Ethics Quiz: Robo-Bathrooms?

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The Big Apple’s Communist, anti-Semitic Mayor Zohran Mamdani this week (yes, that kind of intro is called “poisoning the well,” and I don’t care) announced that the first two high-tech modular bathrooms (of 17) that the city ordered earlier this year from Throne Labs are now on city streets. The rest of the restrooms will come online soon.

Wait, what? How does a bathroom come “online” ? This is how: The new public toilets can only be accessed by texting a number via a smartphone or by using special tap cards, which will be distributed by non-profit organizations in the community. There is strict 10-minute time limit on the things. A speaker inside the room will announce via bot that pooping-time is running out. Next the desperate user will hear in English and Spanish, “Attention: Your use time has expired! The door is opening now!” Then the door will slide open, exposing the user to the world. If someone doesn’t vacate the robo-bathroom at that point, Throne Labs personnel will get an alert to investigate, and if, necessary, call the police.

This system is allegedly necessary because NYC, which no longer observes the “broken window theory” and will not arrest someone for relieving themselves in public, decided that the public urination problem was becoming…serious. But how many public pissers have smart phones?

When I told a friend about this innovation today, he said, “There’s got to be something unethical about that.“

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Is it?

Trump Derangement Case Study #50,674,328…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

My next door neighbor just posted an innocent photo of a wild turkey that turned up in his back yard.

The first comment on his post: “Does he work for Trump?”

Sickness. I am permanently harming my fingers by wrestling them away from the keyboard so many times each day.

I momentarily gave in yesterday when a good friend referred to Trump “defiling a memorial” by putting his name on the Kennedy Center. I couldn’t stop myself. I had to respond that while Trump’s fooling around with the Kennedy Center is dumb, neither JFK nor the Kennedy family warranted such a monstrous mausoleum that was already defiled with the names of a sociopath whom only moral luck saved from being the POTUS who caused World War III, and who should have been impeached for having sexual affairs with a foreign spy and a mob moll, and the family that covered up a murder so the Jack’s black sheep youngest brother could stay in the Senate and out of prison.

I did manage not to add that JFK achieved so much less in his three years in office than Trump has in just two years of his second term it isn’t even close, which would have caused mass un-friending and several fatal head explosions.

Cross Street-Naming Ethics With Fanatic Red Sox Fan Ethics and You Get…Whatever This Is. In Utah…

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

In a remote neighborhood in Herriman, Utah, there is a charming subdivision with streets named only for past Boston Red Sox stars. Ipswitch Way and Yawkey Way—named after streets around Fenway Park—surround Fisk Drive, Remy Road, Pesky Lane, Eovaldi Avenue, Pedroia Street, Xander Lane, Varitek Drive and Boggs Way. Never mind if you don’t recognize those names: I do, but it’s likely that very few residents know their Boston Red Sox lore.

The project manager is a man named Brandon Parr who has lived in Utah his entire life, started following the Red Sox when he was 7, and now, in his forties, carries a Red Sox water bottle and wears a Red Sox cap every day. Developing the subdivision in Herriman was his first assignment as a project manager in 2021. Apparently the builder gets to name any new streets in any proposed project—I did not know that!—and when Parr was told about the honor, he said, “I’m doing Red Sox!” He submitted ten street names for approval, all well-known to Sox aficionados.

Ethics issue #1: Is it fair and responsible to use the naming power to satisfy a personal passion when it is completely divorced from the region and the community as well as the likely future residents? Utah doesn’t even have a Major League baseball team. Maybe the Miami Marlins are further away that the Red Sox , but not by much (don’t check that: I won’t, and if I’m wrong, I don’t care). My verdict? A mild “unethical.” I don’t know the origins of most of the streets in my Alexandria neighborhood except the section where all the streets are named after Presidents (Tyler intersects Taylor). Still, turning a Utah neighborhood into a Boston Red Sox fan display seems a bit excessive.

