Animals

“Oh, And We Have Deadly Snakes In Our Yard…”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The Ethicist (Kwame Appiah to his friends and NYU students) gets a lot of questions about a common dilemma: what kind of things does a selling homeowner have an ethical duty to inform a potential buyer about? My favorite version of this issue—because you know how I am—involves houses where horrible murders have taken place, or ones that are rumored to be haunted.

Most of these non-horror movie situations are solved by a strict adherence to the Golden Rule. Would you want to be told that a property has X? If so, tell the potential buyer. Yeah, being ethical may cost you some money, or even a sale. Nobody ever said being ethical was easy or always beneficial to the ethical actor.

Last week Kwame was asked by condo seller of she was bound to tell a potential buyer that the condo association uses “pesticides, herbicides and other chemical treatments” that environmentalists regard as harmful, even though they are legal. The seller has been part of a group trying to force the association to go “green” without success. The Ethicist’s answer was reasonable: if the condo association was obeying local laws and ordinances, the dispute was none of the purchaser’s business until after the property was transferred. “[W]hen it comes to selling your unit, your responsibility doesn’t extend to reshaping a buyer’s worldview,” he wrote. “Those who dissent should make their case for reform, but disclosure is usually reserved for departures from what is recognized and approved — from what a reasonable person would anticipate. You’re free to voice your concerns. You’re not required to.”

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Are Americans Too Trivial and Easily Distracted to Run a Competent Democracy? The 100 Men vs. a Gorilla Controversy…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

When I heard that social media was in lather over the idiotic question of whether a hundred men could defeat a single silverback gorilla in hand-to-hand combat, I immediately thought of the scene above from the film “Stand by Me.” But those characters in the movie (based on Stephen King’s novella “The Body” and directed by Rob Reiner before Trump-Derangement ate his brain) were twelve. There are so many fascinating and important questions that not only are fun to ponder but that also are beneficial for society to debate that the social phenomenon of millions being obsessed with an idiotic hypothetical of no value whatsoever threatens to plunge me into a pit of despond.

Why should I devote my time and energies to trying to inspire my fellow human beings to become more skilled at ethical reasoning when this crap is what more of them find stimulating? “Fiddling while Rome burns” is dumb; arguing about impossible hypotheticals as ridiculous as whether Superman could beat Mighty Mouse in a fight—which in my view is a better question to argue over than the gorilla vs. 100 men nonsense—makes fictional Emperor Nero seem positively enterprising.

Calling this a “thought-experiment” is insulting to thought experiments, but it apparently first was raised on TikTok several years ago. Never mind that gorillas are generally reticent and would never engage in such a match: a Twitter/X post on the topic a week ago re-ignited the debate. As you can see, the author is a moron; @DreamChasnMike wrote, “i think 100 niggas could beat 1 gorilla everybody just gotta be dedicated to the shit.” Call me an elitist if you must, but as a matter of principle I would avoid reflexively pondering anything deemed worthy of discussion by someone like Mike. The fact that so many otherwise rational people are rushing to do so now is worthy of analysis, however.

Is it because so many, like me, have decided that the Trump-Deranged are officially mentally ill, and can only be engaged in infantile discussions? Is it because, as I have speculated here before more than once, the efforts of our rotten, political indoctrinating education system and our dishonest, biased, incompetent journalism have combined to lower the media IQ in the U.S. to around 83?

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Some Funny Things Happened on the Way to the Ethics Alarms Friday Forum…

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Last week’s open forum was wild, man, and I hope today’s can be as lively.

Based on the early returns, there’s a lot to bloviate about in the ethics world. The amateur golf champ playing in the Masters was caught pissing into a creek on n the 13th hole at Augusta National golf course. Pennsylvania judge Sonya McKnight was just convicted of shooting her sleeping boyfriend in the head. (Seems awfully judgmental…). Almost all Democrats in the House voted against the bill requiring voter ID in Federal elections. Yes, their determination to prove the cognitive dissonance scale wrong continues apace! A black Congressman tried to discuss issues with a Trump-Deranged white female and was called a “race traitor”…

…and we learned that after VP JD Vance’s March visit to Pituffik Space Base in Greenland, the Col. Susan Meyers, the commander of the 821st Space Base Group who also oversees the Pentagon’s northernmost military base, issued a gratuitous email to the base’s personnel stating that he did not speak for her of the base. What an idiot. (She was fired.) Finally, we have this stupid incident, in which Frontier Airlines let a woman fly to Puerto Rico with her “emotional support parrot” but wouldn’t let the bird on the return flight. (Gift link.)

