Another Change of Heart About Animals Post

First of all, I totally agree with Jeremy Rifkin on how animals should be treated with the respect and care they deserve. People should extend more “empathy” to animals because they do have feelings and emotions, and are very similar to humans; more than we ever imagined. Rifkin proved that animals are intelligent by talking about the crow bending the straight wire to retrieve food and Koko, the gorilla, learning sign language. Both stories are quite fascinating by learning how smart animals are and we do not even recognize it. Also animals can have feelings and show emotion such as depression. Rifkin talks about how elephants stand next to their dead kin for days and display a mourning period. This heartwarming story showed how animals are alike to humans by having feelings. The articles we read in our packet in class all had topics supporting animal rights but there was none with a counter-argument. The only thing close to this was the letter to the editor which was simple and cheap. Although I believe in animal rights, I am afraid that too many of other classmates may have a different view but do not have any supporting backup; therefore they just choose the side everyone else joins.

The Value of Life

In her thread "Animal Rights," Kaitlyn mentioned that animals should be given rights "so... their lives [are not] wasted" during experimentation. I found this very interesting because it reminded me of our previous unit of the value of life. Though we merely focused on the monetary value of a human life depending on money needed to support a lost loved one’s family, I feel that we should think the same with animals. Of course we wouldn’t give them money (What good would that do?), but in its place something much more valuable for animals to allow them protection and comfort from painful and harmful experimentation: rights! So many animals are suffering from abuse, mistreatment, neglect, and other terrible treatments, so I thought that it would be nice to give them a helping paw. What do you think about granting animals rights, and if so, to what extent- un-human personhood, or simply enough to prevent animals living in harsh conditions under the hands of oppressing mankind?

Undecided

I am sure many of us check the undecided box when talking about animal rights.  We are conscious that animals feel pain, but scientist convince us that animal research is for the better.  I speak for all of us who are indecisive when I say, that I am in the middle.  I do not think that animals deserve the same rights we, the superior beings, have.  As I read through the articles, I noticed that all of them were biased towards the need for animals rights.  A Change of Heart added how the Swiss believe that their should be some plant rights...now, in my opinion, I think they have gone too far at that point.  If animals do not obtain the same intellectual thinking we possess, what makes them think plants do?  My point is that many believe that animals feel the pain and emotions we can, which is why they think that they deserve equal rights, but they will never get to our level.  We have become very advanced in technology and our knowledge has expanded to great lengths.  Animals, not even dogs or monkeys, will always be below us and that may sound harsh, but it is true.  All in all, I believe that animals should not be abused for any type of enjoyment, but if animal research will truly help, I give my full support.

A change of heart about animals

After reading and annotating the article 'A change of Heart about Animals'  by Jeremy Rifkin it has me thinking more about how animals really do have feelings like us humans and how they are more like us than we thought.  In this article Rifkin talked about how two crows strategized a way to get food with just a hook and a straight wire from inside a tube, I don't know about you guys but I was pretty amazed that two crows could figure that out on their own. I was also amazed by the gorilla he talked about that was taught sign language and mastered it and also scored between 70 and 95 on a human IQ test. I have tried to learn a little bit of sign language myself and it's  hard, so for a gorilla to know over a 1,000 signs is crazy to me. By reading this article I've learned a lot of new things about animals that I didn't know before, they are really capable of doing most of the things that we do they just may take a little longer learning how to do them.

It's All About the Money

So I know were getting closer to break. We're being told to blog and to blog and to blog. Personally I would never blog if I didn't have to. My point is that I don't see what blogging helps us with. I don't see the point of any of the homework given to me from my Spanish class, Economic class, or government class. Honestly at the point I'm at in my life, my life out of school doesn't care about my life in school. My whole life revolves around trying to find work. Just trying to make enough money to help my parents out. When I have enough free time in the weekend to do homework and other crap I really don't think to do it. All I'm doing is trying to find where the money is at. I do care for college and would like to attend a university but I'm just trying to do enough to get by senior year. I don't want to be copying vocab words and coloring thinking maps my senior year. How old are we? I'm already checked out.

Animal Rights

I feel like we are constantly hearing about animal rights and whether or not animals should be tested on. I personally think that if an animal has to be tested, it shouldn’t be to the point where they feel a lot pain. There should be a certain level of pain that the animals feel.  I know if I were that animal I would not want to go through horrible pain, we humans have an advantage because we can actually speak for our selves, so we have a say in what we want. Animals, however, cannot speak for themselves, so I think they should be able to have rights so it is not like their lives have been wasted. The article, “A Change of Heart about Animals,” by Jeremy Rifkin, says that our fellow creatures, “feel pain, suffer and experience stress, affection, excitement and even love.” Rifkin gives an example of elephants experiencing grief. He says that when one of their kind dies, the elephant will stand next to their body for days, this shows that, “mourning for the dead represents the real divide.” Which means animals have feeling and memories and should be able to have rights so they can have a feeling of protection.

A quote by Gary Provost

First of all, I found this quote pretty recently and thought you would all enjoy it. Gary Provost was a famous writing instructor who lived from 1944-1995.

"This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important."

Next time we write in class I am going to try and use this with my writing, and I think it may help with keeping everything interesting. Hope the rest of you liked this quote too.