A collection of links for a Tuesday morning...

[annwfyn]

Cold cold world. A group of primary school children who were rearing a lamb, cheerfully voted to send him to slaughter so the school could get some pigs to raise for sausages, despite PETA sending the headmistress a pleading letter.

An article on simple delights, and the little things that make us smile. I read this earlier and it did definitely brighten me up.

A shiny little animated map showing the history of the middle east through its invasions. One thing this kinda brought home to me is how eurocentric my history is. I had no idea who the Sassanid Empire* or the Seljuk Empire** were.

Anyway, those are my links. I'm now heading into work for what is hopefully going to be a nice quiet day with my boss in Paris.


*The second incarnation of the Persian Empire, it appears.

**A Persianate medieval Sunni Muslim empire, established by the Qynyq branch of Oghuz Turks, according to wikipedia.

Comments

[lilitufire.livejournal.com]

And in other news, lambs are animals that are tasty. Let's now all point and laugh at PETA. Honestly. Why was this even an issue? Poor school.

[lilitufire.livejournal.com]

In fact I might send this to my father in law, (who is an ex farming studies teacher) just to see his reaction! :)

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Totally agreed.

Honestly, I think it would have irritated me if they hadn't sent that lamb to slaughter, as I'm quite sure most of those kids would have kept on eating meat. They would just have been taught that weird human hypocrisy which says 'don't let us see our food! Let us coo over cute fluffy animals, and pretend that the meat we are eating comes from the meat tree'.

[lilitufire.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly. Like the "Friends to Dinner" episode where some chick was making chicken tikka for her friends and got all squeamish because she actually had to interact with the MEAT oh noes....

mmm tasty meat tree.

Heh - shall I post in the toilets and see what happens? :)

[lilitufire.livejournal.com]

Done. I couldn't resist. Mea culpa. I am a BAD Lisa.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Oh, go for it!

[madwitch.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't do anything PETA asked me to do, the bunch of hypocritical arsewipes that they are.

They should be eaten by bears.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Bears do not teach their young that humans have feelings too. They just teach their young that humans wriggle whilst you eat them.

[wildrogue.livejournal.com]

That first one reminds me again why I dislike PETA so much. I really object to the idea that anyone who eats meat is an inhuman monster who betrays the poor fluffy lambies. Good on the school, say I. The children have learned the far more valuable lesson that they can look at various arguments and make their own decisions.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I agree totally. I think it sounds like a really valuable project, and I bet the animals the school kept for meat had a happier life there than they would have done on a lot of farms.

(well, not so much the lambs. You can't really intensively farm lamb. But the pigs that they turn into sausages will be happier, I reckon)

[twicedead.livejournal.com]

And the sausages will be better. Everyone wins!

[darklord-vecna.livejournal.com]

And just to be different, I'm going to talk about the maps... ;)

I quite like them, and watched some of the others on the site. The religion was interesting to watch, just wish it had some of the others in there as well. Shame the politics one was democracy only, and had the subtext of "We're wonderful and so is democracy". Hey ho, that's a rant for another day...

V.

[melsner.livejournal.com]

" I'm now heading into work for what is hopefully going to be a nice quiet day with my boss in Paris."

Are you going to Paris with your boss? Or did you mean while your boss is in Paris?

Mike Elsner: Grammar Nazi!

[castorlion.livejournal.com]

Yes, but due to Godwin's Law, you now automatically lose.

Thus, grammar loses.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

[twicedead.livejournal.com]

Here's the thing; Godwin's Law is invoked when someone describes someone else as a Nazi. So if he describves himself as a Nazi then does he automatically lose and win at the same time? Which is pretty much what being a Grammar... um.. obsessive does - they win but they also somehow lose.

[melsner.livejournal.com]

I didn't compare her to a Nazi! I didn't invoke it as part of the argument. So nyah.

[ginasketch.livejournal.com]

mmm delicious lamb.

[omentide.livejournal.com]

How sad is it that too much of what I know about the Sassanid and Selcuk empires I know through playing boardgames (History of the World features both)?

And I did further research for my Requiem vampire (who was fairly soundly Ottoman, but, being me, I needed to know what happened before the Ottomans).