Ethics issue #2 struck me immediately, however: If a Sox fan is going to do this, there is an obligation to do some research and due diligence. With 10 streets to name for Red Sox favorites, where is the homage to Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski, David Ortiz, and Pedro Martinez? OK, I’ll forgive Roger Clemens: I wouldn’t name a street after that asshole either.

Parr has his excuses lined up: “Williams,” “Ortiz” and “Martinez” streets are too common, and “Yastrzemski Road” is too hard to spell. He also claimed that alternatives to “Williams” like “Splendid Splinter Street” were too long. I’m not buying it. “Big Papi Drive” would cover David Ortiz. “Yaz Ave” is an easy call. What’s the matter with “Ted Williams Way”? Meanwhile, as a Red Sox fan, I respectfully object to some of his choices. “Eovaldi Ave.” is named for a Sox pitcher whose fame is based on a single game performance in relief during the 2018 World Series. Does this alleged Sox fan recall Curt Schilling and the “bloody sock” games in 2004? He admits to being a big Xander Bogaerts fan, hence “Xander Lane.” Bogaerts abandoned Boston as a free agent choosing money over team (so did Nathan Eovaldi). There are too many superior Sox players who did not place cash over loyalty, and leaving Tony Conigliaro out of the street names (Tony C. Court) while honoring sex-addicted, Yankee traitor Wade Boggs is deeply offensive.

Esteemed Progressive Law School Dean Boasts About His School’s Illegal “Good Discrimination” In Faculty Hiring. Surprised?

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Ethics Observations:

1. These people cheat. They are proud of their cheating: it’s “the ends justifies the means” exemplified. This is a law school dean—at a prestige law school!— openly admitting and rationalizing violating the law.

2. He also says that he’ll lie under oath to deny what he said.

3.Dean Erwin Chemerinsky has a long and disgusting EA dossier (at the link) but is always—always, no exceptions—represented in the mainstream media as respected legal scholar. I don’t respect him: he’s an Ethics Villain, and undeniably so.

4. Notice that he says “diversity is important” but he never says why it’s important. This is just an article of faith with the Left. It is important because it just is, that’s all, and they say it is, so there.

5. I’m playing the Learned Judge tonight in a law school production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Trial by Jury” (1875, and as funny and sharp now as it was on opening night.) The Foreman of the Jury, a bass-baritone role, is being played by tiny female student, a soprano, who is inaudible and who can’t remember her entrances. She is easily the least able member of the chorus. Why was she cast in that role? She is the only “student of color” who auditioned, and the student organization has by-laws requiring “diversity” in casts. As a result, the show sounds worse, looks worse, all of the cast members who are qualified for their roles will get fewer benefits from their work and dedication as a result, the audience will enjoy the show less, and the exploited student, who is a very nice young woman, will be embarrassed in public. If I had to describe a perfect example of what’s wrong with DEI logic, I doubt that I could come up with a better one. Yet ideologues like Chemerinsky still use their authority to assure the world that discriminating against white males in pursuit of diversity is an “unalloyed virtue, as Gilbert might say.

6. Our cast—all of them (but me!) list their “pronouns” in their program bios— had a rehearsal in the faculty lounge. There are only two newspapers there for faculty perusal: The New York Times and the Washington Post. Nah, U.S. law schools aren’t Leftist indoctrination centers! What a ridiculous conspiracy theory…

7. Do let me know if any Axis news media outlet breathes a word of this incident. My bet: there won’t be any.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) Demonstrates How Democrats Ruined Impeachment For All Time

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The Impeachment Clause in the U.S. Constitution was written by the Founders to create an emergency “Get Rid of a Rogue President (or other high Federal official) Free Card,” to be used in a bid-partisan process featuring due process, hearings and a trial. The Democrats cynically used the process as part of their undemocratic and ruinous campaign to make it impossible for the elected President to govern, because he had committed the unforgivable sin of blocking Hillary Clinton’s rose-strewn path to the White House. Like the fake, Hillary and Obama engineered Russian collusion hoax (and in Trump’s second term, the J-6 kangaroo hearings in the House, both of Trump’s impeachments were contrived, politically motivated, and Constitutionally indefensible. The damage was done, the precedent set. Impeachment is now toothless; the Founders’ metaphorical safety valve is done. What once was framed as cooperative, bi-partisan inquiry to be triggered by genuine abuses of power is now just another toothless and corrupt tool of political warfare. Good job, everybody!

