Excuse me for stating the obvious, but racists are dumb. That’s not just my opinion. It’s the conclusion of a provocative new study published in the journal Psychological Science. Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario, and his colleagues found that children with low intelligence are more likely to grow up to be racist adults. A previous study examining homophobia showed that people who are less adept at abstract reasoning are more likely to be prejudiced against gays.

All of this got me thinking: Does the link between brains and bias apply to how we view animals too? Are “speciesists”—people who believe that humans are superior to other animals—just not all that bright?

“There may be cognitive limits in the ability to take the perspective of others,” explains Hodson. In other words, the less intelligent you are, the harder it may be for you to put yourself in another’s shoes—and the more likely you are to hold prejudiced beliefs about other groups.

If someone is unmoved by the plight of elephants shackled, beaten and forced to perform in circuses or of animals poisoned and blinded in laboratories, perhaps they similarly lack the ability to consider the animals’ point of view.

The anecdotal evidence linking intelligence and empathy for animals is certainly intriguing. Some of the world’s greatest minds from throughout history—including Pythagoras, Leonardo da Vinci, Mohandas Gandhi and Leo Tolstoy—have been vegetarian.

Albert Einstein, whose diet was primarily plant-based, said, “Besides agreeing with the aims of vegetarianism for aesthetic and moral reasons, it is my view that a vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.”

A few years ago, the BBC reported on a study that linked a high IQ with being vegetarian. More than 8,000 children in the U.K. were given IQ tests in 1970. When researchers followed up with the participants decades later, they found that people who had scored well on the tests were more likely to become vegetarian later in life.

Another study showed that vegans and vegetarians have more empathy—for both animals and people—than meat-eaters do. Researchers in Europe recruited vegan, vegetarian and meat-eating volunteers and placed them into an MRI machine while showing them a series of random pictures. The MRI scans revealed that when observing animal or human suffering, the “empathy-related” areas of the brain are more active among vegetarians and vegans. The researchers also found that there are certain brain areas that only vegans and vegetarians seem to activate when witnessing suffering.

So, could it be that your deer-hunting cousin or that woman at the store with the fur-trimmed jacket is just not smart enough to see that animals feel pain every bit as acutely, love their young every bit as deeply and long for freedom every bit as intensely as we do?

Maybe. But I like to think that such people just haven’t been given the tools they need to make a compassionate choice. As celebrated astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson says, perhaps “part of our formal education should be training in empathy. Imagine how different the world would be if, in fact, it were ‘reading, writing, arithmetic, empathy.’”

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-57382449-503543/2-western-journalists-reportedly-killed-in-syria/

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE81I0AP20120219?irpc=932

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2012/feb/10/week-in-wildlife-in-pictures

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2012/feb/03/week-in-wildlife-in-pictures

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/02/18/2032308/research-confirms-warming-causing.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/17/world/asia/in-baad-afghan-girls-are-penalized-for-elders-crimes.html?_r=1

Recently, a powerful lobby spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to defeat a bill that would have enhanced public safety, safeguarded the environment and curtailed cruelty to animals. Who is this giant wielding such influence? BP? The NRA? Halliburton? Nope, it’s none other than the U.S. Association of Reptile Keepers, which fought a bill that would have made some species of dangerous snakes illegal to import and sell. The group griped and hyped for three years until the list was gutted by more than half—four species have been banned rather than nine.

The ban will stop imports and interstate commerce in Burmese pythons (who, as a new study shows, are eating their way through Florida’s Everglades), yellow anacondas and northern and southern African pythons. Yet anyone can still go out and buy, breed, sell and trade in boa constrictors, reticulated pythons and three other species of anaconda.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar—whose job it is to protect our natural resources, not animal dealers—unabashedly defended the watered-down version of the bill, assuring Americans that the compromise wouldn’t “suffocate” commerce.

It’s a strange lot that insists that pythons, rattlers, constrictors, vipers and other reptile species make good pets. Snakes shun contact with people and for good reason: They are wild animals who only suffer at the hands of humans. Reptiles do not want to be your friend. They want to be left alone.

