We all have prejudices to dispel: the need to get away from thinking that 'I' am important and special and 'you' are not, and the frightened mindset that tells us that certain 'others' are of no consequence.

I hope SeaWorld is exploring how, like Ringling, it can get out of the wild animal business.

Perhaps the mere idea of receiving a nasty missive will allow animal researchers to empathize with their victims for the first time in their lousy careers. I find it small wonder that the laboratories aren't all burning to the ground. If I had more guts, I'd light a match.

Elephants have the largest brains of any mammal on the face of the Earth. They are creative, altruistic and kind.

I'd go to work early, before anyone got there, and I would just kill the animals myself...I must have killed a thousand of them, sometimes dozens every day.

All of us in society are supposed to believe that cruelty to animals is wrong and that it is a good thing to prevent needless suffering. So if that is true, how can meat be acceptable under any but the most extraordinary circumstances, such as perhaps roasting the bird who died flying into a window?

In order to be kind, one must do. There is no point in thinking good thoughts and not acting on them. There is no currency in wishing things were better but not rolling up one's sleeves and helping to change them.