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), on the way out after losing the primary for his seat earlier this year, filed eight articles of impeachment against Secretary of War Pete Hegseth this week.

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Baseball Ethics: It’s Beginning to Look Like The Old Timers Knew What They Were Doing Sometimes After All…

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The most famous and, clearly, most amazing Major League Baseball player—also the highest paid, by far—is the LA Dodgers’ two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani. From his days as a Japanese baseball star, Ohtani has been both an all-star level starting pitcher and a superior batter. He insisted on being allowed to continue pitching every five days and being in the lineup the rest of the time as a condition of signing with a U.S. team. In his ten years in the Majors, Ohtani has performed feats unmatched in the history of baseball, including the legendary game in last year’s National League Championship Series in which he pitched six scoreless innings, striking out 10 batters and allowing just a two hits against the Milwaukee Brewers and went 3-for-3 with three home runs at the plate, outhitting the Brewers single-handedly.

Only one player before Ohtani had the ability to do that: Babe Ruth, widely regarded as the greatest baseball player of all. For the Boston Red Sox Babe was a Hall of Fame-caliber pitcher who also appeared to be one of the best hitters in the league until he was sold to the New York Yankees. They made Babe give up pitching on the theory that an everyday superstar at the plate was more valuable than an ace pitcher even in the days when pitchers could start every third day and pitch complete games. The second part of the theory was that no athlete’s body would stand up to the rigors of pitching and being in the line-up every day.

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Confronting My Biases #32: Perpetual Students

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

That’s New Zealander Jamie Beaton above, posing for photos during graduation days at Harvard, Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, Cornell, Oxford, Stanford, Columbia, and King’s College, London. He’s the subject of a profile in the New York Times (gift link), chronicling his status as a “perpetual student.”

“A 5-foot-6 personification of naked ambition whose LinkedIn profile has been the subject of memes and Reddit threads, Beaton has gone to the head of a rarefied class — perpetual students,” the Times relates. “If he continues collecting advanced degrees at such a swift pace, he will surpass Benjamin B. Bolger, who has racked up 16 at age 50. He might even beat Michael Nicholson, an octogenarian forever scholar with more than 30 degrees to his name.”

With me, this resonates exactly like the Guinness Book of Records item about the only man to eat a whole automobile. One of my favorite oddball baseball players and historical figures was Moe Berg, a man who spoke Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Sanskrit, had degrees from Princeton and Columbia (in law), read ten newspapers a day and put all those skills to work playing major league baseball as a third-string catcher, never married, never owned a home, never started a business or earned a regular salary after retiring from the game. Beaton is more productive than that (arguably: Moe was recruited as a spy during World War II), but I still regard spending so much time and money accumulating academic credentials as pathological.

On the other side of the argument, of course, is the refrain of The Animals: “It’s my life and I’ll do what I want!” I endorse such autonomy and eccentricity, but still find the spectacle of someone with obvious ability, talent and work ethic spending so much of it on himself rather than the betterment of society, creation, and leadership as less than admirable.

At my undergraduate school, there were notable permanent students, mostly chubby middle-aged bachelors who arrived as undergrads, proceeded to graduate school, kept adding degrees, chased Masters and PhDs and never left the academic womb. They became “resident advisors” or “resident scholars” in the Harvard House system. They all gave me the impression that if they walked off the campus they would crumble to dust like vampires in sunlight.

I have an unmarried nephew who is 37, unmarried, and has been living in a university town for more than a decade as he pursues an elusive PhD. He does some teaching at the school, but he is, or was, a lively, funny, brilliant young man who had so many options after he graduated from college. As I increasingly regard higher education, in its current state of rot, a blight on American society, the phenomenon of the perpetual student seems increasingly indefensible, or at least tragic.

