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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

#301

Post by thr0w__4w4y »

scruple wrote: post #262
mudil wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I catch all spiders at home with a wine glass and piece of paper and throw them out. I do the same with all the flies. No need to kill. Also, I am grossed out to see people smashing insects at home.

Do people not have Black Widows where they live? 90% of the spiders that I encounter in and around my home (mostly in my garage and my garden) are Black Widows and I thoughtlessly and indiscriminately kill them on sight. When I didn't kill them, they seemed to try to take ownership of different areas of the garden or garage. This happened where I lived in LA, in Goleta, CA, in north Santa Barbara county, and in Orang…

Guess I'm lucky then... I've lived in LA for about 28 years and I don't think I've ever seen a black widow. Actually I remember when I was ~3, I was sitting (legs crossed) on the patio, my neighbor came over and smashed a scorpion near me with a hammer. Remember it vividly, mostly because I didn't understand why he killed it (at the time). As an adult, I don't recall seeing scorpions, brown recluses, or black widows..

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

#302

Post by 52-6F-62 »

white-flame wrote: post #223
52-6F-62 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some people develop deficiencies when they exclude meat from their diet. I'm one of those people. Personally, I think refraining from consuming animals is the morally superior option—nothing to do with health. In the longer history of humankind I hope that's the direction we take. I'd happily take an artificial steak made of a complex of vegetable proteins, fast, etc that tastes like prime beef over slaughtering an…

> Personally, I think refraining from consuming animals is the morally superior option—nothing to do with health. Personally, I can see zero moral difference between killing an animal for food, and killing a plant for food. If one is unacceptable, then so should be the other.

It's pretty off topic for the general discussion, but ideas surrounding this really interest me and I'd be happy to discuss them outside of this venue if you'd like.

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

#303

Post by upvotinglurker »

jgh wrote: post #191
eridius wrote: post #153

> That means cats must have a daily visual contact with other felines Wow, really? Why? Cats are loners, they don't need to be around other cats. In fact, my cat hates other cats, giving her daily visual contact with other cats would basically be torture.

I'm with you there...we used to live in an apartment on the ground level and people nearby had outdoor cats that would regularly come to our windows and it would really stress my cat out. He's a lot easier going without the daily visual contact with other felines.

I had one cat like that (extreme agitation and threat displays through the window at stray cats).

I have another one who, after his cat companion died, started exhibiting play aggression and increased clingy behavior toward me. When I got him a new cat companion (taking care to choose one that enjoyed rough-and-tumble play with other cats), his behavior returned to normal. These two do seem to actually enjoy their daily contact.

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

#304

Post by ricardobeat »

myopicgoat wrote: post #123
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.

Seems a bit overreacting dissing the whole of journalism for the odd pun seen in an article. Eg: John Oliver’s late night show is, objectively, quite good journalism (even if he denies it) though it’s not very “serious”.

It’s something I’ve begun to notice in almost every piece, like it is now worth some kind of internet points. It pops up in texts that are otherwise completely ‘serious’, even more formal ones, which is unsettling. Not exactly what I’m looking for when reading news about a tragedy, business failure or science.

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

#305

Post by [deleted] »

chr1 wrote: post #41
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…

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…

[deleted]

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

#306

Post by [deleted] »

chr1 wrote: post #41
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…

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…

[deleted]

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

#308

Post by grzm »

dfbsdfd wrote: post #307
heinrichf wrote: post #9

It's also illegal to own a single guinea pig or parrot (because they are prone to loneliness): https://www.zmescience.com/other/feature-post/guinea-pig-swi...

test

You also get to choose your companions, or lack of them as the case may be. Given the choice, I suspect guinea pigs and parrots would choose the company of others. As pets they don't have that choice.

Please note that I'm not saying anything about the keeping of animals as pets, or the social instincts of parrots or guinea pigs, or even whether or not the regulation is a good one. Just that the analogy you present here doesn't hold.

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

#309

Post by lazyasciiart »

wallace_f wrote: post #297
lazyasciiart wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'll find that this kind of thing started with making slavery illegal, a.k.a the actual use of force by the government to take away people's freedom to own other humans. The idea that all authority is immoral because authority can be used for immoral purposes is a simplistic slippery slope, and frankly anyone arguing that is just arbitrarily picking one ingredient of tyranny and saying that it should be ban…

Permitting private individuals to enact injustice such as slavery is advocating anarchy. You should read a little bit of Locke, Hume, JSM, Jefferson on democracy... The idea is very generally that we agree to a social contract to "give up some of our liberties to protect the remainder." Nobody has a right to remove the rights of another in this tradition, and it has always been that way going back, long before the Ci…

You're right, it didn't start with the Civil War. I just thought that slavery was a nice simple example of the legitimate use of force by the government that was decried as abridging the liberties of the Confederates. I get that you don't think 'the right to own other people' is, like, a real right like 'the right to kill animals however I want' and all the other ones you object to the government regulating away, but that's your personal and very subjective line and not some foundational precept.

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

#310

Post by [deleted] »

grzm wrote: post #308
dfbsdfd wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

test

You also get to choose your companions, or lack of them as the case may be. Given the choice, I suspect guinea pigs and parrots would choose the company of others. As pets they don't have that choice. Please note that I'm not saying anything about the keeping of animals as pets, or the social instincts of parrots or guinea pigs, or even whether or not the regulation is a good one. Just that the analogy you present he…

[deleted]
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