Animals

Bear to the Rescue!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

No, I don't think "Jurassic Park's" T-Rex felt sorry for Sam Neill...

Robert Biggs is a naturalist who often hikes in California’s Bean Soup Flat area.  He was hiking recently there when he came across a mother bear, a yearling and a newborn. Biggs had  seen the same bear and its older cub last spring and fall, and said that they developed something of a trusting relationship. “The cub stood up on its hind legs and put its paws up and I got to play patty-cake with it,” he said.  He said the mother bear watched the two play and her only reaction was to call the cub back.

Yes, Biggs is apparently insane. But never mind.

After watching his patty-caking bear family, Biggs continued on his hike up the trail. As he turned to go, a mountain lion lept on his back, knocking him to the ground.  “They usually grab hold of your head with all four paws, but my backpack was up above my head and the lion  grabbed it instead,” Biggs said. “It must have been stalking the little bear, but it was on me in seconds.”

He tried to fight off the predator, but it didn’t let go. Suddenly, Biggs’ pal the mother bear came from behind and attacked the lion, tearing its grip from the backpack. They fought as Biggs sought safety; the big cat finally retreated.  Biggs had bite marks, scratches and bruises to his arm, but was otherwise uninjured. Continue reading →

“Luck,” Causation, and the Complex Computation of Mixed Motivations

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Was it good luck, or bad luck?

HBO has announced that it is cancelling “Luck,” its well-reviewed series about corruption in the sport of professional horse-racing. Why? Well, that’s an interesting question.

The immediate impetus for the decision was the death of a one of the horses used in the series. It was the third horse to die, so the announcement took the form of a sensitive and humane decision based on concerns for the animals. “While we maintained the highest safety standards possible, accidents unfortunately happen and it is impossible to guarantee they won’t in the future,” HBO’s statement said. “Accordingly, we have reached this difficult decision.”

I was initially impressed, but a couple of things about the move, which seemed uncharacteristically ethical by show business standards, bothered me. “Luck” was much-praised but low-rated, despite a cast headed by Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte and a production team headed by respected film director Michael Mann. Though it had been renewed for a second season, some felt that the renewal was dictated by a corporate decision not to embarrass its Hollywood royalty. Continue reading →

Is Cosmetic Surgery For Dogs Eth…Oh, For Heaven’s Sake! I Can’t Believe I Have To Ask!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

NPR’s gag current events quiz show “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!” got gasps from its panelists, its audience and me this week when it discussed the supposedly growing trend of “canine plastic surgery”, including “face lifts for dogs.” WWDTM was, as is often the case, being a bit misleading in the interests of time and humor: the case that prompted the discussion was the story of a British couple who had spent thousands of dollars on wrinkle-reduction for their bloodhound, but it was not, as she show led us to believe, an effort to create a canine Joan Rivers. The dog had a rare medical condition in which it developed excessive skin folds that covered its eyes. Truth may be stranger than fiction, but sometimes it’s not as funny.

While researching the bloodhound story, however, I learned about “Neuticles”—

—fake testicles implanted in neutered dogs in order to…well, what, really? Continue reading →

Weekend Ethics Catch-Up

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

If you took an ethics break this last weekend of February, here’s your Ethics Alarms make-up assignment:

 

Matrix Chicken Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Yum-yum!

Architecture Student and artist André Ford has sparked an ethics debate after proposing that chickens be raised for meat in vertical racks after  their frontal cortexes have been severed, rendering them brain-dead and essentially growing meat. The question is, would this practice be more ethical than current factory farming, less ethical, or does it make no difference?

Ford’s system would have the chickens suspended and immobile, with their feet removed. Tubes would supply water and nutrients directly into them while other tubes would carry away their waste. The chickens, of course, wouldn’t feel a thing, which one could argue is a superior state to the well-documented stress and misery they would experience in traditional chicken farms. Meanwhile, the costs of raising chickens would be (theoretically) reduced, in part because far less space would be required, and the process would also be cleaner—again, theoretically. Continue reading →

Ethics Alarms Recap: A Long Weekend of Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

If the long Presidents Day weekend took you hither and yon and away from ethical dilemmas and controversies, welcome back! Here is what went on here in a lively three days:

Tales of Moral Luck: The Snake, the Testicle and the Lousy Friend

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

"Heck, sure, pal, I'll suck the venom out of your face--what's that? You were bitten WHERE????"