Be careful. It’s stupid out there…

Psst! Sam Jones! The Idea of Being an “Influencer” Is Not To Influence Stupid People To Be Even More Stupid!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I can already tell: this is going to be a Great Stupid day.

And what better way to start it off than to visit the idiot above,Samantha Jones, also known as @samstrays on Instagram? For some ridiculous reason, the American has over 92,000 followers on social media platforms, where she purports to be a wildlife and hunting enthusiast. Below Sam is shown in an earlier incident, molesting what looks like a giant echidna, though maybe Sam is only two feet tall.

Her current infamy, however, has resulted from the incident shown in the photo under the headline, when she recently, while visiting Australia, snatched a baby wombat from the side of a road and ran to her car with the creature’s furious mother in desperate pursuit. After the “influencer” posted the sequence, it sparked an international incident.

“I caught a baby wombat!” Jones says to the camera. “OK, momma’s right there and she is pissed,” Jones adds, as the animal’s mother runs towards her. Jones then put the wombat down and drove away. The footage, which she shared on Instagram, sparked immediate fury in Australia.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong called out the ‘ugly American,’ saying, “It looked pretty dreadful, didn’t it…I think everyone who would have seen that would have thought, ‘leave the baby wombat alone. Leave it with its mum.’” An online petition calling for her deportation from Australia started amassing signatures, as home affairs minister Tony Burke announced that the conditions of Jones’ visa were being reviewed. Reportedly, Jones has left the country before she could be kicked out, deleting the offending video in the process. The Australian Wildlife Rescue Agency WIRES has weighed in to state that separating a baby wombat from its mother is a crime.

The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, even got involved. “Maybe she might try some other Australian animals,” he said at a press conference, when asked about the incident. “Take a baby crocodile from its mother and see how you go there. Take another animal that can actually fight back rather than stealing a baby wombat from its mother. See how you go there.”

Please, God, don’t let President Trump get involved in this and start a wildlife harassment war. Just have a bunch of birds shower this idiot with droppings, like that scene in “High Anxiety,” or something. Maybe have her social media followers bombarded as well.

Goodbye, Elphie, and Thanks

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

My sister had to have her beloved Havanese Elphie (short for Elphaba, the character in “Wicked”) euthanized early this morning just after midnight. That’s not Elphie above, but it’s close: I don’t have a picture of her.

I’ve dreaded this day for my little sister almost from the moment she brought Elphie home as a puppy 16 years ago. My sister not only had never owned (or lived with) a dog before; she had been phobic about dogs her entire life, an unfortunate mindset she inherited from my mother. But true to her defiant, determined character, once my sister, divorced after a miserable marriage, knew that both of her children would be moving far away from the D.C. area, she set out to become a dog owner. “I’m not going to come home to an empty house every day,” she told me, “and for once, I want to have someone close who is always happy to see me.”

She researched dogs for a full year (“Dogs 101” on the Animal Planet channel was a crucial resource), ultimately deciding on the Havanese, the Cuban bichon, as the ideal “starter dog.” It was a wise choice, as the breed is small, friendly, devoted to its owner and innately adorable. I was amazed how quickly the little dog made a positive difference in my sister’s life and whole outlook on life. Always insecure and prone to depression, she seemed happy literally for the first time since childhood. Within months my sister went from being a dog owner to a dog nut, learning all the breeds, bonding with the last two dogs Grace and I owned (sweet Rugby and then Spuds), and vastly enlarging her circle of friends by meeting the other dog owners in her neighborhood, and my sister had never had a large number of friends before, and often none at all.

