[*] Elitism in the dog house

Let's make sure that we don't here say that when a child is killed by a dog due to the aggregate irresponsibility of the dog's owner and the child's parents, we don't care. We do care -- well, I care: you speak for you. But I think we need to look closely at what this new law in San Francisco is really saying.

Axwell Tiberius, Animal Rights Activist you animals!

Apparently, if you are a random citizen in the city, you cannot own a pit bull or pit-bull mix unless you have it "fixed" (which is to say "broken" but we live in weird times). The logic of this legislative move is that if all the pit bulls are fixed, there will be fewer pit bulls, and if there are fewer pit bulls, there will be fewer children killed by pit bulls. It's a pretty good numbers game, I guess -- even if statistically the per-capital number of children mauled by pit bulls remains constant, a lot fewer children at the end of the day will be mauled if there are 1000 pit bulls in SF rather than 10,000.

This assumes, of course, that people will not import Pit Bulls from, say, Oakland or San Jose. It would never happen. And people certainly wouldn't drive to Oakland to pick up a Pit Bull if they couldn't find any in Frisco.

But get this: Breeders of show dogs recognized by a kennel club would be exempt. Translation: if you're rich and you live in San Fran, you're probably a responsible dog owner; if you're poor and you live in San Fran, you're probably an irresponsible dog owner.

I leave the joke-making to the meta. I have work to do.