Course Selection

2004-04-20T23:51:55Z

1. Calculus
2. Spanish 5
3. English 2 Gifted
4. Biology Gifted
5. Physics Honors
6. Probability and Statistics with Applications
7. Advanced Placement Statistics
8. Guitar 2

Tight schedule. Guitar will keep me from going insane.

Sorry...

2004-04-13T04:45:36Z

Hi Seth...dont be angry. I just cant sleep tonight. And I knew your password. I was just testing it out to see if it worked. Really! I promise! I love you so much. Sometimes, I know that I'm all weird and clingy but its just that I guess I'm scared. I dont want to lose you. I guess I'll adopt the theory of just letting go and if you really love me you'll always come back to me. Bye. Sorry again.

Spring Break

2004-04-12T18:42:56Z

Tomorrow I have to go back to school, sucks, I like sleeping in late everyday. They should do a five week things during winter and during summer. Summer is way too long and breaks in winter and spring are too short. I went to UF this week, lovely campus. I'm most likely going there, but I want to apply to UPenn as well. I have to do stuff for a skit in English.

P.E.T.A.

2004-04-12T18:37:35Z

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

Background
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has been described as “by far the most successful radical organization in America.” The key word is radical. PETA seeks “total animal liberation,” according to its president and co-founder, Ingrid Newkirk. That means no meat or dairy, of course; but it also means no aquariums, no circuses, no hunting or fishing, no fur or leather, and no medical research using animals. PETA is even opposed to the use of seeing-eye dogs.
Amidst the dozens of animal rights organizations, PETA occupies the niche of -- in Newkirk’s own words -- “complete press sluts.” Endlessly seeking media exposure, PETA sends out dozens of press releases every week.

In the past, PETA has handled the press for the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), a violent, underground group of fanatics who plant firebombs in restaurants, destroy butcher shops, and torch research labs. The FBI considers ALF among America’s most active and prolific terrorist groups, but PETA compares it to the Underground Railroad and the French Resistance. More than 20 years after its inception, PETA continues to hire convicted ALF militants and funds their legal defense. In at least one case, court records show that Ingrid Newkirk herself was involved in an ALF arson.

PETA has even begun to adopt the tactics of an ALF offshoot known as SHAC (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty). This group is notorious for taking protests outside the boardroom and into the living room, attacking their targets at their homes.

In 2001, three masked SHAC members brutally bludgeoned a medical researcher outside his home in England. The lead attacker was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison. A few months later, SHAC attacked another research industry employee on his doorstep with a chemical spray to his eyes, leaving him temporarily blinded and writhing in pain. The following year, Newkirk was asked her opinion of SHAC in the Boston Herald. Her response? “More power to SHAC if they can get someone’s attention.”

By 2003, PETA activists had adopted SHAC’s protest techniques, stalking and harassing fast-food restaurant executives. Not content to write letters and picket the chain restaurant’s offices, PETA’s leaders met with the CEO’s pastor, and visited his country club and the manager of one of his favorite restaurants. PETA activists, one dressed in a chicken suit, even protested at the church of two executives, annoying worshipers by driving a truck with giant screens of slaughterhouse video back and forth along the street.

In an effort to win more media exposure, PETA has adopted the counter-intuitive tactic of buying stock in restaurant and food companies that serve and sell meat. After buying just enough shares to qualify, PETA’s pattern is to introduce shareholder resolutions that would require animal-rights-oriented practices in the way animals are handled and slaughtered.

PETA’s goal as a shareholder, of course, is not to turn a profit. Its resolutions, if passed, would increase the cost of doing business and lower the value of everyone’s investment. The group has claimed that it’s “not trying to remove meat from the menu.” But with a stated long-term goal of “total animal liberation,” pushing for animal-welfare changes is just a first step. PETA’s short-term goals are to economically cripple these companies, force them to increase the retail price of meat, and nudge consumers toward eating less of it.

PETA collected more than $16 million in donations in 2002 alone, but few donors understand exactly where their money is going. During the past ten years, PETA has spent four times as much on criminals and their legal defense than it has on shelters, spay-neuter programs, and other efforts that actually help animals.

