Today has been blessedly uneventful. Between my coughing fits and AJ�s nightmares, I had very little sleep last night, but was able to sneak in a rare afternoon nap while AJ dozed and am now somewhat refreshed and prowling about in search of some work to do.

It�s not that there�s a shortage of work, rather that there�s so much to be done that I�m not sure where to start.

So in the interest of postponing that particular decision, I thought I�d attempt to respond to odalisk�s question of the day: If aliens walked the earth would it be ethically acceptable for a vegetarian to eat them?

My immediate response was, yes. Vegetarians, like everyone else, can eat anything they want. If they choose to eat plant matter and not animal matter, that�s their choice. It doesn�t mean that anything outside the realm of their choice is unethical for them to eat. I am a vegetarian. If I went to McDonald�s and ordered a Big Mac with cheese, paid for it with valid currency and ate it, there would be no ethical problem with that (although I can think of some other problems that might arise). I simply changed my mind about my diet.

But what if when changing my mind about my diet, I decided that what I really needed to dine on was a tender newborn human. There is, indeed an ethical problem with that. I am eating my own kind. While there are a few cultures where this is acceptable behavior, in the vast majority of the world this is a big taboo and I�m willing to accept that as a given. Big Macs: yes, Babies: no. Eating a baby of one�s own species clearly goes beyond a change of heart.

The question, then, that needs to be answered is what is the difference between a Big Mac and a baby? They are both tender and juicy. They both smell good sometimes and bad at others. A baby is bigger than a Big Mac, but it would be theoretically possible to make a Big Mac the size of a baby and eat it, so that is probably not an important criterion. Neither of them speaks, although a baby does make noise. For that matter, the Big Mac can make noise too, when in contact with certain stimuli � a hot grill for instance. The baby, however, can move all by itself. The Big Mac is not capable of that. And although the baby does not have any kind of vocabulary, it has ways of expressing itself that presumes it has desires and it both needs to and can make those desires known � visible and audible signs of sentient behavior. Eventually, most babies will develop the ability to express themselves through language. Although I doubt most people wish to keep a Big Mac around long enough to see if this would happen with the hamburger, I�m willing to bet that most of you would join me in assuming that a Big Mac will never acquire appreciable language skills beyond the occasional ability to summon sounds of gastric distress in the eater thereof.

Moreover, although I am a vegetarian primarily for health reasons and also due to the unfortunate demise of a turkey named Lawrence whom I once rescued from a rainstorm (see my list of 100 things for more details if you wish), my reasons for dietary restriction are not actually based on ethical decisions. My bottom line is that I will not eat anything that I do not feel comfortable killing myself. Therefore I occasionally eat fish, which I know from childhood camping trips with my grandfather, that I am capable of catching and cleaning myself. I will not eat beef or pork, because I cannot envision a situation where I would be comfortable with the whole business of turning the living animal into an edible form. But this is purely a personal decision and I do not have any feelings about the meat-eating habits of others, although I do think those die-hard Atkins followers are a little nuts.

There are, however, plenty of vegetarians who make the decision not to eat meat based on questions of treatment and cruelty to animals � the beginning product of the Big Mac, and therefore probably a better comparison to the baby, also a beginning product. Cows and babies have in common the same things that differentiated the baby from the Big Mac: signs of sentient behavior.

So what, then, is the difference between a baby and a cow? Ethical vegetarians would say nothing of significance and therefore, we will assume that anything with visible and/or audible signs of sentient behavior would be ethically taboo on the list of these vegetarians.

But what about the rest of us? It would seem that the only significant difference between the cow and the baby is the baby�s ultimate acquisition of language skills. In this we can�t define the language too carefully, as there are many languages to choose from. But then what about the cow? She makes plenty of sound and finds ways to make her feelings known too.

I suppose we now must define language. Consulting Merriam-Webster online, we find the following:

1 a :the words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used and understood by a community b(1) :audible, articulate, meaningful sound as produced by the action of the vocal organs

This seems to be getting at the bottom of things. Although both the cow and the baby have the ability to make themselves understood through sound, it is not a strictly syntactical sound as this definition implies. The baby, however, will ultimately acquire the ability to make itself understood through syntactical constructions. The cow will not.

It must be on this syntax that we define language as the differentiating characteristic between bovine and baby, as Merriam-Webster also includes the following definition of language:

(4) :the means by which animals communicate

So based on my survey of Big Macs, bovines and babies, I have come to the following conclusions:

It is unethical to eat things that have or will attain the ability to use language in a syntactical fashion, whether through audible or visual means.

It is unethical for vegetarians who are vegetarians for ethical reasons to eat anything that displays audible and/or visual signs of sentient behavior.

Finally, we come to odalisk�s aliens.

Ethically, most of us can eat them if they do not (1) display any audible or visual signs of sentient behavior AND (2) do not have or will not attain the ability to use language in a syntactical fashion. Ethical vegetarians cannot eat them if they meet point (1), regardless of their linguistic skills.

So to answer odalisk�s question, it depends on the vegetarian and on the alien. And whether the alien tastes good with ketchup.

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