Those who breed and sell reptiles make money. But how to understand those who buy and keep the animals? In Jennie Erin Smith’s remarkable book, Stolen World, which documents the scope and scale of this ruthless industry, one dealer puts it this way: “A venomous animal gives someone a sense of power and a sense of adventure in an otherwise mundane life.”

But for the animals who are shipped around the world crammed inside toilet paper tubes, plastic margarine tubs and shipping crates labeled “automotive parts,” a buyer’s need to be different is often a death sentence. Mortality is high. Dealers hope that some of what they call “inventory” will survive shipment, knowing full well that the box will arrive filled mostly with decomposing bodies.

Reptiles have specialized husbandry needs, including spectrum lighting, heat sources and dietary requirements, which are expensive, tedious and technical. Very few buyers have the knowledge or inclination to commit to the lifelong responsibility of the animals they acquire on a whim. Snakes usually end up living in small aquariums where they can’t even stretch out the full length of their bodies, much less move around or climb.

Because they can’t vocalize pain or discomfort, it’s easy for owners who feel inconvenienced and bored by their new chore to ignore a starving, dehydrated or sick snake. Snakes are relegated to eating whatever someone remembers to dump into their tanks. They are hauled out for shock value, but roughly handling even large snakes can cause serious internal injuries.

Rather than exploring lush jungles and swamps and experiencing all the sensory pleasures that they are so keenly attuned to, their lives become an interminable limbo. For the vast majority of snakes who aren’t abandoned in an area like the Everglades, where they stand a chance of surviving, death will be slow and painful. Those who manage to acclimate wreak havoc on natural ecosystems—as the new study found, invasive pythons and anacondas have all but wiped out bobcats, raccoons, rabbits and other animals in the Everglades—and cost taxpayers millions of dollars to combat.

Why should the interests of a small group trump cruelty to animals, public safety, taxpayers’ money and environmental devastation? Why did it take three years for the government to sign this weak bill into law? Who “needs” a pet anaconda, boa constrictor or python? These are all questions with no reasonable answer.

A few years ago we alerted you to the horrific men of Pat’s Towing on Shrewsbury Street. We told you how Pat’s towed my car with my beloved dog Bailey – who was dying of nasal cancer, his sweet, wet nose dripping with the puss/cancer – to their hell-hole holding center. $100 in cash (money off the books, of course) got me my dog and my car back.

A few days later, InCity Times got tons of phone calls and notes/stories about Pat’s and the abuse old and young suffered at the hands of this Worcester “business.” We remember a pal telling us how Pat’s almost gave a 70-year-old guy a heart attack – taunting him after they towed his vehicle. Another person wrote us and told us how they tried to steal her credit card. They were appallingly rude TO EVERYONE.

Now these creeps are in Worcester court – for beating the heck out of people – for almost killing another person!

Why doesn’t the City of Worcester stop doing business with these thugs?

Why doesn’t City Manager Mike O’Brien revoke their contract with the city? Hire another towing company for the area Pat’s “covers” like a bunch of Good Fellas? There are so many start-ups that need a leg up! Why not hire a few, new fledgling towing companies to take the place of Pat’s Towing “Service”? Why have Pat’s Towing continue to abuse the good people of Worcester – with the City of Worcester’s blessing?

Finally: What does this say about our city government and the people who run it and being connected in Worcester? Pat’s being awarded the city contract year after year – even if they are felons – is wrong. Everyone knows it happens because they are “connected.”

No one in town needs to get beaten up by a City of Worcester-sponsored company.

Next Worcester City Council meeting (they are off this school vacation week), the first order of the day should be: REVOKE PAT’S TOWING COMPANY/SERVICE CENTER contract with the City of Worcester.

Who has defamed half of Worcester? Who has messed with Google searches, putting people and places and numbers in all sorts of places? Who has hacked into people’s websites? Who has placed fake calls to people – harassed them? Who is the supreme cyber bully of Worcester?

Wondershit, of course!

So, here he is, in all his hypocritical glory:

The pot dares to call the kettle black

By Wonderpoop

Comment section is a frightening look at humanity. One person got it right.

Aren’t we really like supposed to be smart and sophisticated; got like a college or university on every street corner. But we interact like lunatics given the chance. Why aren’t we discoursing intellectual and cultural issues instead of pissing and moaning about every triviality?

