Boy, I suppose it takes an atrocity to get me off my butt these days and make a post.
I was very distressed to read an article in the Christian Science Monitor this morning on the recent deaths of animals at the Chicago Zoo.
I think my last visit to a zoo was the great London zoo in the late 1970s. Fascinating but ultimately depressing. I no longer go to zoos because I have too much empathy for the animals.
I see their value for conservation but I frequently think that the energy spent on funding zoos should be spend on preserving natural habitat. Those greatest of natural habitats, South America and Africa are being deforested as I write this. Yet unless it affects us -- global warming -- nobody seems to give much of a damn.
Having just returned from my college reunion I find myself missing those halcyon days when we could get really pissed off at the government's inadequacy and would rally to draw attention to it.