The video is self-explanatory.
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Pointer: Alexander Cheezem
Month: June 2013
Why Your Child Should Watch “MLB Now”
…other than the fact that teaching your child to understand and enjoy baseball is one of the greatest gifts a parent can give, that is.
Don’t be like Harold, son.
No, the best reason to watch “MLB Now,” a program on the cable MLB channel, has nothing to do with baseball. It does have to do with preparing your child for life, showing him the danger of bias, and teaching her that remaining open to new ideas and information is essential, not only to ethical conduct, but to rational conduct as well.
The show features two commentators, Brian Kenny and Harold Reynolds, debating various baseball questions while coming from different disciplines and perspectives. Reynolds, a former player of some note with the Seattle Mariners, is “old school,” meaning that he belongs to that dwindling cadre of people, in the game and out of it, who rely on traditional wisdom, misconceptions, myths, false assumption and, most of all, their own gut level observations to interpret the deceptively complex game and evaluate its players. Thus he extolls doing the “little things that win,” like bunting and stealing bases, talks a lot about “protection” in the line-up, prattles on about clutch hitting and “pitching to the score,” and other similar thoroughly debunked nonsense that was regarded as cant back when John McGraw was managing but now is about as outdated as the assertion that women can’t drive. Kenny is thoroughly versed in the art of sabermetrics, the statistical measurements of baseball pioneered in the 1980’s by Bill James and others. Sabermetrics has transformed how baseball is watched, operated and played, greatly aided by the availability of computers. They can show how a pitcher with a losing record is both better and more valuable than one who wins twenty games, the traditional measure of excellence. They can prove that a batting champion is actually less of a positive offensive force than some obscure, .270 hitting player few have ever heard of. Sabermetrics can prove that managers with the reputation of being geniuses were really lucky dimwits. They can, that is, if you are willing to learn and pay attention. Continue reading
“Rubbish” and Ethics
That’s me!
Cognitive scientist and philosopher Daniel Dennett has a brilliant and original mind. One of the seven tools he advocates (in his most recent book) for those of us who want to think more clearly and make better use of our time caused me to reflect on one of the most persistent criticism I receive about Ethics Alarms. one of America’s foremost thinkers. Here are the seven, with a sample of Dennett’s comments about them:
1. USE YOUR MISTAKES
“Try to acquire the weird practice of savoring your mistakes, delighting in uncovering the strange quirks that led you astray. Then, once you have sucked out all the goodness to be gained from having made them, you can cheerfully set them behind you and go on to the next big opportunity. But that is not enough: you should actively seek out opportunities just so you can then recover from them.”
2. RESPECT YOUR OPPONENT
“Just how charitable are you supposed to be when criticizing the views of an opponent? If there are obvious contradictions in the opponent’s case, then you should point them out, forcefully. If there are somewhat hidden contradictions, you should carefully expose them to view – and then dump on them. But the search for hidden contradictions often crosses the line into nitpicking, sea-lawyering and outright parody. The thrill of the chase and the conviction that your opponent has to be harboring a confusion somewhere encourages uncharitable interpretation, which gives you an easy target to attack….” Continue reading
Flat, Flat, Flat…and Infuriating
This was bound to happen.
A graph of President Obama’s leadership learning curve since January, 2009. This is actually a new graph, including data since the last one of these I posted, though I recognize that the difference is hard to see…
Waaay back in 2009, when the new President improvidently and recklessly commented on a local dispute between a Harvard professor and a Cambridge policeman, I pointed out that Obama needed to learnthe ethical limits on his power and influence. Teddy Roosevelt’s “bully pulpit” is not license for the highest office-holder in the land to try to mold public opinion on every conceivable matter, local or national, and to influence decisions solely within the authority of others. For the President to state his personal verdict on anything he wakes up concerned about risks putting a weighty thumb on the scales of justice. It is an abuse of power—a President behaving like an emperor.
This is not a difficult concept; indeed, with occasional lapses, every other President has grasped it instinctively. Not Barack Obama. Brilliant Barack Obama. “Constitutional scholar” Barack Obama. For while the Gates episode may have been a rookie mistake, he has engaged in exactly the same unethical, arrogant conduct repeatedly, here, and here, and here and here, and here, and especially here—and I’m sure I may have missed a few.
Each time I pointed out this inexcusable habit, I was barraged by glossy-eyed readers who made excuses for Obama and rationalized his grandstanding remarks, accusing me of being biased and hypercritical. But with each new instance, it should have been progressively clearer that I correctly diagnosed this malady in 2009. Now, after Obama has done it yet again, commenting inappropriately about the military sexual harassment scandal, this proclivity has finally had tangible legal consequences. You can’t say I didn’t warn him. Continue reading
The Teacher, The Ex, and Zero Sum Ethics
“Carie? Your ex-husband is here to see you!”
Domestic violence victims advocates are outraged over an incident in which second-grade teacher Carie Charlesworth, a teacher at San Diego’s Holy Trinity School, lost her job because of threatening conduct by her ex-husband. After an incident where the school was placed on lock-down because Charlesworth’s ex, undeterred by a restraining order, came to the school to confront her, the school district decided that her continued employment was a risk to the safety of the school and its students.
In a termination letter, the district informed Charlesworth that her ex-husband’s “threatening and menacing behavior” made it impossible for her to continue teaching at the Holy Trinity School. Predictably, Charlesworth is angry, and suing. “They’ve taken away my ability to care for my kids,” she says. She has four. “It’s not like I can go out and find a teaching job anywhere.” Now she is publicizing her dilemma to dramatize the plight of domestic violence victims.
She is focusing her resources and anger on the wrong parties. Continue reading
Ethics Quiz: Grade The Misbehaving Celebrities!
Our subjects:
Oh, Bill…you’re such a scream!
Bill Maher, bad boy comic, political satirist and host of HBO’s “Real Time”
Maher’s fans
Ron Futrelle, former sportscaster and Las Vegas media personality
Sarah Palin, former governor, VP candidate, Fox commentator and conservative icon
All clashed over a joke made by Maher during a stand-up gig, and your challenge is to decide who gets the lowest ethics grade. Here’s what happened: Futrelle was in the audience for Maher’s show in Las Vegas. Maher made a joke about Palin’s son, Trig, who has Down Syndrome. According to Futrelle, the joke upset him, as well as the fact that the audience appeared to enjoy Maher’s using Palin’s innocent and mentally challenged child as a comedy topic, and laughed heartily. Futrelle began heckling Maher, eventually prompting an annoyed audience member to remind him that he was not the attraction, and suggest that he shut his gob. Futrelle persisted, and when confronted by security, left.
Through Futrelle’s blog’s account of his experience, Brietbart and the miracle of social media, Mama Grizzly Palin learned that her young son had been (again) converted into joke-fodder, and tweeted her reaction to Maher:
“Hey bully, on behalf of all kids whom you hatefully mock in order to make yourself feel big, I hope one flattens your lily white wimpy a#*.”
Our grading scale:
A Exemplary ethical conduct.
B Ethical and appropriate conduct that could have been better executed.
C Acceptable conduct according to reasonable social norms
D Unethical conduct
F Despicable conduct
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz is, therefore, to accept this challenge:
Give Maher, Maher’s audience, Futrelle and Palin their ethics grades. Continue reading
Ethics Hero: Joe Concha at Mediaite
Berman and Romans: mystery solved. Well, not really ” mystery solved;” maybe “Marshall incompetence addressed” is more accurate,..
Lots of kind readers pitch in here to help Ethics Alarms do its lonely job better and more efficiently. Some of you e-mail me with typos, which are getting fewer thanks to a new a new proofreading regimen, others send me links to stories that raise ethics issues, and others still offer off-site critiques and comments that are helpful and thought-provoking. I do not expect that kind of generous assistance from major media blogs that get more traffic in the time it takes me to post an article than Ethics Alarms gets in a week. Thus it was a nice surprise to wake up this morning to Joe Concha’s post at Mediaite, properly chiding me for getting the CNN anchors wrong on the recent Simon Cowell egging story, and best of all, giving me the right names, which I had failed to find, as in “didn’t do my due diligence and look hard enough.” [For the record, it was not Chris Cuomo and Kate Bolduan who I heard cheering on the woman who threw eggs at Simon Cowell during “Britain’s Got Talent,” but John Berman and Christine Romans, who now inherit the Ethics Dunces honor that should have been theirs from the beginning.]
The fact that Concha enlightened me while taking full advantage of the egg angle (“Blogger’s Got Talent? In Egg-Filled Irony, Ethics Alarms Gets CNN Hosts Wrong” is the headline) and chiding me for my fact-checking inadequacies is beside the point—-I deserved it. What matters is that I’m grateful that 1) he’s reading about ethics, which should be discusses on Mediate every day, given the state of the news media, 2) that he found the right anchors and 3) told me, so I could finally get that post right….which I will do as soon as I post this.
