living graves

since one of my colleagues is a vegetarian--shout out to mrs. mank!!!--i thought i'd share some tidbits i'd gleaned from reading this article on the origins of vegetarianism.

• it was thought that eating blood predisposed men to be cruel.
• genesis 9:4 says "flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat."
• throughout history most people haven't eaten meat--it was too scarce and/or expensive
• "vegetarianism has always been less about why you should eat plants than about why you shouldn't eat animals."
• pythagoras--the right triangle guy--was first known for starting "a community of mystical mathematicians" who abstained from eating meat because they believed in "metempsychosis," or the post-mortem transfer of your soul to another animal.
  
• hitler was a vegetarian.
• gandhi "before reconverting to his original vegetarianism, briefly thought 'that meat eating was good, that it would make me strong and daring, and that, if the whole country took to meat eating, the english could be overcome.'"
  
• "while we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on the earth?"--george bernard shaw
• "if slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian."--sir paul mccartney
• "vegetarians have long had the best intellectual arguments...it shows how little intellectual arguments matter..."
• "so convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has mind to do"--benjamin franklin, part-time vegetarian