News: ‘Moral Footprint’, ‘Crossroads’, ‘mobile slaughter units’

Vaclav Havel, of Prague, wrote an intriguing editorial about global warming in the NY Times title “Our Moral Footprint.” With my recent trip to Prague, I was intrigued to see how someone from the Czech Republic might feel about the subject, and it turns out to be very similar to how I feel about the subject. Maybe climate change is human caused, maybe it’s not. We are having some effect with all of our activities on the planet, and the details of the change really don’t matter. Each and every one of us has a moral responsibility to leave as little of an impact as possible, because our choices today will affect our children, our children’s children, and our neighbor’s children too.
A filmmaker questioned scientists, including Richard Dawkins, for video interviews about their views on science intersecting with religion for a movie to be called “Crossroads.” The filmmaker instead put their interviews in a movie called “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” a pro-intelligent design film. The scientists are angry, with good reason. Being misquoted is one thing, but it’s completely another to have your statements misused in a propaganda film [NY Times]
A Seattle company has developed a hygenic and humane “mobile slaughter unit.” These could eliminate the problems of getting livestock from small farms to large slaughterhouses. It will also be an improvement in processing: big slaughterhouses have such high processing speeds that contaminated meat is inevitable. These MSUs could really revolutionize how animal agriculture works. If small farmers can more easily process their animals, perhaps we will see more and more free-range, grass-finished cattle. [Seattle Monthly]