 6:53 AM

Don't panic:

"At least recognize that you're fantasizing and venting and give indications that you aren't truly serious."

Why would you assume that they do not recognize this?

I assume that by commenting about one's gut reaction on this girl's action on this blog that the commenter recognizes this and those readers it realize this, without having to explicitly state that they know the difference between thought and action and assuring everyone that they will not carry out what they have briefly thought about.

Venting in words is not "just as bad" as doing a thing, and venting is what people here are doing, aware of what they are doing. Part of my comment at 185.

If you have not been implying to commenter's here that their initial gut reaction and immediate thoughts when confronted with cherry's actions are on par with her actions, then, yes, I am not comprehending your phrases.

Posted by: Kel | June 6, 2009 6:58 AM

Nothing more than offer a possible explanation, or at least part of one (note: explanation =/= justification).

Why do you need to explain it?

As for what it does for me: well, it supports my belief that purposefully torturing and killing baby animals and then thinking back on it without so much as a pang of discomfort is not actually a normal part of growing up - which a considerable number of people here actually seem to think it is.

This does not follow.

Tell me, why are you playing mommy?

Because my ovaries dropped last night.

Posted by: Rorschach | June 6, 2009 7:01 AM

@372,

well, it supports my belief that purposefully torturing and killing baby animals and then thinking back on it without so much as a pang of discomfort is not actually a normal part of growing up - which a considerable number of people here actually seem to think it is.

Please dont misrepresent what people say here,it was a decent discussion sofar,keep it like that.

That's why I'm "playing doctor." Tell me, why are you playing mommy?

Oops,Kel has hit a nerve..:-)

Posted by: Rorschach | June 6, 2009 7:08 AM

374 shifting goalposts:

Would that be a "feeling" drawer, or is what she ACTUALLY fucking DID objective enough for you?

I initially commented on your claim that you could determine from the information available that she was mentally ill,and I expressed doubt about that and cautioned against it.
We agree that she killed an animal without remorse.

Posted by: Rorschach | June 6, 2009 7:12 AM

Please tell me where the misrepresentation is.

Thinking teenagers are easily capable of immature/cruel acts without regard for consequences =|= thinking it is a normal part of growing up

Posted by: Katie Joy | June 6, 2009 7:19 AM

Thinking teenagers are easily capable of immature/cruel acts without regard for consequences =|= thinking it is a normal part of growing up

Well, what percentage of teenagers would you estimate it would be "easy" for? And what exactly does "normal" mean to you, if not "easily" done by a healthy person?

Posted by: Rorschach | June 6, 2009 7:22 AM

Yes,you said:

I do, however, feel that it IS likely that she is mentally ill

And I pointed out that feelings are not a good tool to judge whether someone is mentally ill,especially if you dont have enough information about that person.

Posted by: Rorschach | June 6, 2009 7:26 AM

@ 381,

And what exactly does "normal" mean to you, if not "easily" done by a healthy person?

Seriously,are you dense or something? Is this a language problem? Which part of "normal part of growing up" is so difficult to understand?
I have to go and work all night,so bye for now,might pop in later if it stays civil at work.

Posted by: aillurophile | June 6, 2009 7:31 AM

[nope, sorry, I'm not going to encourage vigilante action. Addresses and personal info deleted. --pzm]

Posted by: Jam | June 6, 2009 7:32 AM

This kind of cruelty is nurtured, not bred. The reason this sort of story shocks us as humans is because this sort of cruelty is not in our basic nature.

If cruelty were human nature we wouldn't care about it when we heard it. Even the girl who did the horrible deed was driven from the place by the cries of the animal.

I'm more concerned about the culture in which the girls grew up than I am with condemning the children it produced. We as a species have a serious problem if we allow our offspring to be raised like that.

Posted by: Katie Joy | June 6, 2009 7:43 AM

Hey, guess what? Cheyenne Cherry's done a LOT of "jokes."

The teen accused in a Bronx kitty killing was busted last year in the armed dog-napping of a teacup Yorkie, police said.

Cheyenne Cherry's boyfriend snatched the pooch from a woman in a Bronx park last June after holding a BB gun to her forehead, police said.

Days later, Cherry, 17, had the nerve to send friends to show up with the dog when a $500 reward was posted, the pooch's owner said. "She's evil," Johan Castro, 23, said.

Despite her June 2008 arrest for larceny and extortion, along with two other busts, Cherry was released without bail after being charged with letting a friend's kitten die inside a 200-degree oven.

"They wonder why this little girl doesn't learn right from wrong," Castro said. "If she's willing to kill a cat and steal my dog, what else will she do? She thinks she can beat the system."

Cherry said little Tiger Lily was killed during "a practical joke" - the same excuse she gave for shoving a gun in the robbery victim's face last year, cops said.

"It was just a joke," Cherry said after her arrest for robbing a man of his iPod at gunpoint. She pleaded guilty to robbery and got five years probation.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/06/06/2009-06-06_cheyenne_cherry_teen_accused_of_burning_cat_in_oven_was_busted_in_2008_in_armed_.html#ixzz0HeJXukPl&C

Sounds like a normal kid.

Posted by: dab | June 6, 2009 7:54 AM

Well, her MySpace sure wasn't predictable . . .

Leave it to the 'gangsta' and 'bling bling' cultures to fuck kids up (or anything that encourages one to worship self-image and emulate pathetic role models). In Britain we have the chavs/neds, for whom drinking by the canal and starting fights with strangers to prove that they're tough seems to outweight any other goals they could have in life.

If it wasn't for the environmental devastation, impending food crisis, my misanthropy, Republicans, etc. -- I'd still be resolutely against having a child, for the simple reason that it would be so difficult to keep them away from every poisonous influence in the world, particularly consumer culture and the incessant pressure to compete. "Get better stuff than the other kids" soon becomes "Stab/shoot the other kids" Between this, environmental collapse and the rise of insane fundamentalism, it seems we're fucked.

Posted by: KI | June 6, 2009 8:12 AM

I can't say what I want to because it is hateful and wrong to wish those sorts of things on other beings, no matter how much they deserve to be culled from the herd.

Posted by: Salamander | June 6, 2009 9:23 AM

Factory farm animals are treated terribly as well.

And not only chickens.

Perhaps, given your recent post on the issue, it is only immoral if it is cute...

Posted by: Alex | June 6, 2009 9:51 AM

As a resident of Florida, I have desensitized myself to animal violence. Indeed, I have to put down tens of mosquitoes a night when they're thick.

Posted by: Salamander | June 6, 2009 10:09 AM

Mosquitoes are not believed to be sentient.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | June 6, 2009 10:31 AM

Mosquitoes are not believed to be sentient.

Neither are you for trying to hijack the thread. Go over to the PETA thread where it belongs.

Posted by: Kel | June 6, 2009 10:46 AM

Mosquitoes are not believed to be sentient.

And they are not believed to be very tasty or nutritious either...

Posted by: Salamander | June 6, 2009 10:48 AM

Neither are you for trying to hijack the thread. Go over to the PETA thread where it belongs.

Someone who clearly doesn't understand what sentience entails.

The universe I'm born into requires that we eat to live. So I don't torture myself about it because it's pointless to do so. Attempting to make eating things "moral" is silly; you wind up backing yourself into a position where the only clearly "moral" thing to do is kill yourself. (Which won't inhibit bacteria from eating you)

1. We must eat to survive but most of us can choose not to eat meat and still survive. Indeed, the meat most of us eat requires far more resources than veggies.

2. Eating clearly is a moral thing if it impacts upon other sentient beings. To eat an infant would be immoral?

3. That bacteria do not defer from "eating" you is irrelevant. They are not sentient or rational and cannot make the choice. Besides, once dead, what is the concern with such a situation.

Posted by: Salamander | June 6, 2009 10:50 AM

Mosquitoes can suck a cow dry in a matter of minutes. I saw it on the discovery channel.

Posted by: Nominal Egg | June 6, 2009 10:56 AM

Mosquitoes are not believed to be sentient.

And they are not believed to be very tasty or nutritious either...

Now, if they were mesquite-O's, this thread would be hijacked in an entirely different direction.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | June 6, 2009 11:00 AM

From the link Katie Joy gave in #391

In a cruel twist to the case, a Brooklyn retiree who shares a last name with Cherry is getting threats after someone mistakenly listed her number on a Web posting about the cat slaying.

"They're all saying, 'You'll burn in hell,' 'Who the hell do you think you are?'" Bernadette Cherry, 72, said of the 75 calls from cat lovers.

Okay, /b/ folks, time to pack it in. You're harassing the wrong woman.

Posted by: Medusa | June 6, 2009 11:04 AM

This sad, sad story of the abuse of a kitten has me in tears this morning.

Cherry and her "friend" are sick, and, as someone else posted,budding psychopaths.

Lock them up before they hurt any other creature with their sick "jokes." Next time, it may be a small human being they "play" with.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | June 6, 2009 11:05 AM

Don't worry Salamander, since you are intent on hijacking this thread, you will be mocked. After all, you have no other purpose in life except to be laughed at.

What's the difference between Salamander and a mosquito? The mosquito scored higher on the IQ test.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | June 6, 2009 11:06 AM

Mosquitoes are not believed to be sentient.

And they are not believed to be very tasty or nutritious either...

Flies, on the other hand, are supposed to be really good. Why else would so many people go fly fishing? (Although filleting them would be a pain.)

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | June 6, 2009 11:11 AM

Katie Joy, mindless animal cruelty IS very much within the range of things sane teenagers are capable of (one example would be rural teens playing the roadkill game, trying to run critters over with their cars). Stuffing someone's pet into an oven however would qualify as premeditated animal cruelty, unless the girl was on some serious drugs; and I REALLY don't think that's anywhere within the range of normal.

Posted by: Kevpod | June 6, 2009 11:15 AM

"It's easily reconciled. The octopus was killed humanely and for food. It was also quite dead when tenderized and cooked."

Then just so I'm clear: If the kitten had been stabbed between the eyes, its body beaten against a rock and then eaten, we'd all be OK with that?

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | June 6, 2009 11:19 AM

The only maker of straw men is Salamander. But then, that is all True Believers™ do.

Posted by: Kel | June 6, 2009 11:25 AM

Kel, who is alleging a moral equivalence?

You are saying that are at least analogous, and that is absurd for the same reasons. They are not analogous in the slightest and anyone who has even more than an infantile moral development would not dare compare the two.

Posted by: Salamander | June 6, 2009 11:26 AM

Max,

NATURALISTIC FALLACY.

We can reason.

Posted by: Salamander | June 6, 2009 11:33 AM

Nominal Egg,

1. Why are you quoting the words of another at me?

(The question to Kel was only an attempt to establish that I am not alleging a moral equivalence.)

Despite this failure to acknowledge that I am not and have never alleged a moral equivalence you completely misconstrue the statement. The commenter is not denying that there is a difference. They are merely pointing out that suffering is involved in both instances. And, I presume, that they believe it to be wholly unnecessary. They never said there is no difference.

Posted by: Salamander | June 6, 2009 11:36 AM

Kel, does each instance not entail unnecessary suffering? Factory farming involves net suffering far in excess of the net suffering from the abuse of domestic animals.

Posted by: Matt Penfold | June 6, 2009 11:43 AM

I wonder if DavidCOG is confusing PETA for the RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals).

The RSPCA is not like PETA.

Posted by: Nominal Egg | June 6, 2009 11:45 AM

Salamander,
Your post @ #397:

Factory farm animals are treated terribly as well.

And not only chickens.

Perhaps, given your recent post on the issue, it is only immoral if it is cute...

I inferred an attempt at equivalence from this.
If I misunderstood you, that's not entirely my fault.

Posted by: Matt Penfold | June 6, 2009 11:54 AM

"PETA may be different in your country, but in this case the Yanks do know what is going on in our neighborhood. And it isn't pretty."

PETA operates in the UK but has no substantial support as far as I can tell.

The leading animal charity here is the RSPCA, which is active in a number of areas. It operates rehoming centres for pets andclinics where those unable to afford vets bills can get their animals treated for free. It also operates farm welfare standards, so is not opposed to the human comsumption of meat. It also has been granted the right to investigate and prosecute in animal cruelty cases, and it has a good track record in doing so.

Posted by: Salamander | June 6, 2009 11:58 AM

Nominal Egg,

I think that someone who roasts a kitten alive is likely to be a sociopath (although in this instance perhaps it can be excused somewhat by appealing to youthful folly of someone very excitable?).

Someone working in a factory farm is not likely to be a sociopath (although incidences of extraordinary cruelty do occur relatively frequently - perhaps only as a result of the opportunity at their disposal).

In both instances (1. the torture of a kitten 2. the mass production of meat in factory farms) unnecessary suffering is involved.

I would not condemn the factory farmer in the same way I would condemn the torturer of the kitten.

However, both instances involve entirely unnecessary suffering.

The actions are not morally equivalent but they are analogous in this respect.

Furthermore, I believe the factory farms to be a source of far more suffering than the occasional abuse of a cute domestic animal.

Posted by: Nominal Egg | June 6, 2009 12:03 PM

To address this question from Salamander:

Nominal Egg,

1. Why are you quoting the words of another at me?

Because your use of the terms "red herring" and "strawman" imply that nobody makes arguments of moral equivalence, especially when these comments are on a thread about the sadistic murder of someone's beloved companion.
So I quoted mishcakes @362 to prove you wrong.

One of us does not know what a strawman is, and I'm pretty sure it's not me.

Posted by: KemaTheAtheist | June 6, 2009 12:11 PM

This type of thing is just scary. I almost threw up and it brought tears to my eyes. I was shot in the leg a few years ago and even that didn't make me cry.

The utter lack of indifference makes my head hurt because I simply can't comprehend that type of cognitive failure.

I remember at age 3 I caught a little grass snake with my brother and we were going to keep it as a pet, but we accidently hurt it (or throught we did) when we lost it in the garage and may have accidently hurt it when moving a ladder out of the way. Now I'm unsure if I had really hurt it or not because it was so long ago and I doubt I had the ability to tell if the snake really was hurt or not, but I cried because I thought I had hurt it. I immediately took it back to where we found it and let it go.

Such a deplorable excuse for a human being. To lack the simply empathy capable of a 3 year old is just incomprehensible to me. I hope she's never given the opportunity again to commit such acts of depravity.

Posted by: Nominal Egg | June 6, 2009 12:14 PM

I think that someone who roasts a kitten alive is likely to be a sociopath (although in this instance perhaps it can be excused somewhat by appealing to youthful folly of someone very excitable?).

Absolutely not. No excuse other than psychotic behavior.

