Author: Jack Marshall

Ethics Quiz: The Transexual Female Golfer

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Let’s be fair and clear: golfer Hailey Davidson is not like Lia Thomas, who has crushed collegiate swimming competition by just “identifying” as female. Davidson went all the way, if you know what I mean. She is about to become the first transgender woman to earn a Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) tour card by excelling in the first two qualifying rounds in the first stage of the LPGA and Epson Tour Qualifying School in Palm Springs. 

Still, though she now lacks the capacity to produce male hormones, Hailey competed as a male golfer as recently as 2015, and had the permanent advantage of going through puberty as a male. Though she claims that her drives off the tee have diminished since her transition, the question remains, is it fair for her to compete in a sport against women who have never been anything but. 18 states have outlawed transgender students from competing in girls’ sports. Golf, however, is not weightlifting, and some female pro golfers have competed in men’s tournaments.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day...

Is it fair to allow a transgender female to compete against biological females in golf?

Continue reading →

More Weird Tales Of The Great Stupid! “Death Of A Salesperson”?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Watch out! This one is really, really stupid.

Increasingly embarrassing New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed legislation last week officially eliminating the word “salesman” in official parlance and replacing it with “salesperson.” “Jobs have no gender, but unfortunately, many of our state’s laws still use gendered language when discussing professions that are practiced by people of all genders,” state Sen. Anna Kaplan (D-Nassau) said of the bill she sponsored with Assemblyman Danny O’Donnell (D-Manhattan).

No, unfortunately the legislators’ political party is now addicted to Orwellian GoodSpeak measures, as it tries to control thought by restricting language.

The new law also replaces “his” or “her” with “their” in relevant statutes affecting the real estate industry. Other new Big Brother laws in New York ban the official use of  “mentally retarded” and “inmate” in favor of “developmentally disabled” and “incarcerated person.”

Did you know that Donald Trump and Republicans pose an existential  threat to democracy? Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 8/23/2022: A New Rule And Assorted Ethics Confusion

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

As Bill Maher would say: “New rule!” I am no longer tolerating rude, nasty, disrespectful clerks, waiters, or service providers of any kind. Gus McRae’s handling of an obnoxious bartender in the memorable scene above from “Lonesome Dove,” which I have come to regard as the best Western drama ever put on a screen, high praise from me, may be a bit extreme, but only a bit. The frequency of insolence and general surliness from such employees has increased wildly in recent years—theories welcome— and the only way to stop the unethical trend is to resolve to make as much trouble for such jerks as possible. a) Tell them off. b) Complain to their supervisors. c) Tell the story to online consumer resources. d) Write to headquarters, and e) Don’t give up (I am still fighting it out with CVS over a complaint I registered almost six months ago.) I just walked out of a Staples after not one but two employees treated me like a bug, and resolved never to let such conduct pass again.

1. The “Pity the poor murderer!” defense is unethical, and should be banned. Melisa McNeill, the lawyer for Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter Nicholas Cruz, is making the standard defense argument for monsters who have no other plausible defenses. Cruz never had a chance, he has bad parents, he had various maladies, he couldn’t help himself. This is an appeal to emotion over law or reason, a direct offspring of Clarence Darrow’s position that it is cruel to punish any criminals because they had no free will. The obvious rebuttal to the disingenuous and desperate defense is that millions have grown to adulthood with as many disadvantages or more and not decided to massacre innocent children.

“Wounded and damaged people wound and damage other people because they’re in pain,”  McNeill told the jury in her  opening statement at the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale. “Nikolas was poisoned in the womb.”

Gee, there’s a “Make someone massacre high school students” poison? I did not know that!

This is no more nor less than prejudicing the jury. Once it is determined that a killer is legally sane, such defenses should be illegal.

2. I’m trying to think of the last time the District of Columbia didn’t have a ridiculous and incompetent mayor. It might be Marion Barry, who was sometimes ridiculous but never incompetent. Muriel Bowser might well be the most ridiculous and incompetent yet. Her requests for National Guard deployment to help the poor District, a “sanctuary city,” deal with the 7000 illegal immigrants Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) started busing the Capital in April show astounding hypocrisy, not to mention stupidity.  If the Pentagon granted her request, it could not avoid doing the same in the border states, which are often seeing more than 7000 illegals in a day. Continue reading →

Ethics Heroes: Uber Driver Fritz Sam And Passenger Jemimah Wei

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The vast majority of Ethics Alarms posts about bystanders are negative, so this tale from New York City—come to think of it, the vast majority of ethics posts about New York City are negative too—-is a welcome change.