Again, my apologies to Chris Cuomo and Kate Bolduan for unjustly labeling them Ethics Dunces. I wish them good luck on their new show, and may I never have the occasion to mark them as Ethics Dunces again, in contrast to Soledad O’Brien, whom they replace.
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Facts: Mediaite
“How To Make An Unethical Apology” by Rev. David Brassfield, Apology Innovator
What Rev. Brassfield regards as “Christ-like”
Apologies are fascinating, because they are so seldom honest, benign, sincere, and genuinely contrite. Rev. David Brassfield just submitted one that might serve as a classic in the category of backhanded, insincere, bilious apologies, and a useful template for high-placed jerks in search of inspiration.
Before revealing the good Reverend’s masterpiece, some background is in order. In the wake of the deadly tornado that devastated the area around Oklahoma City, Brassfield printed and distributed an attack on local atheist groups to parishioners attending his Newalla Church of Christ, alleging that they proved their deficits in morality, character and community support by failing to join with various church groups in relief efforts.
“….They claim believers in God are blind and only they see the truth. But, in fact, they only see themselves. Helping others is beneath them. Ironically, they greatly resemble a religious group of Jesus’ day: the Jewish leaders, who talked a good game but did nothing. We should dread the day if those who reject God and the church Jesus built become a majority in this land. …If the “proof is in the pudding,” then those anti-God groups have left a bad taste in the world’s mouth. Thanks be to God that because of the love and sacrifice of his son, believers in God have felt compelled to come from all places to give of themselves freely.”
As Emily Litella would say, “Never mind!” The pastor was dead, dead wrong. Local atheist groups had organized, pitched in, and done their part to assist in relief efforts. A humble apology was called for. This is what Reverend produced. As usual, bolded and bracketed asides are me: Continue reading
Anti-Terror Surveillance Flip-Flops, Fools, Converts and Heroes
There has been much ink and pixels spilled about the supposed hypocrisy of Republicans and Democrats in their disparate reactions to the revaluation of far more extensive phone and internet data-gathering by the government than those of us not wearing tin-foil on out heads ever suspected. For example, a recent Pew survey shows this...
Naturally, Republicans and Democrats are calling each other hypocrites, suggesting dishonesty and lack of integrity. There are surely some hypocrites in there, but for the most part, the flip-flopping is neither dishonest nor theoretically unreasonable. Even if we assume that the level of NSA intrusion under Bush and Obama administrations are the same (and to be fair, it appears that the current gathering of all domestic phone records goes well beyond what we understood to be the limited surveillance permitted under the Patriot Act), they are materially different in one key aspect, from the perspective of partisan citizens.
Think about it this way: Let’s say on successive days you discover your best friend and your business rival, both of whom visited your home for various reasons, looking through bills and financial papers on your desk. They did the same thing, but while you might be peeved at your friend, if he had a credible explanation like “I think I can save you some taxes,” you would not view his actions as sinister, and might even be grateful for it. When you found your rival looking over the same private papers, however, you would be furious, suspicious, and justly so. The difference is a matter of trust. You trust your friend, his motives and loyalty; you don’t trust your rival. Continue reading
And The Jumbo, Desperately Incredible Excuse Division, Goes To….Rodger William Kelly!
Clockwise from Left: “These aren’t my pants!”…”A ghost did it!”…”I was just trying to revive her!”…”Elephant? What elephant?”
There is no question that Rodger William Kelly deserves his Jumbo Award, the Ethics Alarms honor periodically bestowed on “an ethical miscreant who continues to try to brass his or her way out of an obvious act of ethical misconduct when caught red-handed and there is no hope of ducking the consequences.” But there is a legitimate issue over whether his explanation to the St. George, Utah police regarding why he had sexual intercourse with his unconscious, 29-year-old female neighbor becomes the new champion as the most ridiculous excuse ever.
To refresh you memory, the current champ is Michael West, the Wisconsin wife-beater who swore to police that his bruised and bloody wife had been attacked by a ghost. He dethroned long-time champ Lindsay Lohan, who began her long, sad descent by explaining to police, when she was still a movie star and caught with cocaine on her person after a vehicle arrest, that she was wearing someone else’s pants.
I think West’s short reign is over, however. Kelly told officers that he found the woman passed out in front of her apartment and, concerned for her welfare, he brought her inside his own apartment. There he changed her clothes and put her on his bed, and tried to “warm her” by laying down next to her, hugging her, and then, as a desperate measure since nothing seemed to be working, inserting his heat-emitting penis into her to try to “raise her temperature.” Later he tried more conventional CPR. He’s not a rapist. He’s a hero! Continue reading
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