My esteemed colleague Rushworth M. Kidder, who is the founder and guiding light of the Institute for Global Ethics, has drafted a Blog-Poster’s Code of Ethics. I like it, but Dr. Kidder has asked for feedback before making it final; Rush is suggesting that blogs post the Code as a statement of principles. Continue reading
Month: November 2009
Sally Harpold, Chaos, and the Ethics of Law-making
As we contemplate a House health care reform bill that is over 2,000 pages long, it might be a good time to revisit the cautionary tale of Indiana grandmother Sally Harpold, and its lessons about law, fairness, responsibility, and Chaos Theory, not to mention ethics. Continue reading
Ethics Dunces: The Learning Channel, and Us
Remember “Jon and Kate Plus 8,” the late, unlamented TLC cable hit that managed to destroy the Gosselin family, turn a mother of eight young children into a single mom, and raise troubling questions about child labor and the exploitation of kids by the entertainment industry? Apparently the only thing the Learning Channel remembers about it is all the money the channel made from the show, because it has recruited yet another family to exploit and destroy. Continue reading
Baseball Ethics Here!
Commercial: The 2010 Hardball Times Baseball Annual is hot off the presses, and it contains an article by me analyzing the standards of character, integrity and sportsmanship that are or should be applied to candidates for the Hall of Fame. Continue reading
The F.T.C. vs. the Singing Pirate’s Not-So-Free Credit Reports
What does it say about the futility of federal regulators when the Federal Trade Commission thinks the best way to combat misleading commercials for “free credit reports” is to use taxpayer funds to produce and run a parody of those ads? That’s right: the government is running TV commercials designed to look like the commercials that try to confuse consumers into using a costly credit service rather than the government’s free service. Continue reading
Player Dementia and the Fan’s Dilemma: Is Watching N.F.L. Football Unethical?
It is Sunday, and much of America is ready to settle in front of millions of wide-screen, high-definition television sets to watch Sunday’s favorite entertainment: NFL football. The last thing football fans want to think about today is ethics, and today, perhaps, they shouldn’t have to. Although we are not there yet, the time is fast approaching when not only football fans, but the companies that buy commercials, the merchandisers that sell NFL-licensed jerseys and posters, the TV networks, and the nation itself may have to consider a difficult ethics question: is supporting pro-football unethical? Continue reading
The Worst Ethics Exam Ever!
We all know that Illinois ranks right down there with New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Louisiana when it comes to unethical government culture. What I didn’t know was that there is an annual ethics test given to all state employees. Or that these two facts may be related in an unusual way. I thought the ethics exam was in response to the state’s ethical problems. Now I think the exam may be causing the state’s ethical problems.
I also think it may have been written by Mel Brooks. Continue reading
Florida, Facebook, and Teacher Conduct
Two teachers are out of a job. Both share some responsibility for their fates. The question is how much, and whether their school districts over-reacted to their conduct.
The easier of the two tales, and by far the funnier, took place in Prairie Village, a suburb of Kansas City, Kansas. A Mission Valley middle school teacher (make that ex-teacher) named Ryan Haraughty was drawing a map of the United States on the blackboard and drew Florida out of proportion. The extra-long, engorged Florida drew snickers from his teen age students, which Haraughty acknowledged by quipping, “Florida got excited.” Hilarity ensued. Continue reading
Painted Donkeys
The question is: Are fake zebras better than no zebras at all? Continue reading
Race, Eleven Bodies, and the Media’s Disgrace
They are finding decomposed bodies in the Cleveland home of Anthony Sowell, eleven lat last count. Police had visited the house before the discovery and noticed the smell, but never followed up, even though they knew the owner was a violent sex offender. No ethics controversies so far: the police were obviously careless and incompetent, and Sowell was, well, a serial killer. There are no ethical serial killers.
The ethics issue that screams to me in this story, however, is all about the women: all missing for months or years, all young, from poor families, and black. Did you see any national media stories about them when they were missing persons and not abused corpses? I didn’t. Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 