Uber driver Fritz Sam, 54, was driving a passenger to LaGuardia airport when he saw flames coming from a Brooklyn brownstone. Sam stopped his car and dashed into the burning building. He beat the fire department by about five minutes, and had guided two residents into the street to safety by the time firefighters arrived.

Who is the other Ethics Hero, Jemimah Wei? She was his passenger. Sam was driving her to the airport to catch a plane, but when he turned to her and asked, “Can we stop and help?” Wei, 29, immediately replied, “Obviously!”

Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “Electric Cars And The Following The Science” Lie

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

Come to Ethics Alarms for the mile-wide and inch deep reflections of the ethicist, stay for the enhancement, perspective and enlightening analysis by the readers who know what they are writing about.

Sarah B.’s superb Comment of the Day needs no more introduction, and besides, don’t read me on this topic when you should be reading her.

Here is her COTD on the post,”Electric Cars And The “Following The Science” Lie.”

***

First, anyone who says “follow the science” has forgotten what science means. Science is a process that states a method for determining the most likely reason for something. Science requires us to observe a phenomenon, hypothesize about the phenomenon, posit a fair test of the hypothesis, complete the test several times with the same inputs, and compare the results of the tests with the observed phenomenon. The better correlated the test with reality, the better the hypothesis and the more likely it is to be true. Conversely, if you cannot replicate your test or your test or your test does not correlate well with reality, it is either time to scrap the test or the hypothesis.

Anthropogenic climate change is not science by the centuries old definition. The tests are mostly unable to be replicated, and the results have been proven false, time and again. To follow the science, it is time to scrap that hypothesis and move on.

Second, I was amazed to see such low requirements for electric cars to validate their “green” existence. Most studies I have read on this subject put the threshold far closer to 100,000 miles before even coming close. The best I have seen before this one puts us nearer to 75,000 miles than 25,000 miles.

Third, this study only deals with the formulation of the battery. If one considers where we are getting the energy, and as other commenters have noted, solar and wind are not nearly so clean as you would like to think. Heck, think of all the chemicals that need to go into making those panels, even though they cannot give us power 24/7/365 like burning fossil fuels. Life cycle analyses on electric cars, considering batteries, electricity, grid concerns, etc tend to push them to obscene mileage, well above expected battery life. In this instance, they are not unlike windmills, with an expected 30 year life and a 37-52 year payback period, sans government intervention.

Fourth, no one bothers, when discussing electric vehicle, to discuss the basic laws of thermodynamics. These laws are just like the laws of gravity, not caring whether or not you like them. They don’t care what is fair. They don’t care what is socially acceptable. They don’t care if they inconvenience some more than others, because if you are too stupid to get on the wrong side of these laws, you will pay the price. So, thermodynamics state that whenever one transforms matter to energy, or energy to another type of energy, or energy to matter, that there will be a loss in total energy. To take a simple example, we get most electricity by burning coal. The rock is in the ground. We have to spend energy to get it out of the ground and pulverized. Now we’ll start into some of the math. Coal is burned. The gas is used to make steam, the steam is used to turn a turbine that makes electricity. The gas is cleaned. This process has a maximum theoretical efficiency of around 45%. Most of the power plants run at about 33% because theoretical efficiency is not anywhere close to real world possiblity. So for every 100 units of energy the coal gives off, you get 33%.

Let’s now get some minor math happening for electric cars. I’m going to skip the big equations and use easily available numbers from reputable sites. For this exercise, we are going to assume that preparing coal for electric generation uses the same amount of energy as preparing gasoline for car consumption, as gasoline and coal are equivalent primary sources, but electricity is not a primary energy source unless you are hooking up your power lines to silk kites. Now, a car that gets gasoline loses 64-75% on inefficiencies and powering auxiliaries. So a car that was given 100 units of power from gasoline gets 25 units of power when all is said and done, with the WORST assumptions on gasoline cars. Continue reading →

Mask Madness Update!

