Wednesday 17 November 1999

Pic of the day: When the white mouse said "Kiss my behind!" it did not expect the chihuahua to take it literally...
Screenshot from the supposedly family friendly screen saver and electronic pet program Petz II (Catz II + Dogz II). Who knows what else might happen when you let these virtual lifeforms loose on your desktop.
But I have to say, their facial expressions are just too cool.

While electronic white mice have to fend for themselves, the white mice of the real world have their champions. Along with other animals, they are defended by the Animal Liberation Front and related activist groups. ALF (yes, same as in Alien Life Form) has so far targeted property rather than people, but not all animal liberators are quite that scrupulous. A short time ago, one group sent letters with razor blades to a group of researchers. The blades were arranged in such a way that they should cut the fingers of people who opened the letter in a casual way. Not quite terrorism as we know it, but definitely a turn towards the shoulder of the road.

Now, before you make up your mind about me, I think this is the time to mention that I grew up on a farm where the animals were among my best friends. I did on average love my parents more, I guess. But the goat kids were definitely closer to my heart than quite a few of my schoolmates. Not that this takes a lot, since I had a very strained relationship to quite a few of the boys. Let me be honest: If the human kids had been slaughtered and served for dinner, I would feel neither more nor less inclined to eat them than my friends from the barn. But I would have felt better about going to school the next day. School was quite a nightmare for me some times, while there were no such problems with the animals.

In light of this, I can certainly sympathize with those who fight against cruelty towards animals. Whether it be through amateur hunting which yearly wounds quite a number of wild animals, or the meat factories that pass for farms in many "civilized" countries. And yes, the use of lab animals is sometimes cruel and unusual, and some of these are creatures with basically the same brain structures for emotions that we have. (This goes for all mammals, really.) But then again, treatment of lab animals has improved drastically, and over a lifetime I'd say a lab rat has a higher standard of living than their free cousins trying to dodge cats, dogs, hunger, traps and poison.

Not least, research on animals has contributed to numerous important treatments for such common plights as hypertension and diabetes. If not for animal research, it is a given that my own mother would have been dead many years ago. So I hope you can understand that I am in favor of animal testing in medicine. Then again, I can certainly understand that your priority is the rats or monkeys, if you feel closer to them. To each his own.

I was sick at home today. But it wasn't a total loss: While the Americans were snoring happily in their beds, I was up and snuck into the crosswinds.net FTP site and uploaded my two month's worth of pictures that I had been unable to put in my archive. So now you should be able to view September and October 1999 in all their splendor. :)
Of course, around the same time the web-based upload was fixed ... And I have sort of put February online in the archive too. The entries are not checked in any way, links may be dead and the navigation makes me cringe. But it is there. Enjoy! :)

The meteor storm known as the Leonids should be out there. However, it is partly cloudy here in Southern Norway, and anyway it probably would not make much of a difference whether I see it or not. So, not it is.