Of course talk radio is dominated by boneheads, but a guy I heard on WEEI sports talk last week — by no means a troglodyte and almost eloquent in a townie kind of way— is still holding space in my head.

His topic was Question 3 on the Mass. ballot, which would (will) ban dog racing in the state. My position is, there is no intellectually or morally justified position in support of that moldering business, and I regret I can cast only one vote to put it out of the dogs' misery.

"Let's get this straight," he said, with as much certainty as I have on the opposite side. "There's humans, and there's everything else. They're here for us to do with as we wish. Period." (Note: I was driving, so the quotes are accurate only in their sense, but not word for word.)

This is, to coin a phrase, why there are horse races. And dog races. And dog fighting. Just like people who voted for George Bush a second time, I just don't get it. Not just that I don't agree; I cannot fathom how someone has come to that conclusion.

I'm not a member of PETA, and I don't aspire to be. I'm still eating animals, and will kill mosquitoes when they're bothering me. But in my continuing exploration of biomimicry, one point I've been convinced of is that we are not "apart" from nature, we are "a part" of it. Yeah, we got the language skills, but we also got this overwhelming hubris, and I'm not sure it was an even exchange.

If we're so freakin' smart, how come we're despoiling the environment in a way that no other species does? The rule in the rest of the animal kingdom is maintain habitat, because that's how to survive. Why do those "lower" species know what we haven't figured out yet?

I don't think we have been granted dominion, but if we have, I have no doubt we should exercise it benevolently — I don't know how anyone who's ever been under the despotic thumb of a boss or parent could conclude otherwise. Even if I could ask the caller that question, I doubt I'd understand his reply.