Daily Life

The Throw-Away Puppies

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

That was a Facebook post relayed for comment on Reddit. I read it with a large, happy rescue dog snoring on my lap; he had already been given up to shelters twice in his young life. I found myself wondering how many innocent, loving, trusting animals would be experiencing the same cruelty, not just after Christmas but after a pandemic in which shelters have been depleted by people seeking companionship while they are stuck at home.

I suppose it is a good thing the Facebook user who composed this had her name redacted: some crazed PETA members–or my wife—might have tracked her down with mayhem on their mind. I have known people like the writers—still do, in fact—and they all regard themselves as decent, ethical people whose values are in order. In truth, they have the same ethical vacuum as dog-fighting enthusiasts, just from a different socioeconomic perspective

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Integrity Test At Harris -Teeter’s

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I was doing a quick shopping run this afternoon at the local Harris Teeter’s, and ran into one of those little ethics challenges that eventually define us all.

As I was placing all my items on the conveyor belt, the nice old guy loading my cart—he’s helped me before—pulled the cart ahead so he could start putting in the bags. I had to catch up to to it to rescue the soft-drinks in the lower section of the cart. Eventually all was well and I was checked out— I saved 50 bucks!—and I rolled my bounty into the parking lot where I began loading it all into the trunk. Just as I thought I had finished, I noticed a large pack of paper towels (speaking of Bounty), maybe 15 dollars worth, sitting in the bottom of the cart in the front where I had originally put it. I got a horrible thought: had I left teh store without paying for it? I didn’t recall putting it on the belt. I decided that it must have escaped the old bagger’s attention when he pulled my mostly empty cart past the register.

So I was a paper towel thief. Now what? There was a huge line at all the registers. I could take the package to the customer service counter, but my receipt had the name of the cashier on it, and I worried that I would get her in trouble. I’ve been in these mess-ups before, and usually everyone would rather just avoid the hassle of getting it straight. I even considered driving back to the store tomorrow and just paying the money after explaining what happened. I checked the receipt, and didn’t see the item, but then I didn’t see several things I knew I had purchased. After avoiding several bouts of “Oh, hell, it just paper, why not go home and forget about it?,” I decided to be late coming home and to just get at the end of the line with the paper towels.

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Comments Of The Day, As “The Monday Friday Open Forum” Became The Ethics Alarms Mailbag

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Mail

For some reason, the most recent Ethics Alarms open forum attracted quite a few ethics quandaries for discussion. Here are two I thought were especially noteworthy…first, from The Shadow, which is ironic, since I thought The Shadow was supposed to know what evil lurked in the hearts of men…

This is something that happened in my neighborhood (that I’ve only lived in for 2 months, so I don’t know anyone involved) and I was just an interested observer.

A family had pickets knocked off their fence multiple times in the past few months, so they put up a security camera. The next time it happened, the camera caught teenagers ramming and kicking the fence, then running across the road into the back yard of a house. An older couple owns the house, but the have teenage grandchildren living with them. This family posted the video on the neighborhood Facebook group asking for advice; they didn’t want to go talk to the people across the street because “they didn’t want to start trouble”. Some suggested going across the street to talk to them anyway, some suggested calling the police. Another neighbor ended up talking to the grandparents and It turns out the culprits were friends of the teenagers living with them.

I don’t know the final outcome, but there are many good ethics angles here:

1) Should this family have posted the video to Facebook?
2) What should they have done with the information about the teenagers across the street?
3) Should the 3rd party have stepped in to talk to the people across the street (does “duty to confront” apply here)?
4) Once it was known the culprits were friends of teenagers living there, what should the grandparents have done?

Any other good ethics angles here?

I think this is a pure Golden Rule situation, which means not posting the video to Facebook, and not going to the police, at least initially. You have the courtesy of going to the elderly couple, and ask if they will take care of the issue by contacting their grandkids’ friends’ parents. If they won’t do anything, then the police are the next stop. One must do what is necessary to get compensated for the property damage, while doing as little damage to everyone else as possible.

Now here’s ethics puzzle #2, from Sarah B.:

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These Are The “Experts” Your Present And Future Masters Rely Upon

/ Jack Marshall / 51 Comments

monster-replica

If I weren’t so sick of this topic, it would deserve longer post…a rant even.

Reason reports that many epidemiologists believe we should all wear masks and socially distance forever:

“I expect that wearing a mask will become part of my daily life, moving forward, even after a vaccine is deployed,” Amy Hobbs, a research associate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health says.Marilyn Tseng, an assistant professor at California Polytechnic State University, said life would never revert to the way it was, though the preventative measures currently practiced—masks and social distancing—will feel “normal” in time. Similarly, Vasily Vlassov, a professor at HSE University in Moscow, said life was perfectly normal now because this is the new normal….”

Of course they say that. Are you surprised?

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“Duty To Confront” At The 7-11

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Well, your friendly neighborhood ethics scold, unlike Democratic mayors and governors, is dedicated to doing what he urges others to do. In tonight’s case, I was obliged to follow through on the duty to confront (or the duty of confrontation), which has been a frequent theme here. I think it all came into focus for me when two jackasses at a Washington Nationals game were taking up two parking spots in the lot so they could “tailgate.” When I pointed out that they had only paid for one spot and were blocking where I wanted to park, their answer was “What are you going to do about it?” They chose…poorly. But I digress.

Tonight I was running an emergency errand to the local 7-11, and for some reason—free beer?—the parking lot was packed. Cars were double-parked, and I witnessed two near-accidents; it’s always been a badly designed lot. I had to cicle the block twice before I saw a space. And in the middle of it all the whole time, as other vehicles also searched for places to park, was a car with its hazard lights flashing, squatting in a spot right outside the store’s door, as the woman at the wheel blithely played, texted or whatever on her cell phone.

