Worked up.

Listen to this. For every pound of shrimp caught wild, anywhere from four to ten pounds of marine life ("bycatch") is also caught -- and subsequently discarded as decaying waste, shovelled back into the ocean.

And farmed shrimp is hardly better: farms dump pesticides into rivers, which have already killed a quarter of the world's mangrove er, groves (where lots of species of birds and fish live and breed, and which also help hold the coastline together by preventing erosion). This is also, of course, detrimental to local -- and often poor -- communities.

Skeptical? Read this -- and weep. http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2002/07/18/nijhuis-shrimp/

So here's the story. Let's stop eating shrimp. I'm sure we can survive without it (after all, Ariel is a vegan), and it might also make a tiny little bit of difference in eternity.

With a little help from Microsoft, I've come up with a useful sign. Feel free to print it out and hang it wherever you can. Wear it as a badge if you like. So I've finally found a cause I care about enough to post on. (Foie gras is bad too. Don't eat it.) Microscopic? Maybe. But it's something to start with, right? And if I come up with a truly great cause to devote my life to...I will drag you guys into it, don't worry.