I would not condemn the factory farmer in the same way I would condemn the torturer of the kitten.

Than why mention it at all here? Take it to the PETA thread.

However, both instances involve entirely unnecessary suffering.

How would you define "necessary" suffering, and who gets to decide?

Furthermore, I believe the factory farms to be a source of far more suffering than the occasional abuse of a cute domestic animal.

Your concern is noted. And irrelevant to this thread.

Posted by: Nominal Egg | June 6, 2009 12:26 PM

Until you acknowledge that the suffering as a result of factory farms is immoral and unnecessary I cannot take you seriously.

I'll grant you unnecessary, but not immoral.
The only reason cows even exist in their current form is to be a food source for humans (am I wrong about this?). Should these animals be killed in the quickest, least painful ways possible? Yes. Are current methods ideal? No. Can they be improved? Yes. Should all humans give up eating meat? No.

Is it fair to compare the cattle industry to the sadistic torture of kittens for fun? FUCK NO!!1!!eleven!!

Posted by: Kel | June 6, 2009 12:31 PM

Factory farming involves net suffering far in excess of the net suffering from the abuse of domestic animals.

Okay, lets run with this argument.

Firstly, do you think it is less moral to kill a cat for pleasure than to slowly kill a cat if one was going to eat it afterwards? There would be more suffering with the latter choice than there would be with the former choice, but it would be hard to argue that killing for food is in any way less moral that killing for pleasure.

Secondly, there are billions of people who are starving around the world - those who have barely enough food to survive. Surely the net suffering of our own species outweighs the net suffering of our livestock - after all, we have a higher capacity to suffer.

Furthermore, the livestock we eat now live in relative comfort. They do not have to be worried about picking off predators or searching for food to survive - we provide them with both food and protection. In terms of net suffering, they suffer a lot less under our stewardship than if they were battling for survival in nature. Red in tooth and claw and all that jazz.

So there you go, I don't buy your net suffering argument, because it feels nothing more than a misguided attempt to condemn one aspect of our relationship with the rest of nature while ignoring all the other components that show our relationship is beneficial for them. We are two things: moral creatures and powerful creatures. We have the ability to feel right and wrong, while at the same time we can act on it. That gives us the capacity to manipulate nature to our will, and the foresight to understand the consequences.

Animal abuse is a whole different matter to talking about the implications of using food for harvest. To even bring them up in the same breath is baffling, it seems to fuel the purpose of feeling self-righteous about being a vegetarian / vegan as opposed to showing there is a link between the two.

Posted by: Nominal Egg | June 6, 2009 12:38 PM

I would suggest that the chicken wings were the cause of more cruelty than the kitten in the oven. The argument that we're evolved to be omnivores is bullshit.

And you would be wrong. Dietary requirements are not bullshit. If you still do not see the difference between sadistic torture and feeding, then I feel sad for you.
Hint: context is not irrelevant.

With that said, it's time to go enjoy a lovely Saturday afternoon, so I will not be responding for a while.
(If ever, depends on far this hijack goes)

Posted by: Citizen Z | June 6, 2009 12:51 PM

#432:

As a Brit, I was puzzled when I first saw the apoplexy that is produced in most Americans when PETA are mentioned. I've seen the same claims over and over again by Americans - "PETA want to kill your pets", "PETA kill puppies instead of finding them new homes", etc.
It's bullshit. Simply not true.

Then perhaps you'd like to explain why the live release rate of PETA shelters are so low. I'll repeat the link I gave in comment #257. It has footnotes. Do you dispute the numbers obtained by the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services? Or the reporting of San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra J. Saunders?

Perhaps you'd like to take a look at community reports from shelters being supported by a legitimate animal welfare group? Please explain the disparity in the numbers.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | June 6, 2009 12:56 PM

Salamander is a True Believer™. Nothing matters except to stretch the truth, fabricate the truth, and ignore the truth in order to impose his will upon us. Yawn, these TB trolls are so boring.

Posted by: Kel | June 6, 2009 1:15 PM

What I really don't get is those who try to paint meat eating with the same brush as those who abuse animals. To even pretend these are morally similar means neglecting the motivation aspect of morality. What we do is only a part of our moral make-up, why we do it takes a role too. Yet to argue on purely behavioural grounds ignores the why aspect of our behaviour. Motivation matters.

And then to take one part of the experience and therefore call attention to that part as the only part that matters is being downright misleading too. Is it too much to talk about the benefits of the relationships between humans and livestock, or humans and pets? What benefits does it have for the animal? Are they given an advantage in this symbiotic relationship that they were lacking in the wild? It would seem to me that the argument can be put forward that we are eliminating much of the suffering by domesticating and looking after the animals - but by doing so we are taking away their freedom - which is another matter entirely.

Posted by: Nominal Egg | June 6, 2009 1:17 PM

(OK, I've got a few more minutes....)

It depends whether it is necessary to eat the cat. If it is then perhaps it can be justified.

One very significant fact you seem to be conveniently forgetting, Salamander, is that Cheyenne Cherry did not eat the cat. Did not ever plan to eat the cat. Did not want to eat the cat.
We are not discussing some hypothetical "what-if" scenario. She tortured someone else's beloved pet to death because it annoyed her, and said it was "just a joke."
Should she face legal consequences for her actions?

Posted by: Max | June 6, 2009 1:20 PM

I was big on PETA until they started doing the "Lettuce Ladies" and "I'd Rather Go Naked" ad campaigns. Sexism/objectification was the beginning of the end for me in that department.

Posted by: Kel | June 6, 2009 1:30 PM

And people feeding themselves directly from plants, as Knockgoats pointed out repeatedly on the earlier thread, both requires far less energy and creates far less (none, if done right) environmental degradation.* The fact that there are starving and malnourished people is no argument for meat consumption (especially our own).

Completely agree there, but that wasn't my argument. Salamander was talking about net suffering, and that's where I talked about the suffering in our own species from starvation. Not to do with what foods they eat, not to do with solutions for the matter, just purely to do with the notion of "net suffering"

Posted by: go777 | June 6, 2009 1:34 PM

When I saw this I almost puked. Cheyenne Cherry is a abhorrent , despicable Psychopath. She deserves as much punishment as possible. I am goning to pet my 3 cats now.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | June 6, 2009 1:44 PM

stop recommending reading material my library doesn't have (especially right now, when I don't even have time to read!)

Posted by: NoGurus | June 6, 2009 2:01 PM

PZ, I think we need a new ghoulish story to satisfy our blood lust, as this one is getting stale. In the time this thread has been running, another three hundred murders were committed in the United States. I suggest you find the cruelest, sickest one, post it up here, and we can spend another day talking about eviscerating the murderer or describing the gory details of the event itself. Your post is a shameless ploy of emotional manipulation, does no one any good, and worse, poses no solutions for preventing such actions in the first place. In the meantime, we can all tune into CSI Miami tonight. Plot summary: "An elderly man is shot and stabbed and found with a screwdriver sticking out of his head. Watch the details as the team cracks open his head like a walnut to remove the object, and then flashes back to show the many different ways the screwdriver was driven in to his head." Not enough gore? Wait for PZ's next post.

Posted by: SC, OM | June 6, 2009 2:15 PM

SC, OM, I have far too much respect for you to argue with you about this.

Wow - thank you! I'm flattered. In truth, I really didn't want to get involved in it again, but I found people's responses to Salamander strange.

Enjoy your day. :)

Posted by: Wolfhound | June 6, 2009 2:23 PM

Gack! This thread's comments are far too numerous for my lazy ass to read through them all so I'll ask somebody who has done my work for me if some Pro-forced-maternity fuckhead has shown up yet to compare the "small, helpless" kitten to a blastocyst and question why we aren't outraged about the "torture" of said blastocysts.

Posted by: Mike Olson | June 6, 2009 2:48 PM

I just had to add my name to the list of the horrified, outraged and indignant.

Posted by: J-Ball | June 6, 2009 2:56 PM

"We are omnivores, and we evolved that way, and I say with no qualms that it is OK to eat animals."

Bingo.

If God hadn't meant for man to eat animals, he wouldn't have made them out of meat.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | June 6, 2009 3:13 PM

However, factory farms are incredibly immoral. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't eat meat at all, but that meat should be produced more humanely. That doesn't mean it's not better for everyone to cut down on how much meat they eat, because it is.

I think less meat-consumption and humane treatment of animals raised for meat are interdependent. I don't have the statistics, but I'd be very surprised if it were at all possible to raise enough meat humanely to satisfy current meat-consumption levels. Basically, unless we stop mass-eating meat, it will be near impossible to stop mass-producing it.

Posted by: Monado | June 6, 2009 3:17 PM

Bring back flogging! Ten lashes in the public square should make her think twice about doing it again. And maybe a tattoo on the forehead that says, "Cruel to small animals".

Posted by: MikeG | June 6, 2009 3:29 PM

OK. I'm convinced. Factory farming is immoral and I can't in good conscience buy factory-farmed meat. I'm also not going veg. So, what are my options? The good Rev BDC posted a link the other day to small farms co-op that looked great. Are there any others? Is there a labeling system that's reliable in the USA for grocery store meat? Any labeling systems that are known to be useless (like "Free range eggs" *wink, wink*) that I should look out for?

Trying to reduce my personal hypocrisy,
MikeG

Posted by: Knockgoats | June 6, 2009 3:39 PM

If God hadn't meant for man to eat animals, he wouldn't have made them out of meat. - J-Ball

Slice of roast J-Ball, anyone?

Posted by: Salamander | June 6, 2009 3:49 PM

It depends whether or not J-Ball is free range and grass fed.

Posted by: Angel Kaida | June 6, 2009 3:51 PM

Can someone go into a fairly detailed explanation of the various terms attached to this kind of thing? "Free-range," "cruelty-free," "no antibiotics," and "organic" were the first to occur to me. I'll be transitioning into feeding myself over the next few years (currently a college student with scholarships providing my food but no additional income) and would like to know if there's stuff specifically to look out for. And yes, I know that lots of this is online, but I also know that a lot of the people who are particularly concerned about this stuff are also woomeisters/alt-med people/food technophobes.

Posted by: MikeG | June 6, 2009 4:04 PM

Thanks dreikin.
*furiously updates bookmarks*

Posted by: Katie Joy | June 6, 2009 4:31 PM

Katie Joy, mindless animal cruelty IS very much within the range of things sane teenagers are capable of (one example would be rural teens playing the roadkill game, trying to run critters over with their cars). Stuffing someone's pet into an oven however would qualify as premeditated animal cruelty, unless the girl was on some serious drugs; and I REALLY don't think that's anywhere within the range of normal.

Sociocultural variables always need to be taken into consideration. Rural teens are often raised to view squirrels, possums, rats, etc. as valueless pests that cause more problems than their lives are worth. Teens on farms typically learn early on that an animal's right to live correlates directly with its benefit to its human owners. I don't share that opinion, personally - but it's a different way of life.

Even so, I think that's still a pretty uncommon occurrence. I lived on a Texan ranch from the age of 14 until I left for college, and I don't think I ever met any teens who delighted in running critters over. Not that it doesn't happen, but I don't think it's something that rural teens in general tend to do. And I agree that there are notable differences between that and this case - particularly that this kitten was a loved pet, not a "pest," and that the method of death was intended to be invariably excruciating.

Posted by: Carlie | June 6, 2009 4:42 PM

MikeG- also read Omnivore's Dilemma, which explains each of the terms e.g. "organic", "free-range", etc.

Another thing to do is to search for CSAs (community-supported agriculture). Doing searches under the terms "eat local" and "slow food" can also give you searches for your specific area. If your state has a cooperative extension or ag site it will probably also have listings. It's surprising how many are out there yet not well known - I found out just this spring that there's a meat farm 15 minutes from where I work that has the happiest damned animals I've ever seen.

Buying from a local farmer if you can costs more per pound, but that can serve as an impetus to make meat less central in your diet. And it's not always a lot more - the guy I just found sells eggs for the same price as the "free range" eggs at Wal-Mart, but I can go and watch his chickens run around and eat off of the land and know that's what they're doing.

Posted by: Mishcakes | June 6, 2009 4:48 PM

I just woke up (8am here in New Zealand), had a read through the latest posts, and thanks to Salamander and Gra, among others, for picking up the defense of my post while I was away.

Also cheers for the links regarding ethical farming.

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 6, 2009 4:56 PM

But, I couldn't help but imagine just now forcibly implanting a chip in her brain that forces her to have nightmares every night where she's the kitten watching herself shove her in that oven, herself as a frightening alien creature she can't stop.

Actually, this would be completely appropriate.

Posted by: Marcus Ranum | June 6, 2009 5:42 PM

The argument that we're evolved to be omnivores is bullshit. We are rational creatures that can make choices and are not driven by our instincts alone.

It's not exactly a bullshit argument. The reality of the situation is that we exist in a universe that we didn't have a choice in making. It is the way it is and we have to deal with it as such. Perhaps we are rational creatures (I'm not convinced) and maybe we have "choices" (I'm not convinced of that, either) but we don't have the choice of whether or not to eat. If you accept that - that we have no choice but to eat - then you're left with the reality that life is inherently competitive. Even if we're not eating a critter, we're competing with it for living space. We cannot, literally, all get along; it just doesn't work that way. Furthermore, it's ridiculous to hold humans to a higher standard of behavior than other animals, which also eat eachother.

Why is it "moral" to eat something less "organized" than oneself? It's only "moral" if your "morality" is grounded on the notion that some forms of life have a greater justification for existence - i.e.: that "organized" life is more important than "less organized" life. If that's your "morality" then it's just self-centered bullshit that's about as defensible as "god gave man dominion over the beasts" whether a life form can feel pain, or think, or not, it's still trying to survive and any system of "morals" that is based on "organization" is just anthropocentrism in disguise, because it's just a convenient accident that you're "organized" and your nom nom nom isn't. Probably the only "moral" thing you can eat is your own flesh (but it's largely "stolen"). Eating based on "organization" also makes it more "moral" to eat Terrie Sciavo than a chicken. Enjoy.

You need to recognize that life is inherently nasty and cruel.

Posted by: Susan | June 6, 2009 6:17 PM

Wish people would get as irate about the massive abortions of human beings as they are for this outrageous cruelty to a defenseless kitten. I'm glad you posted this, PZ, to bring out the truth about what depravity and murder really look like. This incident helps pro-abortion people see past the propaganda and eugenic euphemisms that so many pro-abortion leaders hide behind, to recognize the truth: killing is killing, and except in war and self-defense, it's indefensible and wrong.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | June 6, 2009 6:42 PM

This was such a senseless act. Why waste a perfect specimen for animal testing? That feline could have been tortured for months.

Was that supposed to be clever?

Posted by: Stanton | June 6, 2009 7:02 PM

Wish people would get as irate about the massive abortions of human beings as they are for this outrageous cruelty to a defenseless kitten. I'm glad you posted this, PZ, to bring out the truth about what depravity and murder really look like. This incident helps pro-abortion people see past the propaganda and eugenic euphemisms that so many pro-abortion leaders hide behind, to recognize the truth: killing is killing, and except in war and self-defense, it's indefensible and wrong.

Of course, my inner cynic suggests that, were Dr George Tiller or some other abortion provider were magically transformed into a helpless, button-eyed kitten, Susan would not so much toss him into an oven while pointing and laughing, but toss him into a large wok and stir-fry him to death while videotaping the whole spectacle to post on Godtube so all of her cohorts can point and laugh.

Posted by: Marc Abian | June 6, 2009 7:21 PM

Call someone immoral for doing a particular practice and they'll resent you for doing so. If the sentiment is that eating meat is the equivalent to being a Nazi

If someone doesn't like being called immoral then they should start behaving more morally. I'm not looking to make anyone feel better when I call them out on being immoral, I'm making an argument.
No one thinks eating meat is equivilent to being a Nazi, just that both are immoral.

With most meat eaters I think they rationalise the practice because they like that taste of meat. If it tasted the same as vegetables, I think everyone would be in agreement.

Posted by: Carlie | June 6, 2009 7:28 PM

Susan, you are so far off base you're not even worth commenting on. I'll just say a woman deciding to get an expensive and painful surgical procedure to protect her life =/= tossing a kitten into a microwave for amusement, and I really don't think I want to know what your mind is like that you can somehow equate the two.

Posted by: NelC | June 6, 2009 7:31 PM

Susan @505, I don't know anyone who is pro-abortion. I'm not arguing labels here, but I don't anyone thinks abortion is good idea. It's seldom, if at all, undertaken lightly, outside of extremist fantasies.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | June 6, 2009 7:47 PM

Did you sometimes walk along a hedge and half-consciously rip off leaves just so your hands had something to do? Keeps shocking me[when people do that].

I'm not sure how good PZ's idea of letting students do it as part of a lab course [is], though.

OK, so maybe it is that late at night. :-(

Posted by: Sadie Morrison | June 6, 2009 8:06 PM

A kitten is not a "small thing." It's a living creature that no more deserves brutal murder than a human being. What a tragedy.

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 6, 2009 8:26 PM

Wish people would get as irate about the massive abortions of human beings as they are for this outrageous cruelty to a defenseless kitten.

Kittens suffer. Fetuses don't.

Kittens are capable of living without commandeering the bodily functions of a sentient person with an independent existence and actual, not potential, intelligence, hopes, and needs, to which their presence may or may not be inimical. Fetuses aren't.

This kitten was roasted to death. Fetuses aren't, now that women no longer face being burned at the stake by dogmatic dipshits like yourself for supposedly "consorting" with the devil.

I think you know all this, though. At least, if there be a devil, he has no claim on you - you are already Attention's whore.

Posted by: Marc Abian | June 6, 2009 8:55 PM

Then how come PETA spent a large amount of money in doing a big campaign equating chicken and pork factories with Nazi concentration camps?

Because the conditions are similar. I think the implication is there, which is oart of what makes it so catchy, but it's only on a superficial level and not a meaningful statement and if you can't see the difference between jews in a camp and chickens, then you should think about this one a bit more.

Also, unless I'm mistaken, Kel was arguing about vegetarianism to a board that's recently had a PETA-bashing thread. If he was piling on PETA, and not making strawman arguments for vegetarians here, then I misunderstood.

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 6, 2009 9:29 PM

Even at 17, the human brain has a good 5-8 years left of development

I repeat:

Find me a single 17 year old anywhere on the planet who is not suffering from a delusional disorder, can get themselves dressed, and is unaware that putting a kitten in an oven and turning it on will kill it slowly and horribly.

17 months, sure, I can buy that. No unimpaired 17 year old's brain is that "undeveloped."

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 6, 2009 9:43 PM

I am firmly against trying juveniles as adults in murder cases, and have a 17 year old son who has poor impulse control so I can understand how horrible things happen in the heat of the moment, in fights, and under the influence of alcohol.

Undeveloped brains and poor impulse control would explain it if she, say, kicked the cat and it died of its injuries.

Throwing it in an oven, turning the oven on, walking away, and calling it a "joke" a couple weeks later...

When I was 6 years old I liked to keep caterpillers in jars with air holes and vegetation and watch them metamorphosize. I killed one when I thoughtlessly left its jar out in the sun; I was devastated when I found this out and at 24 am still deeply saddened by the memory of this event.

I repeat: 6 years old. The notion that "a 17 year old's brain isn't fully matured" might account for the lack of this level of displayed humanity is absurd on its face.

Posted by: Kel | June 6, 2009 10:01 PM

If someone doesn't like being called immoral then they should start behaving more morally. I'm not looking to make anyone feel better when I call them out on being immoral, I'm making an argument. No one thinks eating meat is equivilent to being a Nazi, just that both are immoral.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Northeast/02/28/peta.holocaust/

What's the difference between a religious person calling me immoral because I drink and a vegetarian / vegan calling me immoral since I eat meat?

When you see sentiment like this come up, it minimises any impact:
"I honestly, truly honestly, cannot see how a person that is so moved to tears over the torture and death of a sentient creature can feel justified in ordering a hamburger in the next breath."

Simple thing is if a vegetarian calls me immoral, I'll call them self-righteous. Any time I hear someone condemn another for eating meat, it just makes me want to eat more meat. brb, cooking chicken burgers.

Posted by: Britomart | June 6, 2009 10:16 PM

http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=1985_21860

A very large number of violent people start out with violence on small animals. Jeffrey Dahmer for one.

The sooner they are identified and treated, the better.

Posted by: thatswhenireachformyrevolver | June 6, 2009 10:34 PM

To the blog author: she does not have a pretty name. It is pornographic.

As for punishment, I agree with An Eye for an Eye. Aye!

Slow-roast the little twat with Moroccan spices on a spit in Central Park.

To the self-righteous dimwits pleading psychological counseling for the poor lamb: A demented fuckwit like this cannot be "rehabilitated." Ever. It would be a waste of taxpayer dollars. She will move on to people next. I've got my fingers crossed for some serious vigilanteism in this case.

Posted by: dreikin | June 6, 2009 10:47 PM

Would the horrible plight of the cat be less treacherous if someone intended to eat it after the fact?

No, but can you demonstrate that many or most livestock are slow roasted while still alive?

Posted by: Nominal Egg | June 6, 2009 10:54 PM

Just because the animals were intended to be eaten doesn't justify killing or torturing them.

You're right about the torture part.
Wrong about the killing part.

The two are not synonymous.

Posted by: Susan | June 6, 2009 10:56 PM

Azkyroth, #521, FYI, unborn human babies do, indeed, suffer pain. If a doctor sticks something sharp into the palm of the hand of an 8-week old fetus, he or she will open his or her mouth and pull his or her hand away. Note that in the movie documenting an abortion, "The Silent Scream," the 12-week-old unborn child struggles for life, moving to avoid the suction instrument, opening his mouth wide as his body is dismembered.

It is atrocious that the kitten was roasted in this horrific incident. But note that to a human fetus, a saline abortion feels like being burned alive. It is sometimes called a "candy apple abortion" because the saline burns the outer layer of skin off the unborn child, and the dead child's head comes out looking like a raw, red candy apple.

The Nazis developed that technique, and an aborted baby is often likened in appearance to a victim of napalm.

A D&E abortion dismembers an unborn child with pliers, piece by piece, snapping the spine and crushing the skull.

Since we know that the fetal heart starts beating four days after the mother discovers that she has missed her period, I don't see how you can bestow sympathy on a kitten which is murdered, and not on an unborn human baby. Both are atrocities, we should all be able to readily agree. In both cases, there are countless better options available.

I'm glad PZ pointed out at the end of his article that how we treat the innocent and defenseless among us says the most about us as a society. Truer words were never said, especially in the context of our society's horrific tolerance of tens of millions of needless human abortions in recent years, and the continued push to spread the depraved and degrading practice throughout the world, when more creative, constructive, life-affirming options are readily available.

I'm the mother of four wonderful children, and the loving protector and nurturer of two horses, two cats, a Lab and a chubby guinea pig. I'm for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness! I bet you are, too.

Posted by: dreikin | June 6, 2009 11:08 PM

Susan:
So - we should require anesthetic for all abortions after the end of the first trimester¹? Further, are you in support of population control to counter overpopulation if abortion IS outlawed (and hell, even if it isn't)? Obviously, since you have many children already, you don't seem TOO concerned with anything beyond the momentary and immediate pursuit of life and happiness.

¹http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/294/8/947

Conclusions Evidence regarding the capacity for fetal pain is limited but indicates that fetal perception of pain is unlikely before the third trimester. Little or no evidence addresses the effectiveness of direct fetal anesthetic or analgesic techniques. Similarly, limited or no data exist on the safety of such techniques for pregnant women in the context of abortion. Anesthetic techniques currently used during fetal surgery are not directly applicable to abortion procedures.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | June 6, 2009 11:14 PM

All those ijits who hijacked this thread to talk about factory farms are now in my killfile.

Posted by: dreikin | June 6, 2009 11:19 PM

Nerd of Redhead proclaimeth:

All those ijits who hijacked this thread to talk about factory farms are now in my killfile.

Lovely. If I'm part of that group, I don't particularly care, considering how boringly repetitive you've become.

Posted by: rohit | June 6, 2009 11:41 PM

Then what business have you in comparing the two?

The point is about torture. Slow-roasting might be more (or less) painful by arbitrary degrees than bleeding to death or being pecked by to death by other animals, or numerous other ways animals die in factory farms. I wouldn't know the equivalence, neither would you. The business I have comparing the two is making a point about the torture of animals, which may be done in various ways, including slow-roasting, or the other ways described above

No, I don't. You, making the assertion that it's not, against all history and the obvious perspective of nature on the matter, have to convince others that there's reason to perceive it your way.

"Against all history and the obvious perspective of nature". Sounds very fluffy. If you want to discuss or debate a point, it might be better to not assume that something is obvious, but to give logical arguments. Yes I claim that it is immoral to take the life of a sentient being, by the argument that the sentient being has an active interest in living, procreating and leading a natural life on this planet. Our act of killing animals is based on a selfish need that is not essential for our survival. When the option of co-existing is available, I find that option the moral choice, since we are not forcefully taking the life of another being.

Posted by: dreikin | June 7, 2009 12:52 AM

rohit

The business I have comparing the two is making a point about the torture of animals, which may be done in various ways, including slow-roasting, or the other ways described above

That reasoning is no better than arbitrary comparisons to the work camps of WWII. I asked you if they were being slow-roasted alive, and you rather clearly implied that you didn't know. One torture that elicits empathy does not mean another torture should, or at the same level if it does. Apples and oranges are both fruits. They still don't oft make a good comparison.

"Against all history and the obvious perspective of nature". Sounds very fluffy. If you want to discuss or debate a point, it might be better to not assume that something is obvious, but to give logical arguments.

If you think it's not obvious that a great deal of nature takes it as right, or at least not immoral, to kill each other for food or other purposes, and that humans for all of recorded history have on the whole considered it fine, your education is seriously lacking. Further, that wasn't an argument for why it is right, it was an argument for why they onus is on you to prove it's not.

Yes I claim that it is immoral to take the life of a sentient being, by the argument that the sentient being has an active interest in living, procreating and leading a natural life on this planet.

Non-sentient creatures, such as plants and bacteria, pursue those same activities, so you have yet to define what separates the sentient that you feel are protected, from the non-sentient, which I infer you feel aren't, or at least are not so much protected as the sentient.

Our act of killing animals is based on a selfish need that is not essential for our survival. When the option of co-existing is available, I find that option the moral choice, since we are not forcefully taking the life of another being.

Again, plants and bacteria are also living beings. Do you have some way to fabricate food for humans that does not involve taking lives from at least one of these classes? Do you advocate humans exterminating ourselves so that we need not harm any other being? Or have you simply mis-stated your argument?

Dan S.

Wow. You actually are thinking that whatever you see will probably just be the work of "a few bad apples", rather than an intentional (and entirely rational, after all) industry-wide decision to maximize profit? Oh my.

Wow. Are you that fucking stupid? I did not say that it will "probably just be the work of 'a few bad apples'", I said I wanted evidence it wasn't, in the context of an offer, by the person to whom I replied, to present evidence of the torture on animal farms.

Posted by: unGeDuLdig | June 7, 2009 1:14 AM

It's amazing how many people here engage in punishment and torture fantasies for Cheyenne. Someone even suggested flogging - heehaw or should I say allahu akbar? The funny thing is that her horrific behaviour seems to legitimize all the self appointed vigilantes' malevolent urges, which are unconscious reflections of the girls' meanness. She is an extreme personalization of our own darkest currents, showing all the unacceptable and intolerable elements, almost like a devil surrogate for an atheist blog. And like in the dark ages, this "devil" is (at least by some) loudly rejected as utterly evil, denied of humanity, exorcised and (symbolically) stoned or burnt at the stake with the intention to reestablish our own shaky inhibitions against violence and cruelty. Furthermore, the collective bashing imitates something like warmth and community. All that has not very much to do with the prevention of cruelty, au contraire. Every four or five postings there's a shrill cry for her blood, that is transported by the ticket of scandalized indignation. As I said, allahu akbar.

Posted by: rohit | June 7, 2009 1:40 AM

That reasoning is no better than arbitrary comparisons to the work camps of WWII. I asked you if they were being slow-roasted alive, and you rather clearly implied that you didn't know. One torture that elicits empathy does not mean another torture should, or at the same level if it does. Apples and oranges are both fruits. They still don't oft make a good comparison.

I am completely baffled with your obsession with 'slow-roasting'. My contention is that torture on animals is wrong and immoral, whatever the method used. I repeat - the comparison was to illuminate the act of torture. I would urge you to see the bigger picture here.

If you think it's not obvious that a great deal of nature takes it as right, or at least not immoral, to kill each other for food or other purposes, and that humans for all of recorded history have on the whole considered it fine, your education is seriously lacking. Further, that wasn't an argument for why it is right, it was an argument for why they onus is on you to prove it's not.

Noone has implied that humans didn't hunt or kill in the past for food. We have however reached a point where we don't need to, where our dietary needs can be fully satisfied without killing animals. You seem to be misunderstanding the notion of 'burden of proof' here. It is perfectly possible ( and desirable ) that one should be able to defend one's practice(s) with logical arguments ( that don't merely involve saying ' oh since we've always been doing it, that's that). Of course, I have put forth my argument, and shall continue this discussion accordingly. But to imply that you are incapable of putting forth positive arguments till I do so (and your readiness to make an argument personal by attacking one's education level) does say something else.

Non-sentient creatures, such as plants and bacteria, pursue those same activities, so you have yet to define what separates the sentient that you feel are protected, from the non-sentient, which I infer you feel aren't, or at least are not so much protected as the sentient.

The pivotal difference between sentient and non-sentient beings would be the neurological complexity that sentient beings are endowed with. Not merely as an arbitrary biological advantage, but a complexity that enables them to feel physical and psychological pain and pleasure. They are self-aware and feel the presence and absence of life with a consciousness that plants do not have.

Again, plants and bacteria are also living beings. Do you have some way to fabricate food for humans that does not involve taking lives from at least one of these classes? Do you advocate humans exterminating ourselves so that we need not harm any other being? Or have you simply mis-stated your argument?

"mis-stated your argument"? You really should step off your pedestal. No, I do not advocate humans exterminating themselves, since I think it's perfectly fine to eat plants. Again, plants do not have sentience, they do not feel pleasure or pain or awareness or consciousness. To be honest, I always cringe when over-defensive meat eaters bring up their incredulity towards the differences between animals and plants.

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 7, 2009 1:53 AM

Don't Panic, as long as you keep trying to equivocate between "brain is not completely matured" and "intellectual and emotional development at the age of 17 inferior to that demonstrated by an admittedly bright child barely one third that age is potentially 'normal'" I'm going to continue to piss you off.

Posted by: Rorschach | June 7, 2009 2:07 AM

*Rejoins*

If I can comment on this "argument from brain immaturity" in a 17yo,as say,compared,to a 6yo.
I dont think for a second that as yet underdeveloped moral capabilities,or ongoing brain immaturity,can be blamed in a 17yo.
A 6yo will pull the budgie's feathers out because he doesnt know better,a 17yo if not retarded or sociopathic generally knows what they are doing if they do that.

However,and that was the point I was trying to make yesterday,there can and will be instances where adolescents or young adults will act irresponsibly,display a lack of empathy or do something we might call immoral or immature,given certain triggers,be that emotional trauma,intoxication,or a multitude of other factors.

Posted by: dreikin | June 7, 2009 2:28 AM

Susan

dreikin, #541, I urge you to explore the creative, constructive, positive alternatives to abortion. Take your focus off death and fear, and put it onto life and hope!

I urge you to consider the creative and constructive potential of destruction. Consider the women who may lead better, more positive, and more productive lives by not having to deal with the pain, pressure, loss of hope, and criticism of an unwanted pregnancy. Consider the women who may die if they are not able to get an abortion they don't want, but need in order that at least one of them might live.

That is the ethic that I wish would spread around the world, to illustrate hope and possibilities, and to encourage people like you that life is sacred -- always -- even in the very early stages of life.

I would hold that life, to an extent, is sacred (the extent is not pertinent to our discussion, as it regards other matters than abortion). I would not hold that a fetus always qualifies, depending on the stage of development. If you think it does, I must ask whether you think the many hairs, skin cells, and other cells you slough off regularly also qualify? And whether every unused sperm and ovum also qualifies?

As for your link implying that unborn humans do not feel pain until the latter stages in utero, that's been refuted widely. Note that two past presidents of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and 26 other medical authorities signed a document years ago affirming that the unborn does in fact feel pain during an abortion. This was after President Reagan said in 1984 that during an abortion "the fetus feels pain which is long and agonizing." Fetal EKG and EEG technology demonstrate the "remarkable responsiveness of the human fetus to pain, touch, and sound." (ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments, Randy Alcorn, p. 190)

I consider the many scientists who have weighed in on the issue in scholarly journals, many (including the paper I cited) of which were published much more recently than the Reagan era, more reputable than 26 physicians. Just as I trust the many scientists who have weighed in on the issue of evolution in scholarly journals more than the relatively few, but many more than 26, engineers and scientists who have signed petitions from the discovery institute.

I believe that if we, as a society, would seriously discuss abortion and what it really means, instead of trying to ridicule pro-life people like me and sweep the truth about abortion under the rug, then we wouldn't have nut jobs like the guy who killed Tiller, because I believe nut jobs are provoked into their tragic actions by extreme frustration over not being heard or taken seriously.

What do you believe abortion really means? For me, it means the opportunity for a woman to retain control of her body and future, and for women who are in a medically untenable position, such as an ectopic pregnancy, to have relief rather than die by inaction. Many people do try to rationally and seriously discuss abortion, on both sides, and both sides are attacked. I agree it would be great if that didn't happen, but we would still have nut jobs because even the sanest, most rational arguments are not always sufficient. Some people will simply refuse to hear what they don't like, or they may believe their god/dog¹ is telling them they're right, or some other problem.

The Tiller killer is a lot like the Columbine killers in that respect.

Um, what? I must proclaim honest ignorance here, as I was not in a position to pay much attention to that when it happened, and haven't looked all that deeply into it afterward. Why is that comparison valid?

I also believe that, if we would honestly discuss and debate the central issue of abortion, then people like the kitten killer would begin to value life -- all life -- and we wouldn't have nearly as many atrocities as we're seeing today. The pro-abortion propaganda is to blame for a lot of the violence and killing we're seeing, because anytime you imply that life is cheap, you're going to provoke those on the fringes to kill.

No, not necessarily. You should look up sociopathy - lack of empathy or not valuing of life is not always a societal issue, but a psychological one. As for atrocities, I agree. I imagine such cases as Darfur might be lessened if both sides had a sudden greater care for human life - although that may not be the case, as it can be quite easy to demonize and dehumanize the 'other'. The pro-abortion agenda² is not to blame - no more than the anti-choice³ agenda, at any rate, as they demonize and dehumanize persons such as Dr. Tiller, even at death.

Do you agree?

Obviously, given the above, too complex for a simple yes/no answer.

¹Son of Sam reference, not a joke
²A misnomer. The correct term is pro-choice. The point is not to encourage abortion, but to make/keep it an option.
³Don't like that? Then don't mangle the other side's name. It's disrespectful.

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 7, 2009 2:42 AM

However,and that was the point I was trying to make yesterday,there can and will be instances where adolescents or young adults will act irresponsibly,display a lack of empathy or do something we might call immoral or immature,given certain triggers,be that emotional trauma,intoxication,or a multitude of other factors.

As I said, if she'd kicked the kitten or something and it died, that would be tenable. What she did takes too much premeditation and involves far too long a time lapse before it becomes irreversible to be plausible as an "impulse" action, and even if it didn't, the fact that she demonstrates no remorse at all, considerably later still weighs against this.

Posted by: Nominal Egg | June 7, 2009 2:53 AM

Rorschach,

As you could have noted,my 557 was speaking in general terms.

Well your general terms are fucking irrelevant, because we are talking about a specific incident here.

I suggest you go upthread and see that quite a bit is known about this girl (thanks Katie Joy!). Ms. Cherry is definitely a sociopath.

"want to be taken seriously"...heh.

Posted by: Nominal Egg | June 7, 2009 3:01 AM

By popular vote?

No, based on the evidence.

You're normally pretty cool. Why are you being such a dipshit about this?

Posted by: Rorschach | June 7, 2009 3:20 AM

NE,

I notice you pulled a similar "youre normally reasonable" thing on SC the other day,Im not so impressed with that style.

If you want to call me a dipshit for not accepting a blog entry and newspaper articles as sufficient evidence to make a clinical diagnosis on a person I havent personally examined,please do so.Maybe its a job thing,but I have to be very careful when I make these kind of calls at work,its much easier to cry "sociopath" from your armchair.

*Sigh*

Posted by: dreikin | June 7, 2009 3:43 AM

rohit:
Looking at my last post, a fair amount of the portion was concerned with stuff not really relevant to the main issue. I admit I brought the burden of proof line of the discussion up, but since you'd already met what I wanted in the comment following (where you put up an argument for why to take your position on eating meat), what say we drop that line? I'm sure we could go on with that part forever, and that we're both more interested in the meat of the argument than SIWOTI. Aside from that, I'm ending up arguing about things I didn't even mean as more than non-serious rhetoric.

More specifically, mark my last post tl;dr, and the subjects seem to be developing as:
1) Is any torture of animals immoral? Since that's not really what I meant to argue about anyway (see 2), what are you defining as torture? Does obedience training count for you?
2) Is it fair to make a comparison between the slow heat-death of the kitten and what some farm animals go through? I'd say no, cramped conditions and such are not equivalent and don't bring about the same response in the animal as burning alive.
3) Is it immoral to kill other living beings for food when we have other options available? I'd say it's not, as a broad stance, but that there may be more specific instances where it is. We both seem to agree that killing anything without a nervous system doesn't qualify as immoral here, but I don't know that I believe a cow or chicken does.

Posted by: Salamader | June 7, 2009 6:06 AM

Pygmy Loris:

That you think abuse of domesticated pets is "occasional" demonstrates your ignorance of the subject. Animal abuse is widespread and relatively common.

Relative to what? Billions of animals are created in this industrial system and the vast majority live in absolutely horrid conditions and suffer a great deal. This pales in comparison to the abuse suffered by domestic animals even taking into account the lives of stray animals (which I wasn't given my reference to animal abuse).

I can do no better than to quote JM Coetzee:

The transformation of animals into production units dates back to the late nineteenth century, and since that time we have already had one warning on the grandest scale that there is something deeply, cosmically wrong with regarding and treating fellow beings as mere units of any kind. This warning came to us so loud and clear that it you would have thought it was impossible to ignore it. It came when in the middle of the twentieth century a group of powerful men in Germany had the bright idea of adapting the methods of the industrial stockyard, as pioneered and perfected in Chicago, to the slaughter – or what they preferred to call the processing – of human beings.

Of course we cried out in horror when we found out about this. We cried: What a terrible crime, to treat human beings like cattle! If we had only known beforehand! But our cry should more accurately have been: What a terrible crime, to treat human beings like units in an industrial process! And that cry should have had a postscript: What a terrible crime, come to think of it, to treat any living being like a unit in an industrial process!

http://www.voiceless.org.au/About_Us/Misc/A_word_from_J.M._Coetzee_-_Voiceless_I_feel_therefore_I_am.html

The charge levelled against me and others here seems to be that because we oppose this method of production, as described above, we are somehow intent on minimising the evil inherent in what happened to this kitten. All I am saying is that one instance is rare and the other is not.

Posted by: Carlie | June 7, 2009 6:31 AM

I also believe that, if we would honestly discuss and debate the central issue of abortion,

The central issue is the right of women to govern their own bodies.

Posted by: Carlie | June 7, 2009 8:59 AM

It is necessary to put her evil deed in the most absolute terms and not to allow the obvious question where this depravation phenomenon comes from. It has to be her pure, evil choice, her abnormality, which makes us "normals" feel safer about ourselves. "Sociopath" is the magic word here, devoid of its scientific meaning, our modern day term for "posessed". The crowd demands a message to be sent. To whom? To the zillions of cat burners to be? All this hysteric circus has nothing to do with animal protection or crime prevention. It is more of a collective exercise in self-reassurance and exorcism.

I understand what you're saying here - it's similar to the blaming the victim mentality, because if somehow we can make it their fault, we are immunized against the same fate as long as we don't do what the victim did to "deserve" it.

However, in this case I think there is a definite value to condemning the action as strongly as possible, and in stating that a person who could do such an action is not a "normal" member of society. It's making a clear statement that such actions will not be tolerated, and that yes, you are not acceptable to society if you engage in such actions.

Posted by: Logicel | June 7, 2009 9:40 AM

Susan @552, Do you agree?

No, I do not agree with your comment as it is full of non-sequiturs and category errors.

Death is just as much as a reality as life. Your encouraging the embracing of life and the hope it entails reeks of an unbalanced view, an view that clings to fantasy and make-believe. Your insinuating that people who have the gumption and courage to recognize our mortality and fragility are cleaving to a culture of death and despair is an insinuation born of ignorance and an inability to face reality. You are implying that people who focus on the quality of life are people who are void of positive and fulfilling actions. Hard decisions often need to be made and hope has nothing to do with making such hard decisions. Solid, evidence-based knowledge is the springboard from which such difficult decisions are made, not from an gushing and muddled sense of hope.

There is a study that shows that there is a possibility that violent crime actually has been lessened in the last 20 years in America because of the salutary effect of elective abortion. Humanity through time has become less and less violent, not more and more. Your non-evidential connecting legal abortion (there are just as many illegal abortions being conducted throughout the world) to a lessening of the value of life is just forced-birth propaganda.

If you do not want an abortion, do not have one. You have no business trying to manipulate and misinform (Sweet Jebus, the silent scream! You are applying the basis of recognizing pain from a fully developed human to a gestating form which is an category error).

Posted by: Susan | June 7, 2009 11:58 AM

Jadehawk, #554, the positive alternatives to abortion that I favor include the things that my husband and I are already doing: we give over 10% of our income to our church for all its pro-family programming; he gives tens of thousands of dollars to a Christian businessmen's organization which strengthens men as husbands, fathers and business owners and in turn strengthens the moral fiber of the whole community; I have testified in favor of abstinence-ONLY sex education before the state board of education; we are, quietly and privately, role models because we were both virgins upon marriage and our kids know that and are emulating it; I've served on the boards of the Boys and Girls Club and a local child abuse rescue center; I have been a writing mentor for disadvantaged children for many years, volunteering up to three hours a week on their behalf; I have formed a nonprofit that gives mini-grants to after-school programs to enrich the informal learning experiences of disadvantaged children in our area; our nephew and his wife have two children and are about to receive their adopted third child, who is from Ethiopia; our close family friends also have one child but have just applied to adopt a second one and asked us to be their references . . . we are voting with our feet, and our hearts, and our wallets, for life and for development of all people at all stages of development. It makes me very sad that people think all there is to do to cope with an unwanted pregnancy is to abort the child. That's so short-sighted and selfish.

Askyroth #556, medicine has found that unborn children really do experience pain, not just a reflex; this is why they use anesthesia for both mother and child during fetal surgery; please see the article, Fetal Pain and Abortion: The Medical Evidence, Studies in Law & Medicine (Chicago: Americans United for Life Legal Defense Fund, 1984), by Vincent J. Collins, M.D., Steven R. Zielinski, M.D., and Thomas J. Marzen, Esq. Also note that the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in Great Britain affirmed in October 1997 that fetal pain does exist, referenced on p. 191 of the Randy Alcorn book.

dreikin #559, as a former newspaper reporter, my pro-choice stance changed to pro-life after I did a story on a courageous young mother stricken with cancer who opted not to have life-saving treatment (I think chemo) for herself because it would have killed her unborn child; instead, they induced labor as soon as they could and THEN treated the mother; she eventually died. But her example transformed my thinking, and that was nearly 30 years ago. Another hinge, for me, was the realization that an unborn child has completely different DNA from either the mother or the father at the instant of conception, and thus is not just to be considered, medically, legally, ethically, or any other way, an extension of the mother or a "thing." A fetus is human, not an aardvark, and is alive -- a "being" -- and therefore a "human being," separate from Mom, and deserving of protection like any other human being -- and, as we've learned from this murdered kitten episode, any OTHER innocent life as well. So an unborn human being is different from the skin cells I sloughed off myself in the shower this morning (just fluff up your pillow and dream about it, dreikin -- :>) ) because those skin cells share my same DNA, but an unborn human baby's DNA is completely different and distinct from his or her mother's, from the get-go.

MAJeff, OM: I think the principle that when a society or political group demonizes and depersonalizes any other subgroup of people, the result is violence and genocide, is as clearly demonstrated by Nazi Germany and what the Nazi eugenicists did to the Jews and other "unwanteds," as the Planned Parenthood pro-abortion people are trying to do to unborn children by mislabeling them as "blobs of tissue," calling them "fetuses" instead of unborn children, calling an unborn girl an "it" or an unborn boy an "it," etc.

Wolfhound, #574, I think the guy who killed Tiller, and the kids who killed their classmates and teachers at Columbine, and the terrorists who killed over 3,000 Americans on 911, and murderous Ku Klux Klanners, and Nazis who caused the Holocaust, and all other murderers out there, AND people who think the millions of human abortions in this country are acceptable, all share the same problem: they're selfish, they don't realize that ALL life is sacred, they're deluded by politically-motivated propaganda which distorts their thinking, and they basically don't care what rational, thinking people have to say because they're going on impulse and how they FEEL. Do you agree?

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | June 7, 2009 12:11 PM

I have testified in favor of abstinence-ONLY sex education before the state board of education

But I thought you were anti-abortion? You're contributing to more unwanted pregnancies, more people contracting STIs, and more abortions.

Posted by: Janine, OMnivore | June 7, 2009 12:20 PM

Susan, you do realize that the Nazis outlawed abortions.

Posted by: Katie Joy | June 7, 2009 12:31 PM

In 2007, she was arrested for "smacking a girl in the head with jewelry" (???), and in 2008, she had multiple arrests - the article makes mention of three. The "excuse" for the kitten's death ("It was a joke") is the same excuse she gave for robbing a man of his ipod at gunpoint.

Now it's 2009, she's 17, and she baked a live kitten with no provocation. She was released without bail, and will probably just get yet another slap on the wrist. I'm sorry, Does anyone else see a pattern here? How long do you think it's going to be before they stop giving Ms. Cherry nothing but probation for her violent crimes?

Maybe a mother will have to bury her young child before anything more will be done.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | June 7, 2009 12:41 PM

It's always interesting to see Xian idjits like Susan, who tries to justify unnecessarily imposing their will upon others due to their imaginary god and fictional bible. They also have no real clue on how to obtain their objectives from a sociological perspective. If Susan want to reduce abortions, look around the world and see what works. Heavy emphasis on methods of birth control in school and making it readily available seems to do the job quite nicely. Oops, birth control is also a no-no. That ups the need for abortion. Which shows the reality gap of the religiotards. Killfile to another threadjacker.

Posted by: JM | June 7, 2009 12:54 PM

There are acts that are much, much, much more worthy of people's outrage than this one.

Think of all the suffering that is going on at this very instant. Try and imagine.

While this was surely a terrible act, you should be ashamed of yourselves for reacting so harshly to this single incident.

Posted by: Patricia, Queen of Sluts OM | June 7, 2009 12:55 PM

When I got home from another down day at the Farmers Market ($27.00 in sales), this was the news head line. It's horrible, right here in Oregon:
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009//06/woman_28_accused_of_killing_a.html

This one deserves no empathy, sympathy or mercy if she's guilty.

Posted by: Pygmy Loris | June 7, 2009 12:59 PM

Salamander,

If you bothered to read the rest of my post you would have seen that I do oppose the industrialized system. However, the fact that the Nazi's used such a system as their basis for the Holocaust is irrelevant. Many industrial systems can be perverted to abuse and subjugate people. That doesn't mean the system is wrong, it means the people who perverted it are wrong. We all know the Nazis were bad people. I didn't need you to tell me that.

Again, you think the abuse of domestic animals is rare. Provide proof. Stray animals are routinely abused by people. Jut because they're not pets doesn't mean they can't be abused by people. In fact, it means it's easier to abuse them since there's no owner to notice the abuse.

Posted by: Kemist | June 7, 2009 1:02 PM

Patricia:

WTF ? She wanted what ? To steal the baby ? If so, are the other two kids really hers ?

Posted by: Patricia, Queen of Sluts OM | June 7, 2009 1:20 PM

Kemist - The police aren't saying yet how the baby was removed from the mother. The mother was found stuffed in a crawl space. It looks like another sicko trying to cut out a baby and steal it. All the facts aren't in yet, so we'll just have to wait. This makes my skin crawl.

The other children are safe, I HOPE they didn't witness this.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | June 7, 2009 1:26 PM

we give over 10% of our income to our church for all its pro-family programming;

I hope your pastor is enjoying his Cadillac. Or is he using the money to support his mistress?

he gives tens of thousands of dollars to a Christian businessmen's organization which strengthens men as husbands, fathers and business owners and in turn strengthens the moral fiber of the whole community;

Okay, so he's a member of the Rotary Club.

Susan doing her bit to spread single-motherhood and STDs and promote abortions.

we are, quietly and privately, role models because we were both virgins upon marriage and our kids know that and are emulating it;

No, you're not doing it privately, you're announcing it to the world on this blog. As for you being virgins before marriage, so what? Denying yourself pleasure does not impress me.

Susan, my reaction to these actions range from "so what?" to "that's counterproductive." I won't bother to comment on the rest of your brags, I've lost interest.

Posted by: Rorschach | June 7, 2009 1:30 PM

Good nite,SC,OM !!
And everyone else...:-)

Posted by: SC, OM | June 7, 2009 1:34 PM

Good nite,SC,OM !!

'Night, doll. Sweet dreams.

Posted by: cyan | June 7, 2009 1:36 PM

jm wrote: "you should be ashamed of yourselves for reacting so harshly to this single incident"

Ashamed of feeling outrage and commenting on an act of torture? I don't think so.

How many acts of such acts should one wait for before speaking out against them, do you think?

By the way, it must be very difficult to type one-handedly while shaking one's finger vigourously at the monitor.

Posted by: Marc Abian | June 7, 2009 1:42 PM

Kel

Though some of the sentiments here seem to put eating meat on a similar condition to torturing cats

Pointing out the similarities doesn't mean they're equally as bad. I'll agree it's a bad idea to try and bring in things like the holocaust, it invites bad reactions.

What's the difference between a religious person calling me immoral because I drink and a vegetarian / vegan calling me immoral since I eat meat?

One position is taken simply because it's in a bizarre contradictary book which has moral guidelines which justifies atrocities, and the other is a considered position based on the desire to reduce suffering. Is this a trick question?

No one's harmed by you drinking are they? If they are, you should stop.

Simple thing is if a vegetarian calls me immoral, I'll call them self-righteous.

Which doesn't at all address the morality of your actions. Also, I think self-righteousness is a positive trait. I see how it is used as a pejorative though.

Any time I hear someone condemn another for eating meat, it just makes me want to eat more meat. brb, cooking chicken burgers.

And you feel that's a mature response?

Posted by: SaynaTheSpiffy | June 7, 2009 1:59 PM

Dan S. @#604: I'm not entirely sure that Alexia Kelly is a good example of someone working for common ground. She supports reducing the number of abortions, not the need/demand.
http://www.catholicsforchoice.org/AntiabortionAdvocateAppointedtoHHS.asp
Alleviating poverty would help a lot (notice, though, that they only support raising male employment rates!) but it's not really going to reduce the abortion rate all that much. For most if not all women, no amount of money is worth enduring an unwanted pregnancy.

Ms. Kelly may have good intentions, but she still supports restricting the legality of and access to abortion.

Posted by: unGeDuLdig | June 7, 2009 2:06 PM

@Carlie #575

However, in this case I think there is a definite value to condemning the action as strongly as possible, and in stating that a person who could do such an action is not a "normal" member of society. It's making a clear statement that such actions will not be tolerated, and that yes, you are not acceptable to society if you engage in such actions.

I think the action condemns itself, as you can easily see by the reactions of the vast majority. You'll hardly find someone willing to advocate such cruelties. It's not like countless teenagers are wondering if they should start torturing cute animals. And if someone was actually planning to do so, I have little confidence that the exemplary punishment of Cheyenne would hold him or her back. I may be prejudiced, but deviants of this kind don't tend to be the brightest bulb in the box and have a general problem to grasp the connection between actions and their consequences. I mean, "it was just a joke", how stupid is it to say that, even if it's true in her view? She doesn't just lack empathy, but also the slightest sense of self-preservation. You don't need to worry that she ever finds a sympathetic judge or jury. Hell, she should even worry about her cellmates.

If there's a message to be sent, then it should go more in the direction of: "Get yourself some help, when you feel the urge to hurt people and animals, before you fuck up your life for good." And the problem here is that the developement of destructive characters like Cheyenne's goes years and years undetected and untreated. If you're in a caring environment, the first kindergarten drawing of violence will raise an alarm. If you happen to be black in the Bronx and of a certain background, you're almost supposed to become a gangsta. Her troubles with the law go way back, but we don't hear much of counseling, family therapy or even medication. She must have passed by an army of indifferent teachers before she got notorious.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | June 7, 2009 2:27 PM

As for you being virgins before marriage, so what? Denying yourself pleasure does not impress me.

Forget about pleasure. I think you shouldn't marry if you don't know each other (...and yourselves) inside and out-.

Posted by: Katie Joy | June 7, 2009 3:17 PM

. You don't need to worry that she ever finds a sympathetic judge or jury. Hell, she should even worry about her cellmates.

So far, unGeDuLdig, this girl's never been given anything but a slap on the wrist. Probation for armed robbery? Getting released without bail after torturing and killing someone's pet (in addition to destroying/stealing their property)? This girl has been lead to believe that she can do anything she wants, and the "system" isn't going to take it seriously.

Plenty of people here have already shown a "kids will be kids" mentality about this horrific crime, and a lot of adults have hang-ups about institutionalizing teenagers. I wouldn't be surprised if she got a very light sentence, if even convicted. I doubt she'll ever be forced into any kind of treatment.

You call her excuse ("It's a joke") stupid, but I think it goes far beyond stupidity. She also said it was a "joke" after she robbed a man at gunpoint. I don't think it's a coincidence that she's said that after two different, separate offenses. We have to consider that she might actually think that causing extreme fear or pain in people and animals is funny. I don't think there's any evidence that this will be the last horrific thing Ms. Cherry does purposefully to an animal or person.

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 7, 2009 4:04 PM

Maybe a mother will have to bury her young child before anything more will be done.

Now now, you can't infer that from the available evidence... right Rorshach?

Posted by: dreikin | June 7, 2009 4:26 PM

First off, I'd like to thank Susan for ignoring nearly the entire substance of my last post, in the true American journalistic tradition of ignoring everything that conflicts with your own views. Continuing on,

Jadehawk, #554, the positive alternatives to abortion that I favor include the things that my husband and I are already doing: we give over 10% of our income to our church for all its pro-family programming;

Thus quite possibly denying non-christians of your assistance. And not much assistance even at that, since from your later comments I'd infer it doesn't go towards anything more useful than proven useless abstinence-only education. Also, isn't that the normal tithe? If it is, how do you know that all that money is going to 'pro-family programming' and not your pastor's salary?

he gives tens of thousands of dollars to a Christian businessmen's organization which strengthens men as husbands, fathers and business owners and in turn strengthens the moral fiber of the whole community;

I doubt it, unless you only consider the Christian middle/upper class society as worth helping.

I have testified in favor of abstinence-ONLY sex education before the state board of education;

Thus helping to increase the number of necessary abortions - abstinence only education DOES NOT WORK. This is well-known and established fact. Wishful thinking will not make it otherwise.

we are, quietly and privately, role models because we were both virgins upon marriage and our kids know that and are emulating it;

No, they're not. Or not for long anyway. Kids lie to their parents, whether you want to believe that or not. And if any of the children are emulating you, and I speak from personal experience, you are quite likely fucking up their social abilities for years to come due to this, and likely other, repressions you're encouraging in them.

I've served on the boards of the Boys and Girls Club and a local child abuse rescue center; I have been a writing mentor for disadvantaged children for many years, volunteering up to three hours a week on their behalf; I have formed a nonprofit that gives mini-grants to after-school programs to enrich the informal learning experiences of disadvantaged children in our area; our nephew and his wife have two children and are about to receive their adopted third child, who is from Ethiopia; our close family friends also have one child but have just applied to adopt a second one and asked us to be their references

Good! Productive stuff! I can only hope you aren't filling their heads with many harmful beliefs such as "You should be a virgin until married", and are not denying them the more useful knowledge of what a condom is and how it works

we are voting with our feet, and our hearts, and our wallets, for life and for development of all people at all stages of development. It makes me very sad that people think all there is to do to cope with an unwanted pregnancy is to abort the child. That's so short-sighted and selfish.

People don't - strawmen do. It's also rather selfish and short-sighted for you to think that:
1) Abstinence only education is useful (it's not - it has no effect other than some psychological troubles imposed on a portion of the children)
2) Being a virgin till marriage is best (it's not - repression of natural sexuality is a bad thing, and getting into a marriage without learning if you and your partner are sexually compatible does not help to make happy marriages)
3) Having many children is a good thing (it's not, and is leading to overpopulation and all its attendant problems)
4) Abortion is never, or even rarely useful (it is - and often the best choice once it gets that far)

Askyroth #556, medicine has found that unborn children really do experience pain, not just a reflex; this is why they use anesthesia for both mother and child during fetal surgery; please see the article, Fetal Pain and Abortion: The Medical Evidence, Studies in Law & Medicine (Chicago: Americans United for Life Legal Defense Fund, 1984), by Vincent J. Collins, M.D., Steven R. Zielinski, M.D., and Thomas J. Marzen, Esq. Also note that the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in Great Britain affirmed in October 1997 that fetal pain does exist, referenced on p. 191 of the Randy Alcorn book.

Again, you're using obviously partisan (and outdated) materials to try to backup your case. Fetuses do feel pain, but not for their entire gestation. As my google scholar search linked above points out, scientists in scholarly journals are largely not convinced that pain is felt before the first trimester is over. Further, whether they feel pain, or even look like they feel pain, is not particularly relevant on its own. This line of argument may have no more effect than to think that anesthesia should be used if there's a chance of the fetus feeling pain. Since you already said that's the case, it's going nowhere.

dreikin #559, as a former newspaper reporter,

One of the most respectable reporters in the country is a comedian on Comedy Central - do you really think that's an endorsement for you?

my pro-choice stance changed to pro-life after I did a story on a courageous young mother stricken with cancer who opted not to have life-saving treatment (I think chemo) for herself because it would have killed her unborn child; instead, they induced labor as soon as they could and THEN treated the mother; she eventually died. But her example transformed my thinking, and that was nearly 30 years ago.

Lovely to hear why you chose your pro-slavery & anti-choice stance¹, but rather beside the point. That she made the choice that her child was more important to her than her own life is certainly courageous, but it is NOT a reason to deny that choice to others.

Another hinge, for me, was the realization that an unborn child has completely different DNA from either the mother or the father at the instant of conception, and thus is not just to be considered, medically, legally, ethically, or any other way, an extension of the mother or a "thing."

That it has different DNA does not make it a person. It may belong to the species Homo sapiens, but it is still, for a portion of its gestation, just a small clump of cells without even a nervous system.

A fetus is human, not an aardvark, and is alive -- a "being" -- and therefore a "human being," separate from Mom, and deserving of protection like any other human being -- and, as we've learned from this murdered kitten episode, any OTHER innocent life as well.

It is NOT separate from mom until it is born - it's a parasite living off its host, often causing that host great pain and distress, and frequently a danger to the host. As I said before, it may be a member of Homo sapiens, but that does not yet make it a person worthy of protection. For a good portion of its gestation, the fetus is incapable of surviving outside its host, and without the intellect to match a fly.

So an unborn human being is different from the skin cells I sloughed off myself in the shower this morning

Not much. And what about all those bacteria you kill in the shower? They have substantially different DNA than you, but you apparently don't think much of their demise.

(just fluff up your pillow and dream about it, dreikin -- :>) )

Um, why? They're clearly not important to me.

MAJeff, OM: I think the principle that when a society or political group demonizes and depersonalizes any other subgroup of people, the result is violence and genocide, is as clearly demonstrated by Nazi Germany and what the Nazi eugenicists did to the Jews and other "unwanteds," as the Planned Parenthood pro-abortion people are trying to do to unborn children by mislabeling them as "blobs of tissue," calling them "fetuses" instead of unborn children, calling an unborn girl an "it" or an unborn boy an "it," etc.

They are "blobs of tissue" for much of their lives, and the correct term is fetus; Your emotional appeal does not change reality. Further, did you not comprehend what I said above? The pro-choice camp is doing no more to promote violence against people than the forced-maternity choice-abolitionists are doing. Indeed, most probably less, since it is your camp that is demonizing, dehumanizing, and depersonalizing² abortion providers - actual people, not blastocysts.

Wolfhound, #574, I think the guy who killed Tiller, and the kids who killed their classmates and teachers at Columbine, and the terrorists who killed over 3,000 Americans on 911, and murderous Ku Klux Klanners, and Nazis who caused the Holocaust, and all other murderers out there, AND people who think the millions of human abortions in this country are acceptable, all share the same problem: they're selfish, they don't realize that ALL life is sacred, they're deluded by politically-motivated propaganda which distorts their thinking, and they basically don't care what rational, thinking people have to say because they're going on impulse and how they FEEL. Do you agree?

No. The person who killed Tiller very likely did it because of a misplaced care for the sanctity of life - he likely killed Tiller to stop him aborting what your camp makes him think are people in every way equal to a full grown human. And it's not only politically-motivated propaganda, but religiously-motivated propaganda that deludes many such killers. Further, many of the atrocities you cited took a great deal of planning and forethought - they were quite clearly not the results of people simply "going on impulse and how they feel".

¹What, you thought I wasn't going to read what you said to MAJeff, OM?
²You are not quite commiting plagiarism, but that was clearly a blatant rip-off of what I said in my last post.

Posted by: skeeelz | June 7, 2009 4:28 PM

i can't stop myself from thinking "i hope someone throws THEM in an oven and cranks up the heat ..."

Posted by: Katie Joy | June 7, 2009 4:55 PM

@ unGeDuLdig #618

Whatever ends up happening, I hope the final decision doesn't end up putting other potential victims at risk in an attempt to keep Ms. Cherry out of prison or a mental institution. I wonder if that was the goal of the probation... to possibly let a troubled girl "grow out of it" semi-supervised. No luck there, apparently.

It may seem harsh (note: I'm not talking about throwing her in an oven), I think at this point the safety of the general public is more important than her rehabilitation. If the criminal justice system can create a scenario that ensures both, great. Otherwise, I think the responsibility to protect the public from a violent criminal should be the highest priority.

Posted by: Anton Mates | June 7, 2009 5:01 PM

Sayna,

The Silent Scream has already been debunked. Planned Parenthood had an excellent page about it, but the page is 404'd and you'd just scream about them being lying murderers anyway--despite the fact that they, as a medical facility, are legally required to give medically accurate information. It's a damn shame I can't find it though, because it was really in-depth.

Google still has it cached as HTML, for what that's worth.

Posted by: Jonathon | June 7, 2009 5:02 PM

Speaking as a cat lover and the owner of a cat I'd simply die for, I don't think that there is any punishment horrible enough for someone who would murder an innocent animal in such a horrible way.

Put HER in an oven and walk away. Let HER cry and scream and suffer. I'd love to be there shouting "DIE BITCH DIE!!" while she wails and moans.

Hell cannot possibly be hot enough for people like that.

I have to find my cat now and love on him.

Posted by: SC, OM | June 7, 2009 5:29 PM

Put HER in an oven and walk away. Let HER cry and scream and suffer. I'd love to be there shouting "DIE BITCH DIE!!" while she wails and moans.

Oh, do please describe in more detail how the BITCH would suffer and scream and DIE and you would relish it, Jonathan.

Posted by: dreikin | June 7, 2009 5:47 PM

Knockgoats:
If that was to reference me somehow (as well or instead), that was not my claim - my claim at that point was that the points rohit had provided did not differentiate between bacteria, plants and animals, not that plants do/may feel pain.

Posted by: Susan | June 7, 2009 5:57 PM

dreikin, I'm sorry you feel I ignored you -- it's just that we have totally different views and takes on the facts, and I wouldn't know where to begin -- would take all day to list the links and books I've read and you'd criticize them, anyway.

Maybe just one: for abstinence info, you might look at the FAQ's on the best abstinence-only sex ed program, www.sexrespect.com, and remember that sex ed curriculum is just one piece in a giant puzzle regarding teen and young adult sexuality. Academic achievement, which you know I'm engaged in trying to improve, is a biggie in influencing premarital sexual behavior, and a lot of things that also influence it are so macro it's overwhelming: the nation's economy, parental educational attainment, parental employment, parental substance abuse, teen substance abuse, the media . . . etc. etc.

I'm just supporting that which I know works to produce a happy, healthy, productive teen and young adult -- getting them on a strong footing mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually, with a healthy sense of self-worth -- without leaving them defenseless and vulnerable to peer pressure and the onslaught of problems that engaging in premarital sex brings.

Bottom line: it's all about self-worth, and trying to instill it in young people from all walks of life. Wonder what the mother was like of that kitten-killer; I suspect not very good. As the mother of four, two of whom are grown and gone (and were Phi Beta Kappa college graduates, by the way!) I've learned that helping young people discover their gifts and strengths, and giving them a strong sense of self-value, is the best way to prepare them for adult life. Surely you can agree with this, even though you and I disagree on so many other things.

Before I leave this thread, wanted to refute the notion that Hitler was anti-abortion. He was only that way for Aryan women. He was a huge eugenicist and was greatly influenced by Margaret Sanger, the Planned Parenthood founder, also a Nazi-style eugenicist. Hitler's Germany actually had 65 million people with 500,000 abortions per year by 1935. There was a June 9, 1943 decree promoting "racially valuable" abortions among eastern European women. And the War Crimes Tribunal indicted 10 Nazis at Nuremburg for encouraging and compelling abortions, calling their policies a crime against humanity -- showing that pro-abortion politics are, indeed, Nazi-style, and must be thwarted if we hope to remain on a decent moral foundation in this country.

Please, readers: give an unborn human child killed by abortion at least the same consideration and empathy that you give this poor, murdered kitten. When you defend the weak and innocent, you elevate yourself better than anything else you can ever do.

Posted by: unGeDuLdig | June 7, 2009 6:03 PM

@Katie Joy

I think there is a misconception when you play the security of the public against Cheyenne's rehabilitation. These two are unseparable intertwined. There is no way around trying prevention and treatment (as feeble as the methods may be) if you really want to decrease significantly the threat by distorted characters. The criminal justice system as it is nowadays simply reproduces and enhances the cruelty skills of the Cheyennes of this world. I would dare to say that specially the US prison complex is utterly filled with people who should be treated, for the sakes of public safety. You don't reach these folks with "messages" anymore, the criminal relapse statistics prove my point. When whole segments of the populace fall so far behind the standards of civilization, whether harsh, exemplary punishments nor liberal pity will achieve anything. What's needed here is so demanding in costs and effort that politicians and the public shy away to symbolic, self-comforting and illusional "solutions". I'm talking at least about school, educational and housing reforms, readjustment of family and moral values that have a long time ago become the cannon fodder of culture warriors. The whole justice system, specially the juvenile court system, needs to be humanized and revised. Of course there is a place for "tough love" in all that, and the safety of potential victims has to come first. But exactly that leads me to say that I don't see how making Cheyenne "disappear" in an overcrowded and gang dominated hellhole in upstate New York makes me any safer in the long term. People don't start to behave responsivelly if you treat them like dangerous animals.

@Carlie

How come I never had to reinforce over and over this basic civilizatorial standards to my kids (And I'm not that good of a parent)? They miraculously developed this disgust for cruelty by themselves, because they always were treated with honesty and respect. If you have to force it on someone, something already has gone terribly wrong. And I still don't believe that it would prevent the next Cheyenne to be from becoming another psycho even if you'd crucify the actual Cheyenne publicly. Do you think that the millions of felons didn't know the law or that they thought prison wouldn't be so tough? Now, the 5 year olds you mentioned: They should not learn that cruelty is merely forbidden, this would only make it the more interesting. The educational aim is that they should feel that it is horrible, even if they're not caught. You can't "knock" a genuine, humane feeling into somebody, in the case of a Addams Family toddler your best shot is insight into the fact that the beetle or guinea pig is not a thing, but a sentient "somebody", so the child can identify with it. This is the strongest deterrant against cruelty.

@Jonathon #627

Sieg Heil. Nice to know on what you get off.

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 7, 2009 6:15 PM

I've learned that helping young people discover their gifts and strengths, and giving them a strong sense of self-value, is the best way to prepare them for adult life.

And lying to them about sex and teaching them (especially girls) that their virginity is more important than anything else about their character has what relationship to this?

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 7, 2009 6:17 PM

Before I leave this thread, wanted to refute the notion that Hitler was anti-abortion. He was only that way for Aryan women. He was a huge eugenicist and was greatly influenced by Margaret Sanger, the Planned Parenthood founder, also a Nazi-style eugenicist. Hitler's Germany actually had 65 million people with 500,000 abortions per year by 1935. There was a June 9, 1943 decree promoting "racially valuable" abortions among eastern European women. And the War Crimes Tribunal indicted 10 Nazis at Nuremburg for encouraging and compelling abortions, calling their policies a crime against humanity -- showing that pro-abortion politics are, indeed, Nazi-style, and must be thwarted if we hope to remain on a decent moral foundation in this country.

[Citation needed]

But even if true, what you're describing just underscores the fact that choice is morally imperative. Of course forcing abortion on women is immoral. So is forcing pregnancy on them.

Are you really this dense?

Posted by: Carlie | June 7, 2009 6:20 PM

How come I never had to reinforce over and over this basic civilizatorial standards to my kids (And I'm not that good of a parent)?

Seriously? I honestly don't believe you. You never halted your child from hitting someone or something else, you never tried to tell them that hurting others is wrong, you never had to help them learn to hold a small fuzzy animal gently because they were squeezing it too hard, you never sympathized with them or their friends over the loss of a pet, you never pointed out how others feel? Of course you did. Did you say "Do not throw a cat in a microwave"? Probably not. But you taught them that lesson over and over and over. Of course we're hard-wired for empathy; once when my son was less than a year old he offered me his pacifier when he noticed I was upset about something. But that has to be nurtured. It has to be broadened. People have to learn how to be empathetic towards beings different than themselves - every war atrocity is testament that people can very easily turn off that understanding towards specific groups, and the corollary is that they have to be reinforced to keep it.

I'm not saying to throw her in jail; I share your sentiments that reformation is the goal. That's what I'm saying: she needs that. She apparently missed out on all those hundreds of ways people learn empathy as children, and needs the best remediation attempts possible. Maybe those won't work, but no one will know until she's forced into it.

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | June 7, 2009 6:38 PM

: for abstinence info, you might look at the FAQ's on the best abstinence-only sex ed program,

Why? Why would we look at a program that lies to young people? Why would we look at a program that is actively anti-gay? Why would you inflict such hateful lies on children?

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | June 7, 2009 6:42 PM

There is no such thing as good abstinence-only education.

Posted by: Ichthyic | June 7, 2009 6:49 PM

Do you think that the millions of felons didn't know the law or that they thought prison wouldn't be so tough?

and how about the hundreds of millions of NON felons?

you think somehow awareness of civil and criminal law is somehow innate?

I'm beginning to think if you actually DO have kids, you're living in denial, and your kids are learning how to be part of a civil society from someone other than yourself.

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | June 7, 2009 6:50 PM

Susan you are a seriously deluded person. Anyone who can write that is either the most gullible person in any room she walks into or is lying.

I'm guessing we have yet to plumb the depths of Susan's delusion.

Posted by: Ichthyic | June 7, 2009 7:03 PM

I'm guessing we have yet to plumb the depths of Susan's delusion.

thankfully, it appears she has decided to leave before we had to.

Posted by: Salamander | June 7, 2009 7:06 PM

I'm guessing we have yet to plumb the depths of Susan's delusion.

I'm waiting for Obama's missing birth certificate and the socialist coup under way in the country to be mentioned.

Posted by: unGeDuLdig | June 7, 2009 7:28 PM

@Katie Joy

I see your non-utopian approach and I get it. The problem with it is that we keep dealing with crisis after crisis, build prison after prison and always go for the inmediate, lesser evil, which enables the greater evil to spread. We could have this thread almost every day, when some horrifying atrocity has been perpetuated again. When Cheyenne is finally behind bars, it is not the end of the story, but of our attention, which is soon to be caught by the next little monster. It's like the War on Drugs: We seem to win the battles, but are losing the war, because we never get to the fundaments, to the "production line" where this Cheyennes emerge in droves.

The sad truth is that once the "lesser" classes were needed in factories and offices and had to be disciplined and educated. This led to the school system and its ambiguous blessings. Nowadays, many of the underprivileged aren't - economically speaking - worth the effort. As long as most of them keep watching TV and buying stuff and maxing out their credit cards, who cares? And the deviants are put to use at lower than Chinese loan rates in the prison system. In the big cities there's a huge mass of "unnecessary population" that needs to be shepherded at the lowest cost possible. God forbid they'd ever grew up to be conscious citizens! So, this whole complex hasn't become so monstrous because we somehow didn't get around to fix it. It is a self-feeding machinery that devours youngsters and shits out profit for a few. And increasingly generates sociopathic barbarians.

@Carlie

My german flavoured English sucks. I meant that nurturing empathy, as you so nicely put it, and deterrance by cautionary tales or exemplary punishments contradict each other. "Don't be cruel or we might do something cruel to you" can't be the way. My kids are no angels and I'm no Mary Poppins. But, for example, when they damaged or hurt somebody or something I had them often (not always) make amends, i.e. assume responsability as far as they could. So now and then they were confronted with the consequences of their little misdeeds, with the feelings of those they'd hurt. At the right age this is quite impressive. Also, communicating to them how others feel and sometimes adult intervention played a role, of course. But the basis for their receptiveness to all this was their long-term experience to be treated with affection and dignity, like I'm pretty sure (just assuming) Cheyenne wasn't.

@Ichthyic

Are you telling me that you don't commit murder or rape just because it's verboten? I hope not. Of course, awareness of the law isn't innate, but it has to be preceded by your own conscience, or else you'll just learn the law to find a way around it. Oh, wait, I think that's exactly what Cheyenne was doing, thinking that she's a minor and - although an avid watcher of "Law and Order" - without the slightest notion of right and wrong.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | June 7, 2009 7:31 PM

Outrage is a renewable resource. No need to worry that we're wasting it.

Thread won.

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 7, 2009 7:54 PM

I'm guessing we have yet to plumb the depths of Susan's delusion.

...do they HAVE indoor plumbing in the world she lives in? :P

Posted by: dreikin | June 7, 2009 8:17 PM

I'm waiting for Obama's missing birth certificate and the socialist coup under way in the country to be mentioned.

Hmm..if socialist policies are democratically enacted, is it still a revolution?

Lynna:

dreikin @619: Hard to know the murderer's motives, but from the contact info that's shown up in the investigation it looks like kudos from his compatriots was at least a partial motive. He wanted to be somebody in the Operation Rescue warped universe.

Thanks, I didn't know that. I agree that it's hard to know the motives yet, which is why I tried to phrase it as only a possibility/probability.

Susan:
abstinence-only education is NOT sex education. It is anti-sex education. Sex education actually involves teaching about sex and to have sex safely - none of which abstinence-only education does. And it DOES NOT WORK.
o It makes no difference on the number of children that have sex by a certain age as compared to a control group
o It increases abortion rates by not teaching kids about birth control methods such as condoms and the pill
o It increases drop-out rates because there are more teen mothers/fathers

I'm just supporting that which I know works to produce a happy, healthy, productive teen and young adult -- getting them on a strong footing mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually, with a healthy sense of self-worth -- without leaving them defenseless and vulnerable to peer pressure and the onslaught of problems that engaging in premarital sex brings.

Abstinence-only education and denial of rights to abortion do NOT bring about those results, but rather the opposite by leaving them in the dark about what to do when they have extra-marital sex¹, and leaving them with no good options if they get knocked up. Add to that Christian morality and thought-crime, and you get quite a number of children who are screwed up mentally as well. Sex, even extra-marital sex, is healthy and good for people. It can increase self-worth, emotional bonding, relieve stress, be a good workout, and much more. Abstinence-only education just tries to scare bejesus out of the children and/or leave them in the dark about how to go about having sex safely.

As for the kitten-killer's mother? You have NO basis for making that judgement. RTF thread. Sociopathy, which may or may not be the case, is NOT an issue of upbringing.

I've learned that helping young people discover their gifts and strengths, and giving them a strong sense of self-value, is the best way to prepare them for adult life. Surely you can agree with this, even though you and I disagree on so many other things.

I agree it is necessary. I do not agree that it is sufficient. They must also have access to information & knowledge, be taught how to think critically, be entrusted to make their own choices about what is right for them, and not be emburdened with emotional and religious baggage that distorts their view of themselves and the world. At the least.

The nazi issue has already been dealt with, quite against your favor.

Please, readers: give an unborn human child killed by abortion at least the same consideration and empathy that you give this poor, murdered kitten. When you defend the weak and innocent, you elevate yourself better than anything else you can ever do.

No. For one, a fetus properly aborted goes through nowhere near the same pain as that kitten did. Also, many abortions happen quite early in the pregnancy, before the fetus is even capable of going through the same amount of pain. Further, providing abortions to women who can not, for some reason or another, go through or complete a pregnancy often IS protecting the 'weak and innocent'.

¹All the well-wishing and abstinence-only education in the world will not make that go away. The Victorians were even more prudish about the subject, and it still happened.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | June 7, 2009 8:24 PM

Oh yeah?
Love it or leave it, pinko! wingnut! apparently sarcastic commie reactionary whatever!!!

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | June 7, 2009 8:49 PM

Needs more bacon.

Posted by: Kel | June 7, 2009 9:29 PM

Pointing out the similarities doesn't mean they're equally as bad. I'll agree it's a bad idea to try and bring in things like the holocaust, it invites bad reactions.

Exactly, that's all doing something like that does. It's invoking an atrocity to add emotive sway to a moral argument. It's not only bad arguing, but it's quite sickening.

One position is taken simply because it's in a bizarre contradictary book which has moral guidelines which justifies atrocities, and the other is a considered position based on the desire to reduce suffering. Is this a trick question?

two things:
1. Are you saying that people who condemn alcohol usage out of religion only do so because of their irrational beliefs? That they haven't thought through the morality of drinking? That seems to be a bit credulous.
2. Why jump the gun with the m-word before discussing it? How can we go anywhere from someone calling another immoral? I would infer from this that you have no case for your moral superiority, but you just assume you do. Bring moral justification, not moral superiority. There's a difference between winning an argument and just calling someone wrong. It may be that eating meat is immoral, it may be that it isn't. But to call someone immoral rather than demonstrating their argument is wrong is doing nothing more than feeding ones own smug sense of superiority.

No one's harmed by you drinking are they? If they are, you should stop.

No-one is harmed by my eating meat, unless you count workplace accidents in the processing of meat.

Which doesn't at all address the morality of your actions. Also, I think self-righteousness is a positive trait. I see how it is used as a pejorative though.

Neither does condemnation, like I said above. This doesn't address whether an action is moral or not, it's just being judgemental for the sake of self-righteousness. Comparing meat-eaters to cat-torturers? That's nothing but a low blow and going to provoke a negative reaction. If you want a discussion on the ethics of meat eating, then I'll shove up a post in my blog and we can have one there. (open invitation)

And you feel that's a mature response?

Not in the slightest. But I feel it was appropriate. It would probably be going to far to mention how lovely the veal stir-fry I ate last night was, so I won't mention that :P

Posted by: Katie Joy | June 7, 2009 9:37 PM

@ unGeDuLdig, #655

I agree with you. I'm aware of the extent of the problem. It doesn't change the fact that this girl commits routine acts of violence and aggression, this recent one being (in my opinion) the worst of them. If she's released, there's absolutely no reason to think that there won't be more victims, and they have a right to be protected. They have a right to take their children to the same grocery stores and malls that Ms. Cherry would go to, and the right to live in the same neighborhood without putting their children and pets in constant danger (a danger they probably wouldn't even know existed).

Like I said, if they can find a way to force Ms. Cherry into treatment (which she may or may not actually benefit from) AND ensure that she isn't given access to the general public, great.

Posted by: Anton Mates | June 7, 2009 10:04 PM

Susan,

Another hinge, for me, was the realization that an unborn child has completely different DNA from either the mother or the father at the instant of conception, and thus is not just to be considered, medically, legally, ethically, or any other way, an extension of the mother or a "thing."

Other things with equally different DNA from you:

•Your unfertilized eggs or sperm--they're not even diploid!

•Some of your bodily tissues or organs, if you're a genetic chimera. Lydia Fairchild, for instance.

Other things with the exact same DNA as you:

•Your identical twin

If "completely different DNA" should be a sufficient condition for legal protection, then Lydia Fairchild's cervix has its own right to life. If "completely different DNA" should be a necessary condition for legal protection, then you have a right to kill your twin--and it's fine to abort one embryo if it has an identical twin which survives.

If none of those consequences seem ethically acceptable to you, then whether or not the zygote/embryo/fetus has "completely different DNA" is irrelevant to your argument, isn't it?

Posted by: cyan | June 7, 2009 10:08 PM

Terribly

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | June 7, 2009 11:20 PM

̨Matt, PZ only mentioned extreme cruelty to a kitten. Some folks hijacked the thread to push PETA's anti-meat agenda. Later some antichoice idjits jumped in. That has nothing to do with PZ. Personally, there a half a dozen or so groups that while I may support some of their ideas, promote them in such an over-the-top civil disobedience media bite fashion that they turn me off to their message. PETA is one of them.

Posted by: Stanton | June 7, 2009 11:37 PM

Posted by: SC, OM | June 7, 2009 9:44 PM

Discouraging.

Should I post my recipe for crucified trout, then?

Posted by: Pygmy Loris | June 7, 2009 11:56 PM

Marc Abian,

I said it.

Would you really eat more meat if it was the same as butternut squash? Would you not just eat butternut squash instead? If the only difference was the means of production, you wouldn't choose the one which doesn't harm and sentient beings and is less energy intensive?

You'll have to explain that decision to me.

Butternut squash is seasonal, meat isn't.

I said this on the other thread, but I'll say it here too. Not all land is suitable for farming. Some land is best used for grazing. Therefore, grazing animals on land that cannot be farmed is the most efficient way of getting digestible food off of the land. If you have a method of turning grass into food that doesn't involve an animal intermediary (and is as efficient as a cow, goat, sheep etc.) I would love to hear it.

Just thought I'd mention that my friend's first reaction on hearing about Ms. Cherry was to say "she deserves to be put in an oven then." This friend is a rational person most of the time, but he reacted with a visceral desire for revenge. I think it's very common to have that reaction when one hears about a cruel act. It's what we actually do that's important. Put Cherry in jail, or institutionalize her if she's mentally ill. It might not be as satisfying to our baser urges, but it's a bit more "civilized."

Posted by: yogi-one | June 8, 2009 2:31 AM

Life imprisonment without parole. She is a clear danger to the community. Get her out of contact with the public in any fashion whatsoever.

If she can do it to a cat, she's capable of doing it to another human being.

Get her off the streets, for others' sakes.

Posted by: unGeDuLdig | June 8, 2009 5:03 AM

Life imprisonment without parole.

I hope someday crimes against animals will equal the punishment to those against humans.

And it don't stop... This subject definitely attracts some ecofascists and other representatives of the lunatic fringes. My theory is that (rather leftist) fanatic animal activism correlates with the (rather rightwing) pro-life crowd. Both make themselves to the advocates of an "absolutely just cause", to some kind of holy warriors, and give by this trick themselves the permission to anything their disturbed souls desire. Both work with horrendous posters of gory atrocities and with disgusting 3rd Reich comparisons to submit their audience into obedience. And if you observe the similar self-righteous expression on their faces, their tendency to completely lose it when they picketeer in front of an abortion clinic or a research laboratory, their competing call for drastic measures against their hate objects, it's no surprise that this thread suffered severe hijacking attempts from both sides - they're ideologically closer to each other than they realize. It all boils down to a holiness of life & compassion with the defenseless yarn which oddly can lead fast to death threats, arson and bombing plots. The diagnosis, by which you can discern the extremists almost unmistakenly is an incurable good conscience.

Posted by: Marc Abian | June 8, 2009 7:08 AM

1. Butternut squash is seasonal, meat isn't.

2. I said this on the other thread, but I'll say it here too. Not all land is suitable for farming. Some land is best used for grazing. Therefore, grazing animals on land that cannot be farmed is the most efficient way of getting digestible food off of the land. If you have a method of turning grass into food that doesn't involve an animal intermediary (and is as efficient as a cow, goat, sheep etc.) I would love to hear it.

1. That's a silly objection. Pick a vegetable you like that isn't seasonal, now apply my argument. It didn't have to be butternut squash.

2. There isn't enough of that type of land to sustain the vast quantities of meat that we consume.
If your argument was that a certain level of meat consumption is desirable, then that's a good point. If, on the other hand, you were using it to justify current level of comsumption, then it's a largely irrelevant point.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | June 8, 2009 7:51 AM

Rev.,

Is that rocket-surgery sign real? If so, that makes my day.

I believe it is.

Posted by: Kel | June 8, 2009 8:16 AM

I don't think we should shy from calling people immoral if we believe they are.

Then you are no better than a religious person.

If religion was incidental, and they had thought it through, why mention that they were religious?

If someone were saying meat is immoral, then why mention they are a vegetarian? It was part of the example.

1. Animal suffering is wrong, where they have sentience. Meat eating contributes to this suffering.

Again, I come back to the example of kangaroo. Kangaroos don't live in enclosed environments, they run free until they are harvested for meat. And when they are killed, they have to be killed by headshot. Very little suffering there. Are you going to say that killing and eating a kangaroo in this manner is wrong?

Life is suffering, suffering and death are necessities of life. They both serve useful purposes and as animals we need to live on other life in order to survive. Would you object to eating meat if animals were killed instantly? If not, then your suffering argument is bullshit.

The animals are harmed other people are harmed as this process is a less effective method of food production and contributes more to global warming

That's a different issue. It's framing it in terms of the overall sustainability rather than the issue of causing suffering. If this were the case, I'm sure you wouldn't mind hunting and killing animals for food - even if doing it this way is more painful for the animal itself. In this case, would it be ethical to kill any wild animals that produce methane and contribute to global warming? Would it be ethical to kill any wild animals that cause suffering to others? Would it be ethical to kill animals in order to grow food in order for ourselves? Just how far are you going to take this argument?

The problem I have with calling someone moral is that it is condemnation before justification. Bring the justification first, show that someone is in a morally-unsustainable position before condemning them as such - otherwise it comes off as self-righteousness. And you won't win any friends by having that state, and only serve to antagonise anyone who you condemn.

Posted by: Marc Abian | June 8, 2009 9:08 AM

Here is what I believe.

Aniaml death is bad, as the animal would like to go on living. Animal suffering is also bad, probably worse.
The only place I'd accept such acts is where meat production is the only option, like in areas where vegetables cannot grow, and only if the food was needed. If the choices are hunger for people, or some suffering and death for animals, I prefer the latter.

I can accept the aniamls dying as a by-product of farming, if the farming is necessary. I do not give much weight to the argument that animals die even with any agriculture, therefore it doesn't matter how many die.

In terms of the sustainablity issue, meat consumption contributes more to food shortages and global warming, which effectively increases the suffering for people, particularily the poor.

I think humanity's non-interference in nature is worth something which makes the killing and suffering inherent in it an acceptable price. Unless the contribution to global warming from a habitat or community is substantial, I'm in favour of leaving that alone too.

Then you are no better than a religious person.

This confuses me. Why is it bad to call people immoral if you think they are? In case we hurt their feelings?

If someone were saying meat is immoral, then why mention they are a vegetarian? It was part of the example.

In this case, vegetarianism doesn't give motivation, religion does. Vegetarianism comes after the argument, not before.

Posted by: Kel | June 8, 2009 9:25 AM

This confuses me. Why is it bad to call people immoral if you think they are? In case we hurt their feelings?

Because that's not how morality works. Am I objectively immoral for eating meat? I don't believe that there are objective morals, only subjective ones that are contingent on time and place in history. So if you are going to condemn me, it would seem that you should have to demonstrate that you have an objective moral base by which to argue, or at the very least appeal to the zeitgeist of the time. If you don't do that, then you don't have an objective place to argue from and as such your argument is nothing more than you projecting your views onto the rest of the world - and that makes you no better than a religious person.

This is why I prefer to talk about ethics than morality, to discuss why things are right or wrong and realise that these ideas are shrouded in the framework of the society we are in. Attack the position of the person rather than attack the person, if you call me immoral it is going to get a different reaction from you framing my argument as to show that I'm hypocritical. And I may be hypocritical when it comes to the consumption of meat, I may be appealing to the naturalistic fallacy and cannot break free from a brain that craves meat. But if you are going to call me immoral, I'm going to ask what gives you the authority to say that?

Again, debate the principles, not the person. If I don't think eating meat is wrong, then what does your condemnation of me achieve other than a sense of moral superiority? Getting personal is never going to win you friends, guilting someone can only work if they feel guilty about it in the first place. This is why when a Christian threatens me with hell, I feel nothing. They are doing the same thing, condemning my actions to give themselves the illusion of moral superiority. But if all they can do is appeal to something that just isn't inside of me then they have nothing. Calling me immoral is just like telling me you'll pray for me, and to do so makes you no better than a religious person.

But if you justify your position through arguments as opposed to appeals to my sense of guilt...

Posted by: JM | June 8, 2009 11:12 AM

Outrage is a renewable resource. No need to worry that we're wasting it.

Thread won.

Not quite. Strawman won perhaps. The problem is not that we will 'run out' of outrage. The problem is that peoples' priorities are just not set right. Like this for example:

Speaking as a cat lover and the owner of a cat I'd simply die for, I don't think that there is any punishment horrible enough for someone who would murder an innocent animal in such a horrible way.

Put HER in an oven and walk away. Let HER cry and scream and suffer. I'd love to be there shouting "DIE BITCH DIE!!" while she wails and moans.

Hell cannot possibly be hot enough for people like that.

I have to find my cat now and love on him.

Seriously. Does this person not read the news? They must not realize all of the truly terrible things that occur in one single day. Children who die in wars. Children who die at the hands of pedophiles. Children who are forced to watch their parents killed in front of their eyes. And on and on...

And then we have people getting their panties all in a bunch because of this cat. I'm not saying this wasn't a malicious and terrible act and that the crazy bitch who did it should be brought to justice. But comments like the one I quoted just go to show that people don't have their outrage meter calibrated as it should be.

Perhaps it's the fault of the media and not the commentors here. There was a news story the same day as this one where 38 kids died in a daycare fire in Mexico. They all burned to death in their own version of an oven.

Why does that go unblogged? Why does this cat get all of the blogspace and 700 comments?

Something is definitely not right here.

Posted by: Carlie | June 8, 2009 11:17 AM

JM, it is impossible for every person to blog and comment about every atrocity that happens every day. For every tragedy that is terrible, there will always be one that is worse. By your reasoning, that means we should never talk about anything, because every second spent talking about X means that it's a second not talking about Y. And as soon as you focus on Y, someone else will come along to complain that you're not talking about Z. There can't be a one-upmanship regarding horror, because no one can win that fight.

Posted by: Randy | June 8, 2009 11:51 AM

It is really too bad there is no hell. People who would purposely harm kittens should have that kind of punishment. Too evil for words.

Posted by: unGeDuLdig | June 8, 2009 1:07 PM

@Carlie

Of course we can't talk about everything at the same time. But the strong and emotional reaction to this story, though understandable, reveals a certain lack of balance of priorities. If this one charred kitten triggers such an outrage, it is not because of the amount of suffering, which is relatively small compared to what happens to humans and animals elsewhere. Well, for the kitten itself it was horrible enough. The difference lies in the cuteness and innocence of a baby pet whose cruel death contrasts strongly with the feelings most people would have towards it. It would be easy to proof that an "uglier" animal or a "less innocent" human would have triggered less emotions or even not made it into the news. Some years ago - I don't know if it still happens - there was in N.Y. the phenomenon of vandals who set sleeping homeless people on fire. Although there was some outrage, it didn't shock people as much, mainly because homeless people tend to be the opposite of cute and innocent. This doesn't mean that the death of Tiger Lily doesn't matter, but that our sense of empathy is much more subject to psychological patterns than we'd like to admit and that we have huge blind spots concerning the suffering of others.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | June 8, 2009 1:27 PM

Hmm..if socialist policies are democratically enacted, is it still a revolution?

No. Which is (or at least traditionally was) one of the basic differences between socialism and communism.

If, on the other hand, you were using it to justify current level of comsumption, then it's a largely irrelevant point.

Has anyone tried to justify the current level?

Meat isn't essential for our survival, since we can derive the proten and other nutritional benefits of meat from other sources, such as soy, pulses etc ( As a matter of fact, some studies have shown how a vegetarian diet is healthier than one with meat).

There is of course such a thing as eating too much meat. However, while a vegan diet (is that what you're talking about?) is feasible, it's very difficult to maintain without developing a lack of certain amino acids and vitamins. You have to watch very closely what you eat and how much of it you eat and how regularly you eat it. (This hardly matters for a lactovegetarian, let alone ovolactovegetarian diet.)

Not quite. Strawman won perhaps. The problem is not that we will 'run out' of outrage. The problem is that peoples' priorities are just not set right. Like this for example:

Don't act as if I had defended that strange guy. In fact, before he turned up, I said (second paragraph of comment 516) that this kind of sentiment is part of a problem.

Why does that go unblogged? Why does this cat get all of the blogspace and 700 comments?

Ask PZ. I suspect that the reason is that the fire wasn't due to "a heartbreaking absence of empathy"; being an accident rather than human craziness, it's simply off-topic on this blog.

here is a story that has me absolutely furious. It is victim blaming as it's worst.

:-o

Incredible.

Posted by: Pygmy Loris | June 8, 2009 1:34 PM

Marc Abian,

If your argument was that a certain level of meat consumption is desirable, then that's a good point. If, on the other hand, you were using it to justify current level of comsumption, then it's a largely irrelevant point.

My argument has always been that we need a certain level of omnivory. This includes, but is not limited to, eating meat, eggs, dairy (for those of us with lactase retention).

2. The comsumption of meat on this planet is unsustainable and takes food right out of the mouths of the poor, and contributes more to global warming

There is enough food grown to feed every human being on the planet. This calculation does not include the fodder grown to feed animals. The US is the leading exporter of food in the world. This is in spite of our production of meat. I based this calculation on my 2007 World Almanac, which gives the actual amounts of particular foodstuffs a country exports. The only link I could find only gives the value of the food in dollars.

Anyway, the point is that there is enough food to sustain the current population. We have to use unsustainable practices to produce this much food and will have to continue until the world's human population decreases. Even if we quit feeding animals agricultural products and devote that land to growing food, it won't be enough to sustain long term population growth. (for the sake of clarity here I'm using long-term to mean the next 30-50 years).

To bring it back to the here and now, meat production is not taking the food out of the mouths of poor people. A crappy food distribution network tied to a truly horrifying economic ideology create a situation where there's enough food, but the people who need it can't afford to buy it. Also, many of the places where chronic malnutrition is common have limited arable land that is often put into cash crop production by the wealthy landowners as opposed to food crop production because the food crops aren't worth that much on the local (or international) market, but cash crops are.

Finally, my objection is to veganism because it is unsustainable on a multi-generational scale. The plant sources for certain nutrients (Vitamin B-12*, Omega 3s, and so forth) are either non-existent, not very good, or provide a useless form of the nutrient. We have to look at our animal husbandry practices and decide what causes the least suffering for the animals, but also provides the nutrients humans need.

*I am well aware that we can synthesize B-12 using bacteria and then artificially add it back into food. I remain unconvinced that this is efficient. Especially since the experts are now saying it's best to get your nutrition straight from the food you eat.

Posted by: Pygmy Loris | June 8, 2009 1:55 PM

Marc Abian,

1. That's a silly objection. Pick a vegetable you like that isn't seasonal, now apply my argument. It didn't have to be butternut squash.

I forgot to answer this. Sorry. First of all it's not a silly objection. I used butternut squash in my first example because I was going with a vegetable that I really like. Your original assertion implied that omnivores eat meat solely because we don't like the taste of vegetables (or like the taste of meat more). There are many people like me who enjoy the taste of vegetables just as much if not more than meat. I will admit that the tastes of beef, venison, elk, chicken, turkey, fish, crab, shrimp, etc. also appeal to me.

What kinds of veggies aren't seasonal? I get almost all of mine from my garden and the farmer's market. Are we talking potatoes, carrots and onions? I'd really have to think about that.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | June 8, 2009 2:16 PM

lactovegetarians, ovolactovegetarian don't face nutritional issues. Neither do they contribute towards the killing of animals

But of course they can contribute to the suffering of animals kept under factory-farming conditions.

Posted by: Pygmy Loris | June 8, 2009 2:38 PM

Jadehawk,

I wasn't really serious. The three veggies I listed are the ones I've kept for several months without them going bad. I'm in the southern Midwest so our growing season is quite long and I have fresh veggies from my garden or the farmer's market from April or May to November. Those months between November and May are the worst. I really hate buying veggies that were grown hundreds or thousands of miles from my home. I don't eat any "fresh" fruit during the winter because it's so tasteless. Preserved foods are my staple during winter.

North Dakota is one of those places where a sustainable, relatively local vegan diet probably isn't possible. IMHO. -40 yikes!

Posted by: Pygmy Loris | June 8, 2009 3:01 PM

Jadehawk,

:)

Posted by: Marc Abian | June 8, 2009 8:09 PM

Your original assertion implied that omnivores eat meat solely because we don't like the taste of vegetables

That was not my intent.

My point is that if the end product was identical, as in only the means of production differed between vegetables and meat, I don't think people would be so passionate about eating meat.
To my knowledge, there is no vegetable that is available all year round without importation, so perhaps it's better if we don't talk about a specific vegetable being like the meat, but vegetables generally.

Hope that's clearer for you.

Posted by: PB | June 9, 2009 4:23 AM

JM is no doubt one of those arrogant homo sapiens supremasists. A type virulent amongst the fundy wacko crew.

Posted by: rohit | June 9, 2009 9:45 AM

I love the arrogance of the vegetarian crowd. They act as if it is simple to adopt vegetarianism and morally wrong to maintain our biologically programmed omnivorous lifestyle. I've got some news for you, some of us, myself included, are allergic to a number of the major vegetable groups that provide protein to vegetarians. Quite simply, I can't be vegetarian, it isn't possible, nor for a healthy life, recommended that I even try.

Take a deep breath and relax. Done? Now let's talk.

Whether or not certain individuals within a movement are arrogant or not has nothing to do with the legitimacy of the movement. Sure, a lot of vegetarians are arrogant and condescending. So are a lot of atheists, a lot of religious nuts, a lot of every interest group. Again, has nothing to do with the issue that the group as a whole is fighting for.

If yourself and other people in your situation suffer from allergies that prevent you from sustaining yourself on a vegetarian diet, I find it reasonable that you would eat meat. I doubt many sane vegetarians ( except for the hard-liners ) would ask you to suffer from allergies and die to save the animals. However, note that you are an exception to the general case. Your allergy situation doesn't apply to the majority of the meat-eating population.

These arguments smack of the same arrogance and ignorance espoused by the "Organic Only!" movement. It is far easier to adopt such "moral" positions in an advanced nation with vitamin supplements and modern medicine, all the while ignoring realities faced by others and grasping for some moral high ground than it is to take just a moment and consider the position and limitations of others.

Whether or not a position is moral has nothing to do with how easy following that position is. A moral choice might be the laden with limitations, or it might be the easiest thing in the world. That doesn't speak to whether the choice, in itself, is moral.

Do our agri-business and agricultural practices in general need to be examined and improved? Certainly. Does this mean that we should all adopt a vegetarian lifestyle? No. Does this part of the conversation have anything at all to do with the seriously messed up mind that it takes to maliciously harm a small defenseless animal? Not a bit.

While the argument for vegetarianism might have a lot to do with agricultural practices, there is the question of animal suffering and killing to take into consideration too. And that is precisely why this part of the conversation has a LOT to do with the story PZ posted. We all maliciously harm small defenceless animals when we eat their meat.