Posted on 08/06/2021 6:51:53 AM PDT by Kaslin
Totally false to compare love of a pet to love of a child even if there is an inclination to treat a pet as one would a child. Animals love unconditionally but you can’t say the same about people.
The story is cleopatra used asps to commit suicide, not murder. She had them smuggled in a jar or dates or something.
The poison is (apparently) quite painless, a neurotoxin, and you just go to sleep and don’t wake up. So it has been a pretty common method of suicide back home for 4000 years.
The main issue with the story is an “asp” is more properly known as the Egyptian cobra, and it’s a big black snake that quickly grows to 1.5 meters. So it’s unlikely to be able to be smuggled in a jar of any kind.
That said you could probably get several juveniles and get the job done.
...First.
Exactly.
I have two daughters and I’ve had pets my whole life. I love my daughters and I have loved all my pets.
My daughters don’t want children. I am happy they know that now rather than figuring it out after the fact.
I saw a “history” show that said Cleopatra experimented on prisoners to see which method would produce the most dignified death.
I am curious, how did they learn not to want children.
It is one of the basic human needs and emotions yet I am running into more young people who are somehow trained not to want children.
Tragic
Ah, that’s right, suicide.
I live in Maine, which claims to be the only state without poisonous snakes in the U.S.A.
Those snakes in Israel sound nasty.
I’m glad we don’t have asps here, although we do have asses in our Congressional delegation, and a number of snakes in our state government.
“Learn” and “train?”
Maybe it’s genetic. I think the tragedy would be to bring a baby into a family who doesn’t want him.
There are lots of people in the world with lots of different ways they want to live.
I dont think it is genetic.
Children are taught that the world is going to end in environmental disaster, that children are too much work, that having children is overwhelming, that they are too expensive and so on, by parents, schools, culture computer tv...
All I know is that my girls, one biological and one adopted, were both wanted and cherished and were well brought up.
I was not driven to have children. I’m pretty sure my mother was not driven to have children. I think there is some genetic component. YMMV
The definition of anthropomorphism is the act of giving the characteristics of humans to an animal, a god or an inanimate thing. ... Attribution of human motivation, characteristics, or behavior to inanimate objects, animals, or natural phenomena.
I love my two Wirehaired Pointing Griffons but we all know in the end they’re the dogs! Having said that they are also my closes hunting companions and I miss my hunting dogs greatly when one passes!
What has changed, and changed dramatically, it the survival rate of combat injuries, which in the Afghanistan-Iraq wars was much greater than Vietnam (I heard figures from 5X to 20X greater); also the much more powerful explosives used by the enemy in the Afghanistan-Iraq wars comparied to Vietnam or earlier wars, so that soldiers much farther from the point of explosions (many that they couldn't even see) experienced brain injury or deafness.
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) as well as survival via amputations plus prosthetics plus intensive physical/occupational therapy, as well as better and closer field hospitals and improved medical techniques at point of injury, have saved many lives of troops who would have bled out and died on the field or led lives as shut-ins, unseen by civilians after the war.
Please put up with those miraculous support dogs who can help guide an ambulatory-but-disabled vet, such as alerting their veteran to an oncoming epileptic seizure caused by brain injury so that the vet can quickly move to a suitable fall-down spot and not reinjure his head, or fall against the bathroom door, making it impossible for his family to get to him and make sure his airway is clear, for two examples. One of the toughest parts of re-entry to civilian life for a brain-injured vet is the difficulty of complete brain recovery and the fact that the injury is invisible to the naked eye.
I myself once yelled at a seemingly healthy-looking vet for parking in a disabled spot, when in fact he may have been hearing-impaired or still been having seizures unexpectedly and needed to get in and out of the store without undue stress. Brain-injured vets don't look injured to the rest of us.
Just some of the things I learned as a civilian volunteer at Walter Reed with the DC Chapter of FreeRepublic.com.
I don’t have to send them to college...
Reddit's "Am I the A**hole" feature is today's version of the grocery store tabloids or the old True Confessions magazine from the 1950s!
my four legged son can’t be indoctrinated to hate me and our country...
I have three dogs I love dearly but humans always come first in my considerations.
this is not a true statement for all pets. Some... animals, dogs in particular, can be fiercely loyal to their owners...
I agree, HamiltonJay. There's a difference between gushing anthropomorphically about a pet as distinct from recognizing and cultivating their unique intelligence and skill levels.
I was fortunate to study a lot about animal behavior when I was young. Cats, in addition to powerful instincts, have the intellectual ability of a two-year-old child and can learn basic concepts and verbal cues about the activities they share with the humans they live with, becoming less anxious and more cooperative as members of a household.
I have trained my succession of cats systematically, chiefly through operant conditioning (with affection and treats as rewards), to respond to as many as 65 words or phrases. They have demonstrated their understanding by "obeying" like a dog, often amazing to my friends and neighbors.
When you lose the companionship of such capable individuals in whom you have invested training and enjoyed an extra level of communication, it's a very sad day. But still, it's not like losing a child.
God bless your uncle. I had several with similar stories from WW2. I wish, as a family, we had, at the time, some understanding of PTSD, instead of grumbling about the occasions when they were grouchy or uncommunicative. They were heroes.
Too many of them seem fabricated. I finally punched out.
Try AskAnAmerican
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