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

[Any discussion of the sad and destructive mask mania inflicted on American society—and its children—by the dishonest and incompetent public health establishment and the fear-mongering media must be introduce by Major Clipton’s versatile coda to “Bridge on the River Kwai.”]

Masking has been madness from the very beginning, though it is particularly mad (and maddening) now. Yesterday I saw a couple escorting their tiny children—three-years-old at most— to a CVS. Their faces were tightly bound in cloth (as in useless) masks, like their parents. I so wanted to stop them and ask 1) “Why are you doing this?” and 2) “What, if any, in your political affiliation?” The odds of parents inflicting this on their children not being loyal, lifetime Democrats must be 1000 to one….which is nuts. How wearing a dubious piece of medical equipment (or costuming) became a partisan badge is great topic for sociological research—or a stage farce. I would not have believed, if you told me two years ago that we would have created a large group of virtue-signaling phobics who would still insist on masking even when the pandemic had been down-graded to the level of a seasonal flu, and the benefits of masks have been seriously challenged.

At this point, mask advocates are pushing this anti-social and destructive measure at least a much to create the habit of kow-towing to authority and living in perpetual anxiety and fear so that government incursions on liberty and the enjoyment of life seem benign. It is the embodiment of what Adam Ellwanger calls “Current Thingism:

Continue reading →

An Abject Grovel That Explains So Much

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Ethics Alarms has frequently discussed the ethical and professional deterioration of the historian profession, as it, like so many other professions and institutions, has given up integrity for ideology and political agendas. History itself is under attack as a result, with historical censorship and airbrushing increasingly being favored over objective and balanced examination that does not distort past figures and events by the viewing them through the lens of “presentism.”

In an essay on the website of the American Historical Association, the organization’s president, James Sweet, offered constructive criticism of the trend, writing in part,

Continue reading →

Weekend Ethics Loose Ends, 8/21-22/2022: Brian Stelter Does A Cheney

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Now THAT was an insurrection! On August 22 in 1831, Nat Turner, an educated slave, killed his owner and escaped withe seven followers, planning on recruiting a slave army and capturing Virginia’s Southampton county armory. His strategy was then to march 30 miles to Virginia’s Great Dismal Swamp, where his army could hide out and strike at will. Turner and his recruits attacked homes throughout Southampton County, killing about 60 white men, women and children. The Virginia state militia, with greatly larger numbers, ended the rebellion while killing many of those who had joined him. The episode resulted in vengeful lynching of many slaves, even those who were not involved in Turner’s revolt

Nat Turner eluded capture until the end of October. Unrepentant, he  was tried, convicted, sentenced to death, and hanged on November 11.

I noticed, in researching this story, that apparently the word “slave” is now taboo, and the politically correct term is “enslaved people.“

They were slaves. That is what I will continue to call them. Next we will be commanded to refer to them as “non-volunteer unpaid employees.” The only way to stop creeping Orwellian linguistics is to refuse to tolerate it.

1. Careful…whatever it is that Liz Cheney has might be contagious. Cheney’ s vainglorious self-celebration and presumption of martyrdom after being justly crunched by Republican primary voters in Wyoming was quickly followed by an even more outrageous display of imagined virtue by the ridiculous Brian Stelter, now looking for some other news organization to help pervert. Among a myriad of other flaws, Stelter’s fake journalism watchdog show, “Reliable Sources,” had finally tanked in the ratings (along with CNN in general), perhaps because it no longer even pretended to report informatively on how well (and ethically) the news media was doing its job, and was only repeating anti-Trump, anti-conservative talking points and attacking Fox News.

In his final show, instead of leaving in an ethical and dignified manner, Stelter decided to perform a Cheney on steroids. Among his gagworthy declarations was that “teachers use segments from this show all the time in classrooms, in lessons, guiding and teaching the next generation.”