I went into the 7-11 and pointed her out to the two employees there. “You know, she’s preventing your customers from parking,” I said. “Oh, she’ll leave in a minute,” I was assured by one of the clerks, who obviously wasn’t looking forward to a confrontation. Neither was I: I was late getting home, I was hungry, and it was raining. By now, there were some empty spaces, including the one on the driver’s side of her car.

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A Favorite Personal Ethics Story From The Past, Revived By “The Queen’s Gambit”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

the-queens-gambit-8b97b1d

The Netflix series “The Queen’s Gambit” isn’t exactly an ethics film. However, it did trigger a memory from high school of an episode in my life that I cherish, when a group of callow teenage chess-players, led by me, repeatedly made the admirable choice, and left the scene as heroes, even though we lost.

It was my junior year, and approximately the same period in which the heroine of “The Queen’s Gambit” finds herself discriminated against for being a rare young woman in the male-dominated world of competitive chess. Arlington High School had a chess club, and I was president of the club and captain of the team. We had a girl on the team: my sister Edith, who was a freshman that year. She was undefeated in our league in ten competitions with other schools, first because she was very good, if ruthless, second because everyone she played under-estimated her, and third because I “stacked” her in our ten board line-up. Edith always played 9th or 10th board, which means she was facing inferior players, giving the AHS team a guaranteed win every time.

That year we decided to enter the Metropolitan Boston High School Team Championship tournament, a five player-team affair routinely won by Sharon (Mass.)High School’s team. It featured the highest ranking junior player in the state, and the state Junior Champion, as well as a third player of similar caliber. I brought Edith as our fifth board, and sure enough, she was the only girl in the tournament. She also did very well, though she lost one game early on: the competition was much stronger than what she was used to.

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Comment Of The Day: “Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 10/30/2020: Zoomed Out”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Zoom

Once again I am horribly behind in posting deserving Comments of the Day, or even announcing them. I apologize for this; there are many reasons, but no excuses. This COTD , authored by Null Pointer, is three weeks old, and there are some unposted ones that are older still. Fortunately, the topic is ever-green, at least as long as Shut-Down Hell is upon us: the curse of Zoom.

Here is Null Pointer’s Comment Of The Day on the post, “Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 10/30/2020: Zoomed Out”

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Confession: I Wimped Out

/ Jack Marshall / 41 Comments

Our longest-lasting neighbors, now approaching their 80’s, are as nice a pair as I could imagine. When we moved into the cul de sac 40 years ago, we were the neighborhood’s young blood. Their two children were pre-teens; our son was 15 years from existing at all. Through the years, Red and Beth have helped us in every way imaginable. Red’s old pick-up truck hauled the set of my theater company’s first production. Beth has provided barbecued chicken, home harvested honey and pickles. We’ve dined together and partied in each others’ homes. Now their Husky-German Shepard mix ( a designer breed with the ridiculous name “Gerberian Shepsky”), Peaches, is Spuds’ best playmate.

I was sitting with Red in our neighbor’s back yard watching the two dogs run and frolic, when for no discernible reason, he launched into a diatribe about about his cousin’s wife. “She’s ‘an intelligent, educated woman with 6 grandkids, and yet she just thinks Donald Trump is wonderful. She actually voted for him! This is a woman, and she supports a man who has been charged with all these sexual assaults and even rape, and who cheated on all his wives and paid off mistresses and porn stars. Jack, I just can’t understand it.”

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Mid-Day Ethics Tidbits, 11/4/2020: Sort-Of Post-Election Edition, With Yummy NONE Election-Related Items!

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

1. Ay Caramba! Does anyone think that former Playboy model Eva Marie has a legitimate complaint because she was kicked off a Southwest flight along with her seven-year-old son for wearing this outfit on board?

Eva Marie

I don’t. She said she was “humiliated and embarrassed” when a Southwest Airlines flight attendant told her she couldn’t board looking like that. I don’t believe it for a second. She was seeking publicity. “When they threatened to remove me off the plane if I didn’t have a change of clothes, I felt completely humiliated, embarrassed and highly offended,” the Instagram influencer said of the incident. “I’m an A list member for SWA and have a credit card with the airline and I have perks that allow any person traveling with me to fly free because of my high status with the airline. So even as being a loyal customer with them, I felt like the other women on the plane were judging me based on my attire and they were saying my breasts are too large,” she added. “Well, that’s something I can’t help.”

No, you shameless jerk, they were judging you because you won’t observe even minimal social conventions, like not going out in public looking like a stripper mid-routine. If she is a “high status” member of the airline, then she is presumably aware that it has a dress code. It is overwhelmingly likely that she pulled this as a stunt to gain Instagram users  to “influence,” and exploited Southwest to do so.

The airline would be fair and reasonable to ban her from flying.

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Comment Of The Day: “WordPress Is Unethical, But It’s Not Just Them”

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

User unfriendly

I just had another run-in with WordPress over its “improved” system that makes me want to get hair plugs so I can tear my hair out, so this Comment of The Day by first time commenter Null Pointer is timely. This time, I was asking why I could no longer embed a CrowdSignal poll with a few clicks, and was forced to use the default WordPress poll feature which prevents a voter from checking the polling results without voting repeatedly. “Oh, it’s easy!” I was told by the cheery customer service agent. First, I have to register on the CrowdSignal site, and set up an account, and..and ..and…

I cut off the chat after writing that apparently WordPress doesn’t comprehