1. tsmith
  2. Swabbin'...

Swabbin'...

By tsmith on August 3, 2006.

(The title should, of course, be hummed to the tune of "Strokin'...")

I'm out playing with cows again this afternoon. In the meantime, a few good posts from elsewhere:

Ed talks about the excuses Dembski's given for why research into intelligent design isn't being done.

Revere notes a cull of 50,000 dogs in China due to rabies. He notes:

We've gotten pretty used to the idea that if H5N1 appears in birds it is legitimate to slaughter birds wholesale within a certain distance of the infected flock. In the west, birds are kept as caged pets by some people but not huge numbers. In Indonesia and other countries, however, birds are the kinds of companion animals that dogs and cats are here. Keep that in mind when you consider this story.

And this is true. But at least we have an effective vaccine for rabies, and it ain't transmissible between people. Culling any animal population is a shame, but this one was so completely preventable...doubly sad.

Tags
Housekeeping
Intelligent design/creationism
Various viruses

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Re. the culling of dogs in China -- its not so much the fact that they are doing it, but how they are doing it. Beatings them to death? Thats about as painful a death you can give them...is that the best method they have?

Yes, I caught a clip of this, and it was really quite brutal - they'd just grab dogs from the hands of their owners and then club them to death with long shafts. They clearly did not take the time to aim (so as to render the dogs unconscious) either - I think brutality was intended to be part of this - emotional brutality against the owners as well as the poor dogs. The effects of the cultural revolution are not entirely reversed, and Mao was a cat person - dogs were deemed bougeoise.