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In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

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Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

#201

Post by mrexroad »

mirimir wrote: post #166
chr1 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is worse, causing pain or killing? If we consider an extreme case of someone going through a horrible torture, but the next day waking up as healthy as before, and without some kind of mental illness, and without losing significant amount of his time, or opportunity, would it be any different than a game? Would most people try such a game, where they play for someone getting executed in middle ages? My guess is…

In Richard Morgan's Takeshi Kovach novels, virtual torture typically drives victims insane. And for me, I fear prolonged illness and pain more than death.

Haven’t read the novels yet, but have watched half of Altered Carbon series on Netflix. This was the first thing that came to and a resounding ‘hell no.’

Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

#202

Post by mlevental »

brownbat wrote: post #190
tptacek wrote: post #4

It's at this point you'd probably want to go read David Foster Wallace's essay "Consider The Lobster", an assignment he took from (I shit you not) Gourmet Magazine, which begins with a sort of Illinois Country Fair style travelogue from the Maine Lobster Festival and "ends", if you can call the back 2/3rds of an essay "ending", in a discussion of the meaning of pain and its applicability to the specific nervous syste…

Great reference. I will note that he seems to shrug, especially in footnote 19, as if to confess that whether lobsters feel pain or merely express reflexes is basically unknowable, not for any lack of humans trying to figure it out. He seems genuinely conflicted, rather than firmly opinionated, certain only that people should take these questions more seriously. Or maybe he's being coy, to avoid alienating the gourma…

>I'm curious if he hesitates to kill spiders since writing this article.

DFW committed suicide many years ago.

Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

#203

Post by throwaway2048 »

ricardobeat wrote: post #120

> and Kunfermann said offenders could land in a lot of hot water Is there serious journalism being made anywhere these days? I feel like these subtle puns everywhere detract from the reading experience - not everything is for entertainment.

Puns in journalistic reporting are as old as printed news itself. If anything they have become significantly less popular with time.

Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

#204

Post by moab »

mlevental wrote: post #202
brownbat wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great reference. I will note that he seems to shrug, especially in footnote 19, as if to confess that whether lobsters feel pain or merely express reflexes is basically unknowable, not for any lack of humans trying to figure it out. He seems genuinely conflicted, rather than firmly opinionated, certain only that people should take these questions more seriously. Or maybe he's being coy, to avoid alienating the gourma…

>I'm curious if he hesitates to kill spiders since writing this article. DFW committed suicide many years ago.

This is pretty clear bait, but his choice to commit suicide gives absolutely no information on his position on harming other creatures.

Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

#205

Post by dghughes »

The weird part of all this is lobster was considered garbage only about a 100 years ago.

I live in a rural area and the farmers would use whole lobsters as fertilizer on their fields. This only after anyone bothered to collect them from the beaches, no fishermen were catching them.

Even when people did eat them anyone who did was poor. My mother in her mid 70s said to me kids at school who had lobster were mocked because everyone knew they were poor "Eww lobster".

I wonder what the Swiss law says about shellfish such as clams, mussels, quahogs, geoducks etc. all those are boiled. Compassion is one thing but outright lunacy is another.

Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

#206

Post by djrogers »

nixpulvis wrote: post #168
benjohnson wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also benefit - by learning to treat animals better, we'll learn to treat each other better.

If you treat me like your dog I'll probably end up punching you in the face. Just saying.

And on the flip side, if you treat your dog like a human, it’ll probably wind up being a misbehaving menace.

Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

#207

Post by djrogers »

tzs wrote: post #28

Question: what is the maximum water temperature that a lobster can survive in? If that maximum is less than the boiling point of water, then another question: how carefully is the law drafted? If the law actually specifies boiling, is it just going to result in cooks bring the water to a boil, taking it off the heat, letting it drop to a little below the boiling point, and then inserting the lobster, where it still d…

I like to cook my lobster sous-vide at well below boiling, can’t imagine that’d be any better for the bug...

Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

#208

Post by AndrewGaspar »

askvictor wrote: post #163
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If the law actually specifies boiling, is it just going to result in cooks bring the water to a boil, taking it off the heat, letting it drop to a little below the boiling point, and then inserting the lobster, where it still dies but not as fast? Yeah, make stupid rules, play stupid games. This seems like a feel-good law. I wonder how enforcement will be.

i can imagine heavily armed lobster police bursting in the kitchen of an unsuspecting cook.

Judge Trudy will handle the situation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfpg-YoQj60

Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

#209

Post by mirimir »

mrexroad wrote: post #201
mirimir wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Richard Morgan's Takeshi Kovach novels, virtual torture typically drives victims insane. And for me, I fear prolonged illness and pain more than death.

Haven’t read the novels yet, but have watched half of Altered Carbon series on Netflix. This was the first thing that came to and a resounding ‘hell no.’

I recommend reading the novels! The Netflix series puzzles me. It's like they put everything from the novel in a box, and pulled it out in random order. Some of the changes were arguably necessary so viewers could follow the plot. And some were typical mass-media dumbing down.

But others just seemed pointless. For example, in the novels, the Envoys are not dissidents, but rather enforcers for the Protectorate. Quell was a dissident, and Takeshi did quote her frequently, but she died centuries before he was born. The Quell character in the video is actually Virginia Vidura, who was his trainer in the Envoys. And Reilieen was not his sister.

Also, the virtual torture sequence in the novel is far more extreme than depicted in the video. I doubt that it could be shown, even on Netflix.

Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

#210

Post by wallace_f »

benrbray wrote: post #175
wallace_f wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's terrifying. At least for the lobster, we're not really sure how they interpret pain. They don't have a brain in the same way the humans do. As a vegetarian, I personally would go back to meat if I just knew my meal had a good life and did not suffer needlessly in order for me to eat it. But for the prisoner, this seems like the worst combination: internalized suffering and externalized indifference... So minim…

Honest question: We don't treat dairy cows particularly well while they're alive (for example), so if you care about animal suffering why are you a vegetarian and not a vegan? I'm neither, for the record.

Because doing something is better than nothing.
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