We Need to Boycott KFC

One thing that will be a recurring theme on this blog is my love for animals. In fact, one of the reasons I’m a doctor today is that I had originally wanted to become a veterinarian, but I didn’t think that I could handle the death of all my patients. Many people laugh at this and say “oh, and all your human patients dying doesn’t matter?” Of course it does, but obviously my thought process was a step ahead of them when I was 10 years old. Unlike physicians, where many of their patients even sometimes outlive them (especially if you are in Family Practice), if you are a veterinarian, every one of your patients will die three times over (assuming the maximal life-span of dogs and cats are 15 years, and you practice veterinary medicine for 45 years). What a sad job! Not to mention the fact that you have to euthanize animals as part of your occupation.
Today I will focus on one particular example of humankind’s utter disrespect for other forms of life than themselves. I will speak more about the philosophy that I have adopted concerning all of life in another blog, that of Albert Schweitzer’s “Reverence for Life.” (a wonderful world-view that would make this world a MUCH better place if we all thought like him).
I first came upon the atrocities of Kentucky Fried Chicken in February while searching PETA’s website (PETA stands for “People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals”). Linked on their page is a website that they developed called www.kentuckyfriedcruelty.com. I had heard vaguely about the cruel treatment practices of KFC in the past but had no clue what they were actually doing until I came across this website.
The first thing I watched absolutely horrified me and almost made me wish that I did not belong to the human race. I clicked on a link to a video of a PSA by Al Sharpton (a man I have great respect for and someone I wish to God would have won the presidential election, besides Dennis Kucinich of course!) which detailed what goes on in the warehouses that contain KFC’s chickens. What they do to these poor chickens is completely appalling.
When a KFC chick is just a few days old, they use a machine with a searing hot blade to completely chop off their beaks. The video of this is awful to watch, and I suggest you ready yourself to be shocked if you indeed choose to view it. Some of the little chicks even die from shock due to this barbaric practice. The pain continues for weeks on end.
It gets much worse. Warehouses of chickens are crammed so tight, that the chickens completely lose it and start attacking each other because they can’t even move. They’re fed so aggressively (to maximize meat) and as a result become so fat so quickly, that their legs break and they can’t even walk anymore. Chicken waste is not even cleaned up, and the ammonia fumes from the dung sometimes suffocates chickens.
The slaughtering process is even worse. In order to save money, KFC uses inadequate electricity to stun the chickens before they slit their throats and dip them in scalding hot water to burn their feathers off. That means that many of the chickens are conscious when they are put into the boiling water. KFC could easily afford to knock the chickens unconscious before they boil their feathers off, but of course their greed gets in the way and they could care less about other life.
The atrocities continue. PETA has obtained videos of the warehouse workers actually abusing chickens by stomping on them, picking them up and throwing them against a wall, and numerous other appalling acts against these poor animals who have done absolutely nothing wrong. One video even depicts warehouse workers tearing live chickens apart with their bare hands (this warehouse was in West Virginia, what a big surprise!). Since these workers get paid by how many chickens they can ship in an hour, they grab the chickens and toss them inside tight crates as if they were rocks and as quick as they can. Many of the chickens end up being injured with broken bones in this manner.
KFC knows all about this, and because they are greedy for profit, they do nothing to stop their sadistic practices. PETA has made suggestions numerous times to KFC on how they can slaughter their chickens humanely, yet KFC does not listen. All of the other fast food chains, including McDonald’s, Burger King, and Wendy’s, have adopted humane slaughter practices, but KFC continues to reject PETA’s advice.
Temple Grandin, a fellow animal lover who has just written an excellent book on animals from a unique point of view (she is autistic), is also an expert on engineering humane slaughter systems for numerous food companies. Earlier this month, she quit Yum Brand’s (parent company of KFC) animal welfare committee after KFC asked her to sign a confidentiality agreement requiring her to field all media questions concerning animal welfare to KFC headquarters. (Peep the article here).

This abuse has been going on for years. 750 million chickens are killed each year by KFC. They are completely aware of this holocaust, yet will do nothing to improve the lives of their chickens because they are so greedy for money. Luckily I don’t think I have eaten at KFC in 3 or 4 years, and I guarantee you I will not be going there anytime soon. Although I do not completely subscribe to PETA’s philosophy (I obviously believe as omnivores it is OK for humans to eat meat, but that does not mean we should not have respect for the life which provided that meat), I will join PETA’s effort to boycott KFC. After reading this and viewing PETA’s website, I hope you do too.