Irish tourist Jackson Scott was engaged in a necessary bodily function while vacationing in the Australian outback, when he was bitten—on the testicle.  The biter was a tiger snake, and its venom can be fatal.

Panicked, Scott begged his camping companion, Roddy Andrews to suck the venom out. Roddy, however, said, “Ewwwww!”

Also, “No.”

But he drove Scott in a race against time to the nearest hospital, where doctors administered an antidote in time, barely, to save Scott’s life. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce and All-Time Most Unethical Group With “Ethics” In Its Name: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

I'm SO glad my boyfriend joined PETA!

The People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals seems to be unable to grasp the simple concept that if you show yourself to be completely insensitive to matters of right and wrong involving human beings, nobody in their right mind is going care what you think constitutes the ethical treatment of animals. The latest in a long trail of proof: before the disturbing controversy over the pro-Chris Brown tweets had cooled and in the wake of the death Whitney Houston, a former of domestic abuse victim. PETA thought it was the perfect time to release a new ad celebrating the desirability of being able to harm women in the bedroom.

The 30 second spot shows a young woman without pants and wearing a neck brace as she painfully walks to her apartment. “This is Jessica,” narrator says. “She suffers from ‘BWVAKTBOOM,’ ‘Boyfriend Went Vegan and Knocked the Bottom Out of Me,’ a painful condition that occurs when boyfriends go vegan and can suddenly bring it like a tantric porn star.” Jessica reaches the apartment and smilingly get ready for another round of presumably rough sex.

There are many terms that accurately describe men who are so uninterested in the women they have intimate relations with that they cause them pain and take pride in it. Rapists. Abusers. Max Cady. Sadists. Misogynists. Ass-holes.

“Vegans” is not one of them.

“PETA members,” perhaps.

 

BREAKING NEWS: Whales Aren’t Slaves! PETA Shocked!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

"Thank you! And for my next number, 'Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen!'"

PETA’s cretinous and offensive lawsuit equating Sea World’s whales with enslaved human beings—just the latest in the organization’s irresponsible “look at us!” tactics—was laughed out of court, as everybody but a breathless NPR interviewer knew it would be. This was yet another example of a lawsuit that any common sense-imbued layman would accurately call frivolous, but a bar association discipline committee would not. A lawyer can ethically take on a lawsuit he or she knows is stupid, foolish, silly, or a “hail Mary” shot, as long as there is a good faith belief that it might/could possibly/ gee, with a little luck and they don’t think about it too carefully prevail. And looking at some of the rulings that come down from various benches and verdicts that creep out of some jury boxes, that means almost no case is unethically frivolous in a legal sense. That doesn’t mean that it is responsible and right for lawyers to help plaintiffs like PETA bring such wasteful lawsuits, just that it isn’t a breach of professional ethics to do so. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Case of the Human Cat

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

This is not only an ugly story, but also one that many people are incapable of analyzing dispassionately, or even rationally. I’m going to try.

Michael Puerling is a landlord…some would call him a slum lord…in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin.  A tenant in the upper unit of his property had adopted a black and brown stray cat, which she named Sage. Puerling told the woman she couldn’t keep a cat, so she evicted the feline, which eventually took up residence in the vacant lower unit. Puerling discovered the cat had after it had been making itself at home for months, tearing up furniture and generally making the apartment a giant litter box. According to the landlord, he opened the doors and windows and tried to get Sage to leave, but the cat hid under the kitchen sink. Then Puerling tried to remove the cat by hand…not a good idea, as any cat owner could have told him. When he couldn’t grab the scruff of Sage’s neck, he yanked the cat out by his tail, with the predictable result–the cat went crazy, and attacked him.

So Puerling bashed the Sage’s head in by swinging him by his tail against a slab of concrete outside. Continue reading →