This paper seems meant to raise questions. Likely it does: “Painlessly Killing Predators,” Ben Bramble [pictured here], Journal of Applied Philosophy, epub 2020. (Thanks to Achim Reisdorf for bringing this to our attention.) The author explains: “Animals suffer harms not only in human captivity but in the wild as well. Some of these latter harms are […]
Tag: kill
How to Kill People
“How to Kill People” is a TV documentary made in 1960. The underlying theme: how to design weapons that kill people, but — as the occasionally-coughing on-camera host George Nelson, himself an influential product designer, explains — does not murder them. The passing years have added blurrgh-blurrgh-blurrghiness to the sound track: (HT Paola Antonelli) BONUS […]
Experimentally kill a mouse in/for/because of the market
Economists rarely perform experiments with mice. But it does happen, as in this study: “Morals and Markets,” Armin Falk, Nora Szech [pictured here], Science, vol. 340, n. 6133, May 10, 2013, pp. 707-711. The authors, at the University of Bonn and the University of Bamberg, Germany, explain: “In the experiment, subjects decide between either saving […]
Detect & remove cadavers from amongst the live objects
As professor William J. Wepfer, of the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology puts things in his ‘Message from the School Chair’ “Today’s mechanical engineers might search the ocean with an underwater observation manipulator; work on developing systems to program robots for manufacturing; or build a prototype of […]
Cheese and dogs and a pill to kill mosquitoes
Bart Knols explains—and also demonstrates—three related things: How to use cheese and dogs and a new kind of pill to kill malaria mosquitoes. Knols and Ruurd de Jong were awarded the 2006 Ig Nobel Prize in biology for showing that the female malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae is attracted equally to the smell of limburger cheese and to […]
Man is unbearable
“If it’s a choice between grizzlies and humans, the grizzlies have to go. And it’s time,” writes Bryan Fischer in the blog Rightly Concerned, “Of course there is a simple answer: shoot these man-eaters on sight.” His blog describes itself as “a project of The American Family Association.” The American Family Association says that its […]