Emergent Theory

Over the past several months I have been studying something known as emergent theory. I first stumbled upon the theory all by myself, when I was pondering the miracles of the universe and how crazy it is that these miracles have happened. I initially pondered three miracles: The "emergence" of the universe, the "emergence" of life, and the "emergence" of humankind. Each one of these I considered utterly absurd to have come about by random chance (my discountenance of Darwin's theory of evolution will come at a later time, as I have much to say about that subject). Thus these three phenomenon were "miracles" to me, in other words, they seemed to be supernatural occurrences which on even very light inspection broke the laws of the universe which we know to be true, in that a high level of organization had come out of "chaos" (in effect violating the laws of entropy).
The creation of the universe is obviously different then the latter two miracles, in that it had first had to precede the second two miracles (and, as well, the second had to precede the third), and thus it was the beginning of everything. If that isn't a miracle, I don't know what is!
It is almost too mind-boggling to even think what came before this creation of the universe, and I propose you think and conquer this counterintuitive conundrum by adopting your thinking as thus: there was nothing before the creation of the universe because the creation of the universe itself BEGAN both space and time. In other words, there was no such thing as space or time before the creation of the universe, and thus there could be NOTHING before it in a temporal or spatial sense. Again, Einstein's theories confirm that the very fabric underlying the universe's structure is the space-time continuum.
Development of Einstein's general theory of relativity led to the cosmological development of the concept of the "Big Bang" in the mid-20th century. I admit, although I believe in creation (in the religious sense), I subscribe whole-heartedly to Big Bang theory after much study about it. But what exactly "banged?" And that, my friends, is what leads me to label this creation of our universe, a "miracle." What is a miracle is that first, something had to bang, and second, even if there did exist that particular something, that something still had to bang in order for the universe to come about. It is postulated that the something was something known as a singularity event. Imagine the entire universe compressed into a size less than the period at the end of this sentence. Pretty dense, huh? I mean dense in terms of zillions of kilograms of matter compressed into a infinitesimal volume! Singularity events also occur when a star collapses into a black hole due to progressively decreasing mass (in the form of radiation, like our sun) being overrun by the forces of gravity. The gravitational effects become so enormous that not even light can escape!! More mass then gets sucked into the black hole, it gets more and more compressed as the gravitational effects increase (since the force of gravity is simply a "warping" of the space-time continuum from the prescence of matter), and thus it continues in a big cycle until it becomes a singularity! When a singularity occurs, space-time itself breaks down, along with all of the laws of physics. We thus really have no clue what happens at or inside a singularity.
The Big Bang was a singularity event, thus all of the laws of nature and time and space itself were created when the bang happened! WHY though did it happen!! The universe seemed to emerge, and that my friends, is the 1st miracle. (The intracacies of this miracle of the Big Bang will have to be explained in another blog....).
Not only did the universe happen for unbeknowest reasons, but then LIFE emerged. Obviously in between this many things happened (Galaxies, starts, planets, and a unique planet called Earth formed) but here I will only be discussing the 3 biggest miracles. Part of the miracle of life is the conditions which have had to occur in order for life to even come about! Astounding! But again, I do not believe in macroevolution as a cause for creation of life or humankind (again, an argument for another time, but even so, Darwin didn't even know what a cell was when he developed his theory, let alone the workings of intricate biochemical machines! Can you say OUTDATED?) Thus I am coming from a different viewpoint. But whether you believe in macroevolution or not, the debated "fact" that evolutionary forces even led to life on earth can still be deemed a miracle. Conditions had to be perfect for even the first prokaryotic cells to have come together from simple molecules to become ORGANIZED. Many people think the forces of nature along with the "tincture of time" allow this to be possible, but even if it is possible, given nature's laws, it is still highly improbable (and thus the fact that it happened could be considered a "miracle"). Even with sufficient time, the complexity of even a simple bacteria is still almost unbelievable for nature to construct. Especially when so many mechanisms of the first cells had to be developed simultaneously (i.e. nutrient-gathering, metabolism, excretion). Take away any of these abilities and you don't have life! But, if nature did do this, then obviously it is one of the mysterious "miracles" which I speak of, given the extremely improbable chance that macromolecules could come together to produce a living thing.
