Odracirys

Yesterday, while on a drive, I got behind a truck and took this picture. (During a roughly half-hour period on the road, I came across three more such trucks.) I could smell the truck from so close, and the smell was not good. These chickens were dirty and lame, unable to stand up even if they had the room to do so. Some were throwing their legs around, attempting to stand. I wondered what it must be like for them to see the outside world for the first time in their lives. Of course, there is also the heat and the wind (blowing feathers from the truck as it drove), but the outdoors, even if from behind bars, may have excited them a bit. Who knows what they would find in this whole new world that they had not known even an hour earlier? Maybe their lives would change for the better. Well, that did not pan out. As I kept driving straight, the truck turned right...into a processing plant with a sign boasting "Premium Fresh Young Chicken". Well, that was their glimps...

Abul ʿAla Al-Maʿarri is somebody whom I only learned of recently, but has definitely become one of my greatest heroes. According to his Wikipedia article: "[He] was a blind Arab philosopher, poet, and writer.  He was a controversial rationalist of his time, attacking the dogmas of religion and rejecting the claim that Islam or any other religion possessed the truths they claimed and considered the speech of prophets as a lie (literally, 'forgery') and 'impossible' to be true. He was equally sarcastic towards the religions of Muslims, Jews, and Christians. According to the poet Sa'di of Shiraz, he was a strict Vegetarian who argued for animal rights." "He rejected claims of any divine revelation. His creed was that of a philosopher and ascetic, for whom reason provides a moral guide, and virtue is its own reward." "Al-Maarri's fundamental pessimism is expressed in his anti-natalist recommendation that no children should be begotten, s...

My previous post on Google+ contained the video "If Slaughterhouses Had Glass Walls".  Below is a link to that post, and below that is a link straight to the YouTube video. My Post:  https://plus.google.com/u/0/100881434227795038077/posts/a3uEEBomwDE YouTube Video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2UMp9fsAJo The post outdid all of my expectations and became by far my most viewed post on Google+ up to this point.  I am extremely happy about that, because it is a post about the most important issue for me, which is animal rights.  Below are some statistics as of the time I am posting this on August 22nd. +1s:  1178 Reshares: 304 I sincerely thank everyone who +1ed and/or shared my post!  It really shows the power of a post.  I am sure that on top of those who +1ed it, there were other people who saw it and didn't do anything, either because they didn't like the idea of showing that they "liked" such a violent video, or for oth...