Pea Power! Or, Why I Didn't Finish the Caritas in Veritate Post

I plan to get a post about another chunk of Caritas in Veritate out: maybe later today.

The time I'd have used to write that post got used for my reaction to - I am not making this up - a claim that it's unethical to eat peas.

Because pea plants communicate with each other.

Telepathically.

And apparently this is being taken seriously. By the New York Times. Meanwhile, in Switzerland, the legal groundwork is being laid for extending civil rights protection to individual plants.

In a way, it's sort of nice to know that the American Congress has competition for the global 'craziest legislative body' prize:

• "Asparagus of the World, Unite! You Have Nothing to Lose But Your Hollandaise!!"
  (May 6, 2012)

Again, I plan to do a Caritas in Veritate post: probably later today. I will not be discussing why it's unethical to eat spaghetti, because spaghetti trees feel pain.

Note that the BBC KNEW THAT SPAGHETTI DOESN'T GROW ON TREES. This was an April Fool's joke:

"1957: BBC fools the nation"
BBC On This Day, BBC (April 1)

"The BBC has received a mixed reaction to a spoof documentary broadcast this evening about spaghetti crops in Switzerland. "The hoax Panorama programme, narrated by distinguished broadcaster Richard Dimbleby, featured a family from Ticino in Switzerland carrying out their annual spaghetti harvest. "It showed women carefully plucking strands of spaghetti from a tree and laying them in the sun to dry. "But some viewers failed to see the funny side of the broadcast and criticised the BBC for airing the item on what is supposed to be a serious factual programme. "Others, however, were so intrigued they wanted to find out where they could purchase their very own spaghetti bush. ..."

I haven't discussed telepathic pea plants before, but I have written posts about killer tomatoes, robots (homicidal and/or insane), and related topics, in other blogs:

• "Killer Tomatoes: How Could I Have Missed This Classic?"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (May 3, 2010)
• "HAL 9000, Skynet, and C3PO"
  Drifting at the Edge of Time and Space (January 26, 2010)
• "Science Fiction in the Movies: 'The Satan Bug' to 'The Matrix' "
  Drifting at the Edge of Time and Space (January 26, 2010)
• "The Neutrinos are Coming! 2012 and Hollywood Science"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (November 16, 2009)
• "Attack of the Killer Rabbits: Attention, Writers!"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (August 16, 2008)