gothamgal's Profile

I just dropped my (self-made) soup bowl on the floor. Crash; alas. I'd be delighted for a new one.

the whole kit&caboodle is wonderful, but I'm eyeing the skillet for getting that grill stripe on my veggie burgers.

Tibetan lentil hits the spot.

ipod and radio...together at last.

I withdraw my self-nomination and if Laura K's pop wants to write up his experiences with it, I'd choose him.

Two small but relevant changes in our house this week:

One, my digital camera is newly full.

Two, every plug in the house has been unplugged.

Common denominator? We just adopted a puppy.

Wireless printing -- say, of new-puppy photos, and of various writerly projects -- would be immediately and thoroughly tested in our house.

We'd be pleased to adopt this printer: so far so good with the pup.

Quick question: any eco-friendly ideas for how to cover the exposed parts of cut fruit and veggies? I'm always using half an orange, part of a tomato, etc., and want to avoid saran wrap to cover the exposed flesh when storing the rest. The cut might not be even, so the fruit can't be placed against a plate. Even in a closed container if the innards are exposed they age too much. Ideas? Thanks!

As far as I know, the seltzer guy delivers to all boroughs -- since it's a small operation, though, I think it depends on how he can fit a new customer into an existing schedule. Maybe a few people in the same area could sign up at once...

I saw him in my neighborhood one day and signed up then and there...but a little googling led me to a site that says his number is 718-468-4047. I haven't tried it, but you could.

You can see bats in Central Park or Riverside (and probably all the other Manhattan parks) at dusk, swooping and darting at tree level. You might not interpret what you're seeing as "bats" right away, as their forms are bird-like. But their flight patterns are very different: they move like drunken, weaving birds. I see them most evenings. I wish there were more: the mosquitoes love me.

As geckotoes1's comment makes clear, an essential part of the question of whether oysters feel pain is what *counts* as pain to begin with. It's fair to say that "response to noxious stimuli" might be insufficient, viewed objectively, to posit that the responder feels pain. And it is certainly a "subjective experience", though that's only important if you think that some animals or people don't have subjectivity (which is another question!). But I can't agree with the suggestion that it relies on "higher order processing". This is used by some to duck the difficult, and unanswered, question of what it is that distinguishes people--or chimpanzees, or dolphins--from oysters. We know there are nervous system differences, we know that the difference has to do with the "complexity" of the nervous system, but since we do not know exactly how that complexity translates into subjective experience, we have to remain agnostic on what the differences in complexity tell us about the oyster or dolphin's experience of the world.

Then if we consider whether an animal feels pain based on how it responds, we might be best served by using the argument from analogy. This is what leads me to believe that other people feel pain *more or less* the way I do, although we might differ on whether a particular stimulus leads to a particular experience of pain. But given that we share physiology, it's a reasonable analogy. Given that we share major elements of physiology with all other animals, I think the analogy should be extended to them, too. This is not of course proof that oysters feel pain, but I'd rather err on the part of conservatism (I lose nothing important by not causing animals pain) than risk causing pain unnecessarily.

The philosopher Alan Carter suggests that pain can be posited in others by virtue of its being an adaptive response to painful stimuli -- with their behaviors (writhing, squealing, or even just moving away quickly) being the only component of that response which we can see, as objective observers.

Something to ponder over lunch. (It is, I presume, moot for the oysters by now.) ...