Not only did life come about, but somehow it continued to become more complex and highly ordered. Which brings us to our 3rd miracle. Not only did life continue up and up the ladder (again, multiple highly improbable events continued to occur) and then stop at lower mammals, somehow it led to the development of man! Perhaps the greatest miracle of all? And even the multiple "special abilities" which make us human are almost unfathomable. The development of the mind, the spirit, and our incredible bodies (which I study everyday of my life as a doctor). Such a highly ordered state, beginning with the Big Bang. Not only did humankind come about with the ability to think and feel, we became institutors of the creation of even more highly organized structures (civilization, technology, and religion).
These 3 miracles had been on my mind for so long, but I did not know that other scientists had thought of this too, until I ran into EMERGENT THEORY. I actually initially came upon emergent theory when I had asked for an ant farm for this past Christmas. I hadn't any pets, and I thought they would be cool to watch. Little did I know that these little insects would help me discover this new theory and its ramifications.
Each ant is about as dumb as a rock. It has a minimal amount of neuronal tissue in its brain and can't really make decisions for itself (not really any free will I guess you could say). Each individual ant simply follows genetic mathematical algorithms based on its senses (bumping into things and smelling scents left by other ants). But ant colonies are absolutely amazing entities. As a colony, the ants (plural) can solve complex geometrical problems! They can figure out the shortest distance from the colony to a specific food source, and even more baffling, they place dead ants in a "graveyard" and garbage in a "trash heap," with the distances maximized so the graveyard is at the farthest point from both the colony AND the trash heap! They seem to "solve" a geometric problem. As well, each ant has a specific "job" in the colony, whether it be food-gatherer, gravedigger, soldier, etc. The key and the mystery about all of this, is that NO ONE ant dictates to the other ants what they should be doing (in fact, the queen of the colony does absolutely nothing except lay eggs). It just HAPPENS! Each ant just goes about bumping into things and following scent trails of other ants, and they end up creating this entire living and breathing city, with workers doing different tasks to help sustain the colony, and as a whole, solving problems! Each ant is just plain stupid, whereas the colony is an intelligent entity in itself. This kind of artificial intelligence emerged in much the same way as our first three miracles.
Welcome to emergent theory, where the end result is indeed greater than the sum of its parts! I had pondered these things on my own, how the universe, life, and humankind had emerged, yet I had not realized that there was a whole science behind this, and that there were many more examples of this emergence in the universe (although the example of the ants is more a sub-field of emergent theory, that of emergent intelligence)! Currently I am reading several different books on emergence, and one of them is really interesting (peep The Emergence of Everything) in that it basically takes the "3 biggest emergences" which I had described, and breaks it down into 28 different emergences since the beginning of our universe (from the big bang, to stars, planets, metabolism, cells, animals, mammals, primates, humans, language, philosophy, and science and religion, with many more intermediate steps).
One of the most amazing of these emergences is the human brain. Like the ant colony, how do a bunch of neuronal cells create the mind? Each neuron has absolutely no intelligence whatsoever, but compile billions of them into highly organized networks, and all of a sudden I'm writing this article! In fact, scientists have tried to duplicate this natural model artificially in the form of neural nets. Imagine each computer is akin to a neuron. Network enough computers together, and the emergence of the tasks that the network can do is far beyond the sum of all the computers put together. Synergistic effects dominate in these systems.
The point to drive home (this is important), is that there is no pacemaker to these systems. They are not "top-down" systems like countries, where the government or king controls and dictates things to be done. They are "bottom-up" systems in which higher order emerges from simple entities. Is this simply a natural phenomenon, a way that nature had figured out to go against the grain of entropy? Perhaps, but I subscribe to them as miracles. While emergent theory is relatively new, emergence has been happening since the beginning of time.

