Last week I was on 4thoughtTV for 1 minute and fifty seconds (sorry, embedding disabled). The topic: “What will happen when the world ends?” with interviews leading up to the 21st of October when Harold Camping predicted the rapture. My interview was supposed to air right before 8pm but I was bumped initially to 1:05 by a short documentary about a hippo carcass. Now, I don’t want to be speciesist but I fancied myself slightly more interesting than a dead hippo. Ultimately, the short documentary was replaced by breaking news about Gaddafi’s death, take that dead hippo! I’m not posting this just to expand my multimedia empire but also because the clip does in fact have relevance to the way I view the world, through a vegan philosophy about a world filled with minds. Not going to spoil my short appearance for those of you who decide to watch but suffice to say that I for one will welcome our octopus overlords.
Posted 12 years ago Tagged
In our last podcast I ran some analyses on the vegan pledge data that Chrissy from London Vegan Campaigns was so kind to give to us. To summarize, LVC has been running a pledge every year since 2008. Each year pledgers come to the first meeting and are introduced to vegan food and nutrition including health checkups and cookery lessons. You can see more about what the campaigns do for pledgers at the London Vegan Campaigns website. Pledgers are all assigned mentors who will help them during their month long pledge. Data is collected on pledgers during the first meeting, during the end of the month meeting and, for past pledges, one year after. I divided a lot of these analyses between 2009/10 and 2011 because the questionnaires changed quite a bit. The seduction of dairy Ever talked to someone about a vegan diet and they say “I could never give up cheese!”? Well, we found some longing for dairy in our data.… more
Posted 12 years ago Tagged
Before I thought seriously about animal interests I can honestly say that I was an offensive and inconsiderate omnivore. I ate bloody meat, made jokes about eating every animal I saw and loudly proclaimed about the deliciousness of the carcass I was eating in front of my vegetarian friends. My war-hero grandfather, to whom I was very close, was a dairy farmer in the fifties and his family were horse traders. Also, I was an incredibly picky eater and barely ate vegetables or fruit. That’s part of why I feel like I have such a window into the psyche of those who are most dismissive of veganism and really understand where defensiveness both about the sentience of nonhuman animals and drastic changes in diet comes from. And yes, I’m aware my name roughly translates into “huntress meatman”.… more