Voice Lessons

On to round 3…

I’m still searching around the blogosphere for inspiration for my own blog, and so far have come across quite a few…(by quite a few I mean tons).

One that struck me particularly was “A Philosopher’s Blog: A Philosophers View of the World…assuming it exists.”  It is written by Michael LaBossiere, a Philosophy professor at the Florida A&M University.  Even just by reading his bio you can get a sense of his writing style, witty, informed, and casual without sounding uneducated.  He talks about Ethics in general as well as in terms of food, but although his decisions and writings come from a thoroughly backed knowledge and research base, the opinions are decidedly his own. 

In “Eating the Happy Dead,” LaBossiere talks about vegetarianism and how some “vegetarians” have now expanded their diet to include meat when it is raised in a kind, environmentally stable and enduring environment.  His analogy of a death-row prison with cramped cells, abominable food, and hostile living space versus a prison that has spacious cells, decent food, and a kind environment to the difference between a factory farm and a farm where the animals are treated humanely forces the reader to think of animals more like humans.  Maybe they cannot reason for themselves, but does that justify torture before death? (Though we are debating the living conditions before death, that doesn’t mean that the conclusion itself (death) is not ethical either.) (Does it?)

LaBossiere uses rhetorical questions, actual questions, and analogies to make his point stronger and get it across more clearly.  He relates the topic back to himself, and by doing so includes the reader in his discussion further –

The fact that the animals, happy or sad, end up as meat might be seen as what is important to the ethics of the situation. This seems reasonable. After all, if someone intends to kill me my main concern is with my possible death and not whether the killer will be nice or not?

Because his writing is sort of looming between scholarly and casual, these personal antidotes make the reading more interesting and involving.  In addition, he links out to other websites almost once a sentence – something that when I first reading blogs didn’t really like.  However, the more I read, the more I like the links out – they serve to further the topic or explain something without doing it yourself.  They can also be used in an ironic sense or thought-provoking sense:

In my previous post I mentioned that reading an article in Newsweek entitled “Vegetarians Who Eat Meat”,  got me thinking about two issues. The first is whether a person can be a vegetarian and also eat meat. The second is whether the way the meat animal is raised impacts the morality of eating it. I addressed the first issue in that post and I now turn to the second issue.

Now, I know your are thinking “Whoa there, slow down and actually write something for once…I cant read all my tabs at once as it is!”  Never fear blog readers, you will discover the wonders of the hyperlink just as I have. By using the links, LaBossiere has covered everything you need to know in order to read the rest of his blog, as well as more information for topics you might be unfamiliar with or wish to know more about. 

One of the ironically funny links was the “meat” tab. Instead of just pushing a wikipedia article about animals, it linked to a wiki about investment.  How money is scaring the meat market into the corner with a cleaver.  In a food/ethics blog. 

In the words of the internet,

lolz

I'll definitely be reading more of his blog soon.