Roadside haiku! Putting a fresh twist on an old tradition, John Morse uses poetry as social commentary. For more on roadside haiku, check out Morse's web page here. Read more!

Summertime and the livin’ is easy. Bye everyone! I leave you with this year’s Grizzly@Adams Super Summer Classic: George and Ira Gershwin’s lullaby “Summertime,” from Porgy and Bess. To hear Billie Holiday sing this standard, click here. Ella Fitzgerald also has a fine version of the song. Amy Winehouse’s version is not quite in the same league, but still worth a listen. For an acid-rock version, try this one from Jim Morrison and the Doors. And for the 1959 film version, click here.

“Your daddy’s rich and your ma is good lookin.’” Now that’s poetry.

Previous Super Summer Classics include “Summersong” by the Decemberists and “Hot Fun in the Summertime” by Sly and the Family Stone. Read more!

Comm Arts II: In class today we began analyzing the film Project X (1987). The basic idea here is to remember that films are usually very carefully constructed. Nothing is left to chance. Whatever appears in any given frame is there for a reason, and part of film analysis involves nothing more than observing what is there, and then asking and attempting to answer the question, Why it is there? (Or perhaps better, What is the effect on the viewer of it being there?)

Let’s put our collective minds to work on the image above, which depicts the researcher Teri (played by Helen Hunt) and her subject Virgil (played by Willie). What’s there? Why do you suppose the director put it there? (Click on the image to enlarge it.)

Of course, there’s much more to analyzing film than scrutinizing still frames. But if we each contribute one or two key observations about the frame we can get a little practice and at least get started on our analysis.

For more about the film and the military research that inspired it, review pages 25-29 in Animal Liberation. For guidelines for Paper #4, click here. Read more!

Comm Arts II: Over at the Tyson Foods website is a page titled “Our Core Values.” Two of the listed values are religious:

We strive to be a faith-friendly company.

We strive to honor God and be respectful of each other, our customers, and other stakeholders.

Another of the listed values is more worldly:

We strive to earn consistent and satisfactory profits for our
shareholders.

Given that Tyson is located in Arkansas, I’m guessing the “faith” they’re talking about is Christianity and the “God” they strive to honor is Jesus.

But wait a minute. Didn’t Jesus tell people not to lay up for treasures for themselves on earth, because where their treasure is, there will their heart be also? And don’t huge corporations like Tyson Foods exist to generate profits, that is, to “lay up treasures on earth”? Is Tyson lying about its core values? Or has it hit upon some clever theology that allows it to honor Jesus by repudiating the words of Jesus? Read more!

Comm Arts II: Allow me to get all academic for a moment and suggest that we think of the practices Peter Singer describes in chapters two and three of Animal Liberation as examples of what happens when animal treatment meets modernity. Modernity saw the rise of science and industrial capitalism, and thus provided the conditions for animal experimentation and factory farming.

But now we’re leaving modernity behind and entering postmodernity, which I’ll try to explain today in class. Right now all I want to say is that most of Singer’s argument can be seen as a reaction against some of the key values of modernity — most of that argument, but not all of it. He also criticizes Jewish and Muslim dietary laws, which are decidedly premodern, and genetic engineering, which is postmodern (152-157). I bring this up in part because maybe, as we leave modernity behind and our conditions of existence become more and more postmodern, we’ll need a new book that takes on the problems Singer only begins to ponder in Animal Liberation.

Anyway, what do you think about the genetic engineering of nonhuman animals? Is it ethical to use genetic engineering to create an entirely new species of animal? Should it be legal to patent such a creation? Read more!

Comm Arts II: In Animal Liberation Peter Singer quotes a pork producer as he explains his pigs’ response to having their tails cut off.

They hate it! The pigs just hate it! And I suppose we could probably do without tail-docking if we gave them more room, because they don’t get so crazy and mean when they have more space. With enough room they’re actually quite nice animals. But we can’t afford it. These buildings cost a lot. (121)

I sense that this farmer would prefer to treat his pigs humanely, if only he could “afford it.” Well, if you’re not rich I’m sure you know what it’s like not to be able to afford something. But does economic necessity justify inhumane treatment? Is there really any such thing as economic necessity? I can’t afford a Jaguar, but that doesn’t make it okay for me to use unethical means to obtain one. It just means I do without.

In the same way, if the only way to profitably raise pigs these days is to torture them, shouldn’t that mean we should simply do without factory-farmed pork? Isn’t the farmer really saying “We can’t afford to raise pigs ethically, so we do it unethically”? And isn’t that the same as my saying, “I can’t afford to own a Jaguar ethically, so I’ve obtained one unethically”? Read more!

Comm Arts II: In Animal Liberation, Peter Singer basically calls the pioneering “chicken tycoon” Frank Perdue a lying sack of crap. Well, that’s my paraphrase. What Singer actually does is tell us Perdue’s claim “that the chickens on his ‘farm’ are pampered and ‘lead such a soft life’” (105) does not match reality. Singer lets us draw our own conclusions about the man’s honesty.