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Sometimes, Though Rarely, Two Wrongs DO Make a Right…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Marco Evaristti’s “art” titled “And Now You Care?” at an art exhibition in Copenhagen consisted of three live piglets confined by two shopping carts on a pile of straw. The artist announced that the animals would be given water but no food until they died. Allowing the piglets to starve to death while on public exhibition was, you see, a powerful commentary on animal cruelty in Denmark, one of the world’s largest pork exporters. Evaristti explained yesterday that he aimed to “wake up the Danish society,” which is insufficiently concerned that tens of thousands of pigs die each day in Denmark because of poor conditions.

Oh, good plan.

Now do child neglect.

The exhibition was set inside a former butcher’s warehouse in the Meatpacking District of Copenhagen. Large paintings of the Danish flag and slaughtered pigs hung on the walls around the doomed little pigs. “Mona Lisa” this wasn’t.

The pigs were expected to live up to five days, but Evaristti said he also would not eat or drink along with them. That makes starving the helpless animals better, apparently. But as the exhibition space was being cleaned—it looked like a pig sty!— over the weekend, members of a Danish animal rights organization stole the piglets. Evaristti, says he does not expect his art to be returned.

Good.

But Why Did They Have To Kill the Dog? [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

[Skip to the end for more details released after the post first went up.]

I woke up this morning to the disheartening news that one of my all-time favorite screen actors, Gene Hackman, had died. He was 95 and had been retired for twenty years, so the news was not exactly shocking. However, the details of what police found in Hackman’s Santa Fe, N.M., home indicate a larger tragedy: along with the actor, police found he wife, Betsy Arakawa and a German Shepherd.

Since the police have stated that there were no signs of “foul play,” meaning that the group did not appear to have been murdered, and that there was no immediate evidence of a murder-suicide scenario, as when actor Gig Young was found dead after murdering his young wife, the scene still strongly hints of a suicide pact. Elderly couples do this here and there; some even think that it is romantic. (James Stewart’s last movie, made-for-TV, was co-starring with Bette Davis as an elderly couple who decide to kill themselves in the interests of avoiding pain, misery and expense.) Mrs. Hackman, Betsy Arakawa, was only 64, but who knows? Maybe she had just been diagnosed with dementia or some other dread disease. Maybe the duel suicides were her idea.

But why kill the dog?

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Ethics Quiz: Mouse in the House

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

I have caught over 40 mice over the past three years in the humane mouse trap my late wife insisted upon. We used to carry them over to the woods near our home in the trap, and release them as I sang “Born Free.”

But today, for the first time, I woke up to find a terrified baby mouse in the trap on a day when it is freezing (and snowing) outside. I do not want to care for a pet mouse; I have enough to worry about already. I do not want to put the little thing in a position where it is doomed to freeze—the spirit of my wife will start haunting me. I do not want to let it free into the house. It won’t warm up for at least a few more days. Now what?

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Is there any practical and ethical solution to this dilemma?

Talking Dog Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

I must confess that one reason for this post is to entice one of Ethics Alarms’ stars, the perceptive and sharp metaphorical-penned Mrs. Q, into commenting, since she is our resident canine authority (among other things).

The New York Times recently published a feature [Gift link!]about a new fad among dog-owners: multi-colored buttons one can lay out on one’s floor. The buttons can be set to emit the dog-owner’s voice saying a single word like OUTSIDE, WATER, PLAY, FRIEND, AFRAID, WALK, BALL and so on. Dogs learn to step on the buttons to emit the desired word…

Voilà! Talking dogs.

Well, maybe. Researchers disagree whether the dogs are really using the buttons to communicate or just giving a Skinnerian response when they figure out that, for example, pressing a particular button will result in a treat. Dogs using the buttons are all over YouTube and other platforms on the web: that’s Bunny the Sheepadoodle above, who supposedly makes complex remarks and even existential ones, like “DOG WHY?”

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No Wonder Today’s Great Britain Is Choking With Woke Insanity, Censorship and Weeny-ism…

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The Hollywood version of the Broadway cult musical “Wicked” appears to be a holiday box office smash. I suppose I’m going to have to see it, though “Wizard of Oz” worship alienated me long ago and how they can justify making a two hour, 45 minute film of just Act I of a three hour musical mystifies me. However, there is something to be learned from the nanny state’s British Board of Film Classifications (BBFC) felt that it had to put out these ridiculous trigger warnings for what is essentially a family movie:

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