Well, blame it on the T&G. They gave us the rope and we willingly hung ourselves.

Welcome to Wusta!

R. Tirella

By Rosalie Tirella

The stuff you remember, the memories you carry with you every day and then revisit whenever you like … . Who can say why (and how) we choose the dreamscapes we each carry within our hearts? Why is it that one man’s memories of his wife cooking homemade chicken soup one Sunday night will stay with him to his dying day? Or why one woman will forever remember the deer that came out of the pocket park to cross the busy street, right in front of her. The deer was breathtakingly beautiful – the moment seemed frozen in time.

The images that pop into my head during often busy and stressfull days are often happy ones, the kind that comfort me. Like the time my father, working as a night watchman at a local club, brought home the club’s New Year’s Eve party decorations for me and my two kid sisters. To hang on our bedroom walls! The night had ended. We were little but our mom had let us stay up late to ring in the New Year. Then, around 12:30 a.m. or so, in walks my father carrying white, silver New Year’s bells, the kind made of crepe paper – the ones that opened up and became 3-d bells – and big cardboard cutouts of the New Year’s Baby – colorful and fun. And lots of streamers, too! They had been hanging from the club’s ceiling. My sisters and I went nuts! We were seven or eight years old – and this was too much for us, already giddy from staying up too late. Well, my mom gave us some Scotch Tape and we ran around our Green Island third-floor apartment taping the decoratons up all over the place. I got the big silver crepe bell for my bedroom! My mom helped me hang it from my ceiling.

BUT: Somehow our dad – who could be counted on for little – certainly not for groceries or winter boots – had come through in the most spectacular way! For that night any way, we were a happy family!

Then this image, one that for some reason “surfaces” for me every year or two and that I want to share with you now: two twelve-year-old girls – both seventh graders, listening to (on one of the girl’s Walkman) and singing along with the Whitney Houston hit single “I Will Always Love You.” It’s the early 1990s and these tweens are in love … with being in love. Whitney Houston captures for them the kind of idealized romance that they are dreaming of, that they hope to experience, the kind they so badly want to believe in, the kind of love that makes your life PERFECT. “I will always love youuuu …. will always love yooouuuu,” Whitney sings, scaling those octaves, just one sensuous rollercoaster ride via her amazing vocal cords. The girls are sitting close together – like gal pals do – sharing the Walkman’s headphones. They are singing loudly but they are carrying the tune in the prettiest way.

They say to me: “Rose, come here and listen.” They are excited, their cheeks are pink! I walk over, sit next to them and one of them puts a headphone next to my ear. The black foam on the head phone tickles my ear and I listen. But I also watch the girls, all innocence, all dreams, all I-will-marry-my-first-boyfriend-and-we-will-have-a-beautiful-baby-or-two-and-live-happily-ever-after. My beloved will only have eyes for me. He will positively light up when he sees me and run to my open arms (in slow motion, just like in the movies!). We will ALWAYS LOVE EACH OTHER.

My two young friends are thrilled to have me “this grownup” acknowledge the miracle (maybe I say myth?) they have just stumbled upon: TRUE EVERLASTING LOVE. TRUE EVERLASTING LOVE as sung by the beautiful, Venus-like Whitney Houston. Whitney of the beautiful smile (better than Julia Roberts!), Whitney of the shimmering evening gowns, Whitney, the all knowing angel of love. If Whitney sings it so beautifully, it must be true!

I will never forget the rhapsodic looks on those young girls’ faces, their voices sounding more cottoncandy than chanteuse as they sang along to – floated on is more like it – the luscious pop melody that Houston sang to them that sunny afternoon.

For this beautiful memory, I will always love … Whitney Houston.

BUT: When you forget Hogan’s Heroes for a sec, you see something not too funny: Wondershit, a guy who lies, whips up fake stats, digs deep into your personal data to destroy you and your dreams, and wields nothing but contempt for people he feels are inferior to him.

The perfect Nazi, actually.

How can Wondershit be so oblivious? How can he suddenly feel victimized when he has brought this unholy dumping on himself? He has trashed and libeled his way (sans BYLINE, of course) into this shitstorm.

Even his precious putty cats can’t save him!

R. Tirella

http://www.latimes.com/la-ed-disclose-20120215,0,738803.story