Carnival Of The Cats #117 is comfortingly extensive this time around.  There’s a lot to enjoy.

Friday Ark #91 is full of all manner of animal goodness.

Weekend Cat Blogging #54 always has links to great cat photos and stories.  Oh, and Kiri is very unhappy about the dog.  Could you tell?

“This could be that ‘Hot, Hung, Athletic’ guy you’re talkin’ to online…”  Ow!  My eyes!  I’ve gone blind…

English as the national language.  Short and sweet, and don’t you feel violated somehow, taken advantage of even?

The kitten of doom.  I’ve seen this video before, but it’s always worth a smile and a chuckle.  It’s best without sound in this instance.

This is quite funny in a mathematically nerdy kind of way.  Just how does one prove that 1 + 1 = 2?  In Principia Mathematica, it took hundreds of pages for the authors to realize they couldn’t really prove it at all.

An old yet compelling example of interspecies adoption: a lioness who keeps adopting the calves of what would normally be her prey.  In fact, she did it five times in 2002 alone.  [via Biomes Blog]

Birds in the News 63 (v2n14) is available for your avian fetish.

It seems increasingly difficult to find agreement with religious people of late, at least from my perspective as one of the hated, disenfranchised, intolerable, segregated, and otherwise rejected members of our society; therefore, you can imagine my joy when something crosses my radar that shows there are still a few out there who really do understand and practice what they preach.  Especially when they’re gay.  This e-mail to Andrew Sullivan is just such a piece of work.  It even brought a tear to my eye, and not because I suddenly felt the grace of their god.  It touched me because this man truly believes in the religion now being wielded against him.  He feels his faith has been violated and that those preaching bigotry in the name of his god are being led astray.  Please, go read it.

This is extraordinarily unacceptable:

SANTA FE (AP) – Two Santa Fe men who were deemed most responsible for the beatings of two gay men have been sentenced to 90 days in jail and an additional year of house arrest that includes weekends in jail.

Isaia Medina, 20, and Gabriel Maturin, 21, each could have faced seven years in prison.

In imposing the sentences Firday, state District Judge Michael Vigil told them they would be ruined if he sent them to prison.

And what of the victims?

Maestas spent eight days in a coma after the February 2005 attack and had to learn to walk and talk again. Stockham was punched once in the face.

I see how that works.  You can put someone into a coma and cause sufficient harm so that they actually have to learn to walk all over again, but justice doesn’t want to ruin your life by putting you in jail.  This judge apparently believes ruining one life through hatred and violence isn’t worthy of true justice through the forfeiture of freedom.  And to think I considered that to be justice in such cases.

People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.

— James Baldwin

There should be no doubt that I feel deeply when it comes to animals.  A great part of that stems from my cynicism about people, a trait often reinforced when I look at the horrible anguish we levy against nature.  How many species have we driven to extinction?  How many animals do we put to death every year simply because people don’t care, don’t truly love their pets, and don’t act responsibly?  How much beauty and life have we destroyed in the name of progress?  How much have we endangered our own existence by assuming everything on this planet is here to serve us, a belief we act on with reckless abandon?  How often do we turn our backs on the pain and suffering of others, even going so far as to declare those experiences to be the justice inflicted by some god who supposedly loves everyone yet seems to enjoy pushing horrific anguish on those with whom we disagree?

Despite my proclamations to the contrary, however, and accepting the ardent cynic within, I also have great compassion for people.  I hate to see them suffer needlessly (and, more importantly, when it’s not of their own doing).

While I do not subscribe to any one religious or philosophical ideology, Buddhism has always been the greatest influence for me in that regard.  Much of that comes from the fact that Buddhists follow and demonstrate the greatest teachings of humanitarianism and environmentalism.  Unlike the vast majority of other faiths and creeds, Buddhism focuses on improvement of self rather than proselytizing.  This is because the faiths that declare you must convert the world understand their message is unable to win over the hearts and minds of others through example only.  Buddhists, on the other hand, only convert by example instead of trying to force their beliefs on others.  Truth be told, religion fails entirely in this regard and could learn a lot from Buddhism about how to live a life worthy of following, a life full of love and caring, a life others would want to lead.

One significant piece of this is the Buddhist tenet that we are a part of nature, not masters over it, and that we must tend to the Earth and all its inhabitants instead of just focusing on ourselves.  Religions all preach a dominionist viewpoint: humans are the masters of the world, and every bit of life on this planet is here only to serve our needs and desires.  It’s a disgusting and damaging declaration that has unarguably destroyed much life and placed the entire planet in jeopardy.  Again, Buddhism could teach others of faith a great deal about caring “for the least of these” in a real way rather than just through lip service.

I said all of that as an introduction to a new series.  During the next several days I will be sharing some of my favorite verses from the Bodhisattvacharyavattara (“Way to Enter the Path of Bodhisattva”), a Buddhist text written by (the Arya) Shantideva in the 8th century.  This is precisely the kind of teaching that other religious followers don’t get but should if their gods were truly full of love and compassion.  These are also some of the best examples of how to live a truly good life.

I hope you will enjoy them as much as I have and continue to do.  Perhaps, just perhaps, you will also find among them a strong motivation to cast aside the inhumane greed and terror of other faiths that reject this kind of true compassion in favor of their own hatred, intolerance, dominionism, and, not to put too fine a point on it, evil.

Today marks the first wedding anniversary of xocobra and LD.  It couldn’t have happened to two nicer, more beautiful people.  And what a magnificent couple they make with all the blonde hair, blue eyes, and sexiness you could ever want.  Sometimes it just makes you sick to look at the two of them, what with all that radiant gorgeousness just oozing out all over the place.

Congratulations, you two!  Happy anniversary!