[Avodah] If you have an electronic water meter, can you turn on your faucet on Shabbos?

[Zev Sero]

On 1/08/2012 1:20 PM, Micha Berger wrote:
> The idiom is not from a case that is mutar or assur, it's just the
> source of the idiom. I'm not even sure the origin is halachic. For
> all I know, it's a local Babylonian expression. "Pesiq reishei"
> doesn't appear in the Y-mi, and in fact there is speculation that not
> only doen't the phrase exist, in EY they didn't have the halachic
> concept altogether.
>
> But in any case, it's just an idiom, not an legal case. After all,
> cutting off the head would be mechateikh regardless of the chicken
> a"h's demise.

AFAIK it is indeed a legal case, where you cut the head off a bird to
make a child's toy, and have no interest in what happens to the rest
of the bird.   http://mechon-mamre.org/i/3101.htm#6   Normally this
would be mis'asek, and therefore patur according to R Shimon, but he
concedes that in this case it's psik reisheih velo yamus and he's
chayav.  PRdLNL is an exception to this concession; if he davka would
rather that the chicken remain alive then R Shimon returns to his
position that mis'asek is patur.  The LNL negates the PR.

BTW, in reference to your claim that LNL means only that he doesn't
positively want it, and includes cases where he's indifferent, see
Shabbos 75a, Rashi dh "tfei nicha leih".  Rashi says explicitly that
where he's indifferent R Shimon concedes that he's chayav, and the
exception to R Shimon's concession is only where he would rather the
melacha didn't happen.

-- 
Zev Sero        "Natural resources are not finite in any meaningful
zev at sero.name    economic sense, mind-boggling though this assertion
                  may be. The stocks of them are not fixed but rather
		 are expanding through human ingenuity."
		                            - Julian Simon