Do you think Singer has treated Perdue fairly? Or did he let him off too lightly? Are you confident that Singer is right about Perdue? (Checking Singer’s use of his sources here would make for a great essay, BTW.) If Singer is right, what would have been the most rhetorically effective way to call Perdue on the carpet? Read more!

Comm Arts II: I spent most of class Friday lecturing on the concept of spontaneous order as part of a broad shift in thought that touches on everything from biology to economics to linguistics. A spontaneous order is any kind of organization that emerges on its own out of chaos, through some unplanned and undirected process of self-organization. Probably the most famous example is biological evolution, in which complex, highly organized, and seemingly designed life forms and ecosystems evolve naturally, without the help of any outside direction. (Compare evolution-by-natural-selection to the process of selective breeding, which does depend on outside direction, namely, that provided by the animal breeder.)

Other examples of spontaneous orders include the modern market economy, the human brain, and, most important for this class, language.

Just like a market economy, a natural language is not planned or designed by any individual authority or designer. The meanings of its words, the rules of its grammar and syntax, and the conventions of its writing emerge naturally out of the zillions of judgements and choices made by the many people who use the language.

Why do I stress this fact? Because it’s crucial to understanding the debate over prescriptivism and descriptivism. I won’t try to explain these concepts here; if you missed my “prescriptivism and descriptivism” lecture in class you’ll have to get yourself up to speed by perusing the links I’ve provided. (If you’re feeling particularly intellectually adventurous, read this famous Language Log essay, Everything Is Correct Versus Nothing Is Relevant.)

Here’s your question — and it’s not an easy one to answer. To what degree do you think our society should try to standardize its language and try to stop it from evolving? To what extent do you think we should let it evolve naturally? What implications does your answer have for the teaching of writing in the schools? Read more!

Comm Arts II. Below the fold I’ve pasted in a sample abstract of the sort you’re supposed to turn in on Friday. It’s not perfect, but I hope it demonstrates what my paper will be about and what is at stake in its argument. Here’s the abstract:

Other Pathways to Animal Liberation: Tom Regan and Tzachi Zamir
Abstract
In Animal Liberation, Peter Singer bases his arguments not on the notion of animal rights but on the principle of equality and the rejection of speciesism. Because of the tremendous controversy over our treatment of nonhuman animals, it is important to understand that Singer’s utilitarianism is not the only way to defend animal liberation. Even if Singer’s opponents were to prove him wrong, they would still have to contend with other animal-liberationist arguments. In this paper I will compare and contrast Singer’s work to that of two philosophers who take different routes to the same animal-liberationist end: Tom Regan, who argues that nonhuman animals do indeed have rights, and Tzachi Zamir, who argues that animal liberation is consistent with speciesism.

What do you think? Does this proposed project meet the basic criteria for a good intervention in the local public sphere?

P.S. Yes, I'm really going to write this paper. I try not to ask my students to do anything I don’t do. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Read more!

Comm Arts II: Among the many experiments described in Animal Liberation, perhaps the most grotesque is the one that involved “transplanting the heads of monkeys and keeping these monkey heads alive in fluid after they had been totally detached from their bodies.” The goal of the researcher, Robert J. White, was “‘to offer a living laboratory tool’ for research on the brain” (75). Do you think this kind of research can be justified, or is it simply beyond the pale? If you think it can be justified, on what grounds? If you think it’s beyond the pale, what do you think it says about our culture that it permits such things? (If you’d like to see video taken during the original experiments, click here.) Read more!

Comm Arts II: Writing about animal experiments in Chapter Two of Animal Liberation, Peter Singer writes that “Many experiments inflict severe pain without the remotest prospect of significant benefits for human beings or any other animals” (36). His opening example is a project in which military researchers exposed monkeys to lethal doses of radiation. Why do you think Singer chose to make this his first example of what he considers to be unethical animal experimentation? Read more!

Comm Arts II: Before class Wednesday be sure to read pages 1-23 in Peter Singer’s influential book Animal Liberation. Remember that the idea here is not simply to discuss whether Singer’s animal-rights argument is right or wrong, but to analyze how he goes about making that argument. That is, part of the idea is to pay attention to Singer’s rhetoric. You’ll hear a lot more about rhetoric as the course goes on.

For now, however, let’s forget about rhetoric and focus on the argument itself as it has been developed so far — such as the idea that “all animals are equal.” Notice that Singer is not arguing that all animals are the same in the sense of “having equal abilities” (which is obviously false) or “deserving equal treatment” (which probably strikes most of us as absurd).

Instead, Singer is arguing that all animals merit equal consideration of their interests.

Different kinds of animals can have very different interests. Some animals might conceivably have no interests at all. As Singer writes, “The basic principle of equality does not require equal or identical treatment; it requires equal consideration. Equal consideration for different beings may lead to different treatment and different rights” (2, my italics).

So, maybe we’re not convinced that we should all be vegetarians — but do we agree with Singer so far?

What about the idea that we must “avoid speciesism,” which is to say, “we must allow that beings who are similar in all relevant respects have a similar right to life — and mere membership in our own biological species cannot be a morally relevant criterion for this right” (19)? Read more!