Continue reading →

Electric Cars And The “Following The Science” Lie

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Policy-makers often use science, or perhaps more accurately “science” as dishonest justification for the policies they want to inflict for ideological motives. Climate change is perhaps the most glaring example, though the handling of the Wuhan virus runs a close second. Most government experts allow their political biases to slant their application of science in their advice and recommendations, and few elected officials comprehend science and relevant research sufficiently to make competent policy consistent with the nuances of the scientific matters involved.

Let’s look at electric vehicles, for example, which are currently being encouraged by tax credits.

Ashley Nunes, Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program fellow, has pointed out that a gas guzzler may, in some circumstance, actually be better for the environment than an electric vehicle. When did you hear anyone in the Biden administration admit that?

Nunes found that many owners of electric vehicles (EVs for short), usually wealthy Americans who take advantage of  federal tax credits to purchase one as a second car, are harming the environmental because they aren’t driving enough.

Manufacturers of electric cars need lithium, and finding and mining lithium  takes a lot of energy, with more still required to make a functional car battery out of it. Creating a clean-burning EV battery creates twice as much greenhouse gases as making an internal combustion engine.
Because, as Nunes explains, “an electric car is almost always cleaner to drive per mile compared to a gasoline-powered one, you can burn off the emissions associated with manufacturing the car.” Still, it takes 28,069 miles of driving, or about 2.73 years, for the EV to overcome its initial polluting disadvantage to gain a “green lead” on a gas-powered car with its low per-mile emissions. Paradoxically, you need to get people to drive more in order to get an emissions advantage…and all of the climate change propaganda is aimed at getting Americans to drive less. And since EV purchasers tend to be wealthier people who use them as a second cars, it takes about a decade for the electric cars to produce any emissions benefit. How many wealthy household hold on to a car of any kind for ten years?

Thus, Nunes has concluded, some people are “better off driving a gas-powered car if they care about the environment.” EV owners tend to sell the vehicle before it’s reached the green break-even point in miles. 

But wait—there’s more.  Nunes’  research indicates that people who own both gas  and electric-powered vehicles choose to drive the gas-powered one most of the time. It is the  people who buy EVs secondhand, the poorer households that drive them for many miles and years as their primary vehicle, who achieve  the emissions reductions that electric vehicles are supposed to provide. But government subsidies miss this group entirely! The federal government tax credit of up to $7,500 only accrues to those who purchase new electric vehicles. Even with some states like California offering additional rebates on top of that, new electric vehicles often cost more than the average American earns in a year.

“If you’re a poor American and all you can afford is a $10,000 car, this rebate isn’t going to matter to you,” Nunes concludes. “And by and large, we find that, guess what, the person buying a $120,000 [electric vehicle] would have still gone out and bought the car without a $7,500 subsidy.” 

Policymakers’ EV hype is self-defeating, and doesn’t “follow the science,” because the politicians have a shallow understanding, to the extent that they have any at all, of al the relevant factors. 

The policies are wasteful and ineffective, no matter how smug and certain the climate-change scolds are about them. The electrical car advocates are assuming expertise and scientific justifications they simply don’t have.

It’s incompetence seasoned with dishonesty, abusing science rather than using it properly.

Cognitive Dissonance Also Makes You Stupid: Now NeverTrump Conservatives Are Offended By “1776”

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Anti-Trump madness, aka. Trump Derangement, is causing some Republicans and conservatives to support Democrats, progressives and anti-American totalitarians on the rise in their gradual rejection of all traditional American institutions, heroes, symbols and images. On the Left, the reason for the push to kick them into the dustbin of history is a basic dislike of the nation and its values generally: it’s always been racist, sexist, and imperial, you see, essentially bad, so it needs to be torn down. Everything American became unbearable once slavery was strategically accorded a position so deep and low on the cognitive dissonance scale that the United States’ historical connection to it drags literally everything American below the center line.

Here’s Dr. Festinger’s essential scale again:

The idea is that what we associate with something or someone inevitably affects how we feel about them. If, for example, I am positively inclined toward a character on a TV show—let’s say that character has a plus 4 score on my scale—and that character states admiration for someone whom I detest, say Megan Rapinoe (at least a minus 20 in my estimation), that obnoxious opinion would pull the once-admired character well below zero, which indicates neutral regard. Dr. Festinger’s theories argue that Megan would also improve her ranking by being connected to that character. Continue reading →