My family just received a Christmas card from the family of a long-time friend, and my wife commented on how good his wife looked in the photo. I mentioned this to my friend, and he laughed. “That’s what I was going for when I photoshopped out the crow’s-feet and wrinkles. She does look good–just not that good.”
My gut feeling is that this is misrepresentation, and unethical. Continue reading
A recent Wall Street Journal blog post included this surprising statement:
“Amid a rise in office gossip, researchers are disagreeing over whether it is fundamentally good or bad.”
Pardon? Dictionaries are unanimous in defining gossip as “idle talk or rumor, especially about the personal or private affairs of others.” That’s pretty clearly unethical, wouldn’t you say? Continue reading
To someone passionately devoted to the belief in God and Christianity, the thought of having one’s city governed by non-believers may be repulsive. Unfortunately for the sensitivities of those facing this dilemma, the founders of the United States of America were quite specific about the irrelevance of religious belief to civic participation and the rights of citizenship. That may not stop some self-righteous political opponents of Ashville, N.C. City Councilman Cecil Bothwell, who says he doesn’t believe in God but who was duly elected in November, from trying to sue the city for its failure to abide by an archaic, and undeniably unconstitutional, state law forbidding atheists from holding office. Continue reading
Read and heed the amazing story of how greed, betrayal, lack of trust, and warped values have made life (and death) miserable for the Carvel ice cream clan. “Law and Order, Criminal Intent” isn’t so far-fetched, is it?
I promise: this is the last post related to Tiger Woods for a while, at least.
BUT… Here is Nike’s statement regarding Tiger’s hiatus from golf and his other, uh, issues:
“Tiger has been part of Nike for more than a decade. He is the best golfer in the world and one of the greatest athletes of his era. We look forward to his return to golf. He and his family have Nike’s full support.”
This raises several intriguing questions: Continue reading
The fact that a story is tabloid fodder doesn’t mean it can’t carry ethical wisdom along with its titillation content. As the number of alleged Woods mistresses continues to climb ( fifteen, the last I checked, but that was three hours ago), the Woods saga is casting light on more ethics issues than most. Such as… Continue reading
Even if you can’t stand Bill O’Reilly, you have to admit that the Fox bloviator has an entertainingly thin skin. Are you a struggling TV talking head in need of a ratings boost? Just take a shot, cheap or otherwise, at Battlin’ Bill, and he’ll double your audience by turning red-faced and calling you a slime. This time, O’Reilly is riled at Dick Wolf, the “Law and Order” producer, who recently had a character played by John Larroquette argue on “Law and Order, Special Victims Unit” that a man who killed the children of illegal immigrants had been primed by “Beck, Limbaugh, O’Reilly” who were like a “cancer spreading ignorance and hate.” Continue reading
From Randy Cohen, “The Ethicist” of the New York Times’ Magazine, comes an ethics question that I would think has an obvious answer. The fact that it isn’t obvious to many people is worrisome.
It was obvious to Cohen. A lawyer evaluating resumes for applicants to join his firm asked if he could ethically reject a qualified applicant solely because the applicant was a member of the Federalist Society, an organization much in favor during the Bush Administration, dedicated to studying and promoting conservative ideology. The potential associate’s duties had nothing to do with politics. Cohen, a good liberal if there never was one, was emphatic about whether the reviewing partner could ding the applicant for liking Justice Scalia and agreeing with George Will: Continue reading
Yesterday, The New York Times informed us that a small drug company called Allos is charging $30,000 a month for a cancer drug, Folotyn, that treats a rare and usually fatal form of cancer that strikes fewer that 6,000 American a year. It doesn’t cure the cancer, but merely slows it down; even with that, victims seldom survive more than a few months. “This drug is not a home run. It’s not even a double. It’s a single,” the Times quotes Dr. Brad S. Kahl, a lymphoma specialist at the University of Wisconsin, as saying. Continue reading
According to the annual Gallup poll on the public’s perceptions of ethical conduct among professionals, the following is the ranking, best to worst, of those most trusted by the American public. The percentage is the proportion of poll respondents who ranked each profession “very high” or “high” in ethical standards. Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 