More on Hiroshima....

After writing my last post (A Nuclear Disaster), it reminded me that I wrote some lyrics about the atomic bomb sometime last fall 2004. Perhaps I will talk more on this topic in the future, but for now, here's the rhyme I composed (for all of you who are not into hip-hop, just read it as a poem :)


A comedy or a tragedy?
This topic is ominous since physicists unleashed the power of atomic energy on their ancestry....
Just imagine everything you love being wiped out in the flash of an instant,
by a fat man....
For instance,
Hiroshima minced to bits without a hint....
destruction of this one equivalent to ten thousand tons of tnt....
Truman's decision spilt blood that was innocent.....
Assumin a limited amount of atom split,
Nine-hundred times hotter than the sun ain't the definition of a pic-nick.....
One-fifth of a million, incinerated till they clear....
Talk about a holocaust, a mere 80,000 people just dis-appeared.....
we got a new weapon to cause panic and fear.....
Fast-forward sixty-years.....
Ceramic superconductors under the amtrack tram planted with bombs by a man named Yassir....

A Nuclear Disaster

I woke up this morning with an instant revelation on my mind. This was based on the Presidential speech the other night talking about the dangers of North Korea obtaining a nuclear weapon. The dangers of such an outlook for this world in the nuclear age are really starting to concern and frighten me. I honestly believe that we will see another nuclear device detonated somewhere, maybe not on U.S. soil, in the next 5-7 years. Too many countries and factions are trying to obtain such weapons. The nuclear threat now comes from Iran, North Korea, and any terrorist who can secure nuclear material and develop such a device. The ramifications of man's desire to obtain such power are downright apocalyptic.
Before I explain more about the situation which faces the generations and people of our current time, we must look back exactly 100 years ago, to 1905. Perhaps one of the greatest geniuses of our time, Albert Einstein, had just developed the astounding task of developing a theory which would make so many things possible over the next century, it's utterly ridiculous (I will stick to the original topic, my ramblings about Einstein and his genius work are thoughts for another time.....). THE THEORY OF SPECIAL RELATIVITY. The theory which explains our current understandings of time, space, mass, and energy. The sad fact is, Einstein's genius was perverted.
Not to go into details about the theory, but with this theory, Einstein explained time and space and how it related to the phenomenon of light. Although he relied on previous theories before him (Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism, the transformation of Lorentz, the confirmed constancy of the speed of light in a vaccuum), those who know me know that I still think Einstein was genius to bring this all together. First, Einstein developed this theory like any other great scientist would, to KNOW and UNDERSTAND the universe.
Secondly, (and I find this utterly ironic), the "goal" of this theory was not that which initiated the dawn of the nuclear age, and that which Einstein is noted for, the famous equation equating mass and energy, E=MC2. This famous formula was actually simply a *by-product* of the original theory of special relativity, which sought more to explain the phenomenon and workings of the space-time continuum. E=MC2 was basically a *spin-off* of the theory, which I find amazing (in fact, if you read Einstein's Relativity, a book explaining his theories of special and general relativity to the general masses, E=MC2 is derived in 1-2 paragraphs with a footnote at the bottom of the page, with no other mention in the entire book!)
After the other amazements of special relativity are understood, we're still left with E=MC2. Einstein and other scientists became interested in the ramifications of this profound equation later on (considering it totally changed our view of energy and mass and atomic physics forever!) Another amazement is the vast outpouring of knowledge that continued to come from other scientists from this time (a "renaissance", if you will) which also helped develop the nuclear age.
The milieu which had to have occurred in the first half of the 20th century in order to finally lead to the development of the Manhattan project is even more astonishing. Atomic theory was in it's infancy, and together with Einstein's discoveries and a new world war (WWII), the mixing pot was just right to begin the first step to the destruction of mankind. Einstein and other scientists postulated that it would perhaps be possible to harness the power of the atom's strong and weak nuclear forces (which, along with gravity and electromagnetism, are the 2 of the universe's 4 fundamental forces) to develop an atomic bomb (stemming from his original discovery of E=MC2, the discovery of the atom, and of course numerous other realizations and discoveries concerning relativity and quantum theory).
The irony of all this is that Einstein was afraid Nazi Germany would make this discovery first (the Germans had successfully split the uranium atom in 1938), and so he wrote to President Roosevelt (FDR) in 1939 concerning this matter, and urging that the United States develop the bomb first. Although we could debate hours whether this was the right choice or not, I believe this nevertheless was the "point of no return" leading to the "craze" for countries and factions to pervert Einstein's theories for their own greed and power, in their drunken desire to obtain power and win silly wars, with the resulting death of thousands of innocent bystanders at Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the first victims in this quest for power. (Perhaps millions or billions in the future?)
History continued. The atomic bomb was developed very quickly by the U.S., fearing the Nazis might unleash the power of the atom first. Several years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Truman made his decision (again, a little too quickly in my opinion, but he did so in order to "save" lives down the road in a long war. Little did he know that perhaps the fate of millions were also decided in that instant). As well, the secrecy about such an endeavor, and the fact that such a weapon with this enormous power had never been seen before on planet earth, led to the element of suprise for the United States' enemy.
August 6, 1945. Hiroshima, Japan. ~80,000 people EVAPORATED in an instant. Thousands more died in the days and months afterwards. What a dangerous precedent to set. After the bomb was dropped, Einstein seemed to become concerned about the direction this was going, and he wrote numerous letters and essays concerning the dangers of this vast nuclear power (peep Einstein's Ideas & Opinions, a collection of essays written by Einstein concerning everything from religion, to politics, to physics).

In fact, in 1944, several months before the bomb was dropped, Einstein wrote to Niels Bohr (one of the founders of atomic theory and quantum mechanics) concerning the bomb: "When the war is over, then there will be in all countries a pursuit of secret war preparations with technological means which will lead inevitably to preventative wars and to destruction even more terrible than the present destruction of life."

What made all of this even harder to swallow for Einstein was the fact that he first wrote to FDR because he was concerned about Nazi Germany obtaining the bomb first, and he never intended for the bomb to be used against Japan (Nazi Germany had already surrendered 3 months before the first bomb was dropped). Einstein seemed upset about the decisions of Truman to drop a bomb on Japan, as evidenced by a front-page article in the NY Times almost a year after the bombs were dropped: "Prof. Albert Einstein...said that he was sure that President Roosevelt would have forbidden the atomic bombing of Hiroshima had he been alive and that it was probably carried out to end the Pacific war before Russia could participate." Even later on in Einstein's career: "I have always condemned the use of the atomic bomb against Japan." And several months before he died: "I made one great mistake in my life....when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justification - the danger that the Germans would make them."

Again, a debate for another time is whether we REALLY needed to unleash this type of power on mankind. 1 step made down a dangerous, dangerous slope. 40 years prior, Einstein started with a simple yet brilliant thought to understand the universe. I definitely do not blame Einstein for this (those who know me know I love Einstein and think he was one of the greatest and most brilliant of men that ever lived). I blame the people who perverted his genius for their own greed and power.
60 years later brings us to the present. The nuclear age is upon us, and it's getting much worse. I honestly don't believe that this current generation UNDERSTANDS what a nuclear bomb really IS. I hear people say all the time about enemy countries, "why don't we just nuke them?" Even more scary, the devices we have today are even more powerful than Fat Man and Little Boy, which destroyed two entire cities in the flash of an instant. Yes, politicians and the scientists that work for them have now developed enough nuclear power in their weapons to easily destroy the entire planet (I will not even debate here the run-up of arms between the U.S. and former Soviet Union).
This day is a scary age. Perhaps we will avoid such a disaster diplomatically (God knows no good can come from war.) I can't even imagine the fears of the generation before me, who thought at any time a mushroom cloud could be seen in their backyards, launched from the USSR, although even during my elementary school years I still remember having atomic bomb drills, though we didn't have a fallout shelter. But even though the USSR is gone, new threats are upon us.
Again, for another blog, we can debate whether we should allow Iran and North Korea to obtain nukes. Afterall, if we're allowed to have hundreds and thousands of them, why shouldn't they be allowed to as well? (Yeah, yeah I know, they're TYRANTS!!). The other scary thought is that nowadays terrorists and single small factions could obtain these weapons. You don't even need the backing provided with the money and the power of a government to make one of these!!
I guess only time will tell, but do not be mistaken, these are scary times. Atomic weapons are a complete perversion of the genius of scientists trying to explain the phenomena of the universe, including Albert Einstein. The quest for this knowledge is a benign journey, yet the knowledge was obtained and used by greedy people to threaten others in their own quest for nothing but POWER. If this greed continues, it will affect and consume us all. Sad how man, though created or evolved to dominate and *protect* the planet, will ultimately become the institutor of the demise of all the creatures of the earth (I see this phenomena daily, not only with nuclear weapons, but with the destruction of the environment, the hunting of endangered species, etc.) I feel sorry for the rest of God's creation, whose ultimate destruction in the exception of mankind would probably have come from nature in the form of catastrophe from outer space by a asteroid or large meteor. They and innocent people will thus suffer from those few minority of men who make the decisions and make them in the interest of their own selfish reasons. But I am not alone in this endeavor to abolish the evil use of the power contained within the very substance that makes you and I and the rest of the matter in the universe. Hundreds before me have tauted the dangers of the path that we have paved over the last 60 years. I only hope that those who have control over such matters realize that, although so much good can come from Albert Einstein's discoveries, the flipside of his knowledge may be the very thing that destroys us.