From both a moral and a legal standpoint, there are far too many objectionable things about PETA to list here in detail. But the following “top ten list” is a good start:

PETA is not an animal welfare organization.
PETA spends less than one percent of its multi-million dollar budget actually helping animals. The group euthanized (killed) more than 1,300 cats and dogs in 1999 alone, preferring to spend its money on cheap publicity stunts and criminal defense, rather than finding the animals suitable homes.

PETA assaults common decency.
PETA’s leadership has compared animal farmers to serial killer (and cannibal) Jeffrey Dahmer. They proclaimed in a 2003 exhibit that chickens are as valuable as Jewish Holocaust victims. They announced with a 2001 billboard that a shark attack on a little boy was “revenge” against humans who had it coming anyway. They have branded parents who feed their kids meat and milk “child abusers.” In 2002 PETA organized a campaign to sabotage a popular Thanksgiving hotline, which provides free advice about cooking turkeys. The group has even contemplated (literally) dancing on the grave of Kentucky Fried Chicken’s Colonel Sanders. And in 2003, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk wrote to Yasser Arafat, pleading with him to make certain no animals are harmed in Palestinian suicide-bombing attacks.

PETA receives rock-bottom ratings from charity watchdogs.
Charity Navigator, the nation’s largest nonpartisan evaluator of non-profit organizations, gives PETA a rating of one-star (“poor”). It says PETA “fails to meet industry standards and performs well below most charities in its cause.” PETA’s “Foundation to Support Animal Protection” -- now doing business as “The PETA Foundation” -- was one of just 23 organizations nationwide to receive zero stars (“exceptionally poor”).

PETA peddles its “animal liberation” food agenda through a medical front group that pretends to offer objective nutritional advice.
A group misleadingly named the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) has duped the press into believing that it is an association of conscientious doctors promoting good nutrition. In fact, it is a PETA front group. PCRM and PETA share money, offices, and staff. The American Medical Association calls PCRM a “pseudo-physicians group,” has demanded that PCRM stop its “inappropriate and unethical tactics used to manipulate public opinion,” and argues that PCRM has been “blatantly misleading Americans” and “concealing its true purpose as an animal ‘rights’ organization.”

Taking a page out of PETA’s press book, PCRM has labeled U.S. school lunches “weapons of mass destruction” because they include meat and milk. PCRM’s president, a psychiatrist named Neal Barnard, recently duped Newsweek into covering his “study” (of seven people) supposedly demonstrating that a vegan diet helped prevent type-2 diabetes. In 2002, PCRM was cited in major newspapers more than 550 times. It was identified as an animal-rights organization in only a handful of those cases.

PETA exploits sick people.
PETA famously suggested that drinking milk causes cancer, in an advertisement mocking then-NYC Mayor Rudy Guliani with the words “Got Prostate Cancer?” PETA has also erected a billboard reading: “Got Sick Kids? Drinking milk contributes to colic, ear infections, allergies, diabetes, obesity, and many other illnesses.” In 2003 the group held a demonstration in front of a Toronto-area hospital that was under a SARS-related quarantine, spuriously alleging that animal husbandry has something to do with the epidemic’s spread. Upon hearing that Charlton Heston had fallen ill with Alzheimer’s Disease, Ingrid Newkirk suggested that PETA would “toy with the idea that both Alzheimer’s and CJD [Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease] are related to meat consumption.” According to a profile in The New Yorker, she considered “renting billboards that would display a large picture of a gaunt Charlton Heston foaming at the mouth.”

PETA propagandizes children.
PETA’s website for kids puts a skull and crossbones next to the logo of Disney’s Animal Kingdom and tells the horror story of a fast food restaurant employee who “had taken a patty into the potty with her, then returned and said she had peed on it.” It hands out trading cards to kids that allege drinking milk will make them fat, pimply, flatulent, and phlegm-ridden. PETA also has a child-themed website, and a kiddie-oriented magazine, called GRRR! Kids Bite Back. The name is significant, as it is intended to prep children to identify with the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), which has long-used the phrase “bite back” in its promotional materials. In fact, as early as 1991, convicted ALF arsonist and PETA grantee Rodney Coronado was calling his own crime spree “Operation Bite Back.” PETA also sends “humane education lecturer” Gary Yourofsky into high schools -- and even middle schools -- to promote the “animal liberation” agenda. Yourofsky is a convicted ALF criminal who has said he would support burning down medical research labs even if humans were trapped in the flames.