Now heeeeere’s Eric….!

Kant=Can’t: The German Philosopher On Ending War

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

The recent discussion on the uselessness, and hence unethical nature, of advocating the impossible sent me back to Immanuel Kant. All Kant did was think and write: in 1795 he decided to muse about how there could be an end to war. Kant was not one to accept “Do something!”; he would always try to figure out what would or might accomplish the desired result. Of course, being a philosopher, he left it to others to execute his plan for the betterment of humanity.

His essay “Toward Perpetual Peace” proposes structural and moral conditions necessary if war is going to be eliminated from civilization. Kant, not being deluded, did not believe peace natural to humanity, rather he argued that peace must be carefully constructed through a clear legal framework. His six Preliminary Articles (immediate steps to prevent conflict) and three Definitive Articles (the long-term foundations required for permanent peace) were the magic formula.

The Six Preliminary Articles (Immediate Steps)

These are immediate prohibitions of legal, financial, and military conditions that make future wars inevitable.

1. No flawed peace treaties. No treaty of peace is valid if it is signed with a secret reservation or loophole that could restart a war in the future. A treaty must represent a genuine end to hostilities, not just a temporary truce.

2. Don’t treat states like property: An independent state must never be acquired by another through inheritance, exchange, purchase, or gift, because a state is a society of human beings with its own right to self-determination.

3. No standing armies, because, Kant argued, keeping standing armies threatens neighboring states and ensures a never-ending arms race, making pre-emptive wars more likely.

4. Governments must not create national debts to fund military buildup or foreign intervention.

5. No forcible interference in other nations, because violating a nation’s sovereignty is an offense against the independence of all peoples.

6. “Dishonorable tactics” during war must be banned. Atrocities that destroy the underlying trust required for future peace.

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“Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Update

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Hey, thanks, Washington Free Beacon!

The conservative news and investigative reporting site saved me a post by highlighting how the increasingly despicable New York Times is soft-peddling or ignoring the most revolting proclivities of radical Democratic candidates for Congress while routinely publishing essays like this one…

…which I flagged last week as the partisan hypocrisy it is [Item #6]. The Free Beacon’s list of Democrat and Democratic Socialist fanatics that the Times is or was working hard to cloak in respectability includes..

  • The now appropriately infamous Graham Platner, regarding whom the Times’s opinion columnist assured readers that the guy with the Nazi tattoo was “no Nazi.”
  • Francesca Hong, who lost the primary for Governor of Wisconsin and who wanted to ban Thanksgiving. “Views of the holiday have grown more complex,” the Times said, insisting that the reaction to her insane tweet was “emblematic of a broader reckoning among many Americans with the country’s checkered history.”
  • Adam Hamawy, running for the House in New Jersey, complained about his GOP “opponents” constantly raising his connection to the Blind Sheikh, the radical Islamic cleric who inspired the 1993 World Trade Center attack and was convicted for plotting to bomb other targets in New York City. “Republicans pounce!”
  • Yes, the Times even stoops to white-washing Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan US Senate candidate. When it interviewed the candidate in August, the Times asked him questions like “Can I ask you about young people? How have progressives from New York City to Ann Arbor succeeded in inspiring volunteerism?” They also called his anti-Semitic campaign surrogate Hasan Piker a “provocative streamer and critic of Israel.” Piker has written that the U.S. “deserved” the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, that Mao was “one of the great leaders of this world,” and that he would “vote for Hamas over Israel every single time.”

There are more, but that’s evidence enough of how low the Times is stopping to flip Congress.

Ethics Quiz: Sydney Sweeney (Again)

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Sweeney, the shapely and bold young actress who already angered the Left with her jeans/genes ad that supposedly dog whistled white supremacy, is now getting attacked by the Mad Left for the video above. She’s objectifying female athletes, you see. Or something. Because women athletes have never used sexual attractiveness to promote themselves and their sports…

Hey, how did pro-golfer Paige Spiranac get in there? Away with you, Devil Woman!

Now where were we? Oh yes, Sydney Sweeney….

Here’s The Athletic:

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