PETA distorts religious teachings.
Not only does PETA oppose the age-old Jewish tradition of Kosher slaughter, but the group’s leaders maintain that Jews have misinterpreted their own sacred texts on the subject. They also claim, ignoring mountains of scripture to the contrary, that Jesus was a vegetarian. PETA celebrated Easter in 2003 with a billboard depicting a pig, reading “he died for your sins.” PETA also insists (again, selectively ignoring contradictory evidence) that Muhammad “was not a meat-eater.” In his speeches to adolescents, Gary Yourofsky regularly compares himself to Gandhi and Jesus Christ. PETA’s in-school presentations include the application of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” to birds and turtles -- not people.

PETA opposes life-saving medical research.
PETA has repeatedly attacked groups like the March of Dimes, the Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and the American Cancer Society, for conducting animal testing to find cures for birth defects and life-threatening diseases. When asked if she would oppose an experiment on five thousand rats if it would result in a cure for AIDS, Newkirk responded: “Would you be opposed to experiments on your daughter if you knew it would save fifty million people?” In addition to opposing any and all medical research that uses animals, PETA also insults medical professionals by arguing, with a straight face, that animal testing is a counterproductive means of finding cures for human diseases.

PETA devalues human life.
PETA’s efforts to treasure every mosquito and cockroach invariably lead them to hate human beings for using bug spray and RAID. Ingrid Newkirk argues that as human beings, “we’re the biggest blight on the face of the earth.” For more on how PETA devalues human life, click on “Motivation.”

PETA openly supports violence and terrorist activity.
PETA has long-standing ties to militant groups like the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). The FBI calls these criminal groups a “serious terrorist threat.” For specifics on how PETA supports violence, click on “Black Eye.”

http://www.animalscam.com/organizations.cfm

Midterms

2004-03-24T02:12:57Z

Tomorrow there are some midterms. I should be studying, guess I will later. On Friday I'm going to the Fall Out Boy show, I'm pretty excited. I heard there good live, which adds to my excitement. The shows with Mest and Matchbook Romance. I have the Mest cd and I think I might've heard one song of Matchbook Romance, but Fall Out Boy makes it worthwhile. I want to buy a shirt. I hope they have cool shirts. Last weekend I attended my cousin's bat mitzvah, that family is so rich. Our family is the poorest of all our relatives, which is pretty sad considering we live in Weston. I need something to do this summer. My sister already has a job, but my cousin invited her to California. I wish he invited me and my other sister, neither of us have something to do.

barelyneurotic @ 2004-03-13T09:39:00

2004-03-13T14:38:26Z

Last night I went to the mall, the usual for a Friday night. It was somewhat amusing, kept me busy for a few hours. Today I have a Bar Mitzvah to go to, G-d, I'm so Jewish. I like it though. It's something about me I'm proud and not many people I'm friends with are. I'm going to Warped Tour! I got the tickets yesterday. It is on July 31.

barelyneurotic @ 2004-02-28T11:35:00

2004-02-28T16:38:47Z

Last night I was supposed to go to a concert. We get there and we're waiting in line for two hours, when it gets sold out. I want to stay and see maybe I had a chance of getting in. But I left anyways, because my girlfriend wanted me to. I never realized how much I love her until I think about her not being with me. That's a weird way of keeping people together. I had fun anyways last night, even if I didn't get to see any of the bands playing.

New Journal

2004-02-24T20:15:37Z

This is a new journal of mine. School has been very boring lately. I keep wanting to sleep in first and fourth hours. Every day it's the same. Go to school go home sleep, eat, and watch t.v. Oh well, it's mine. I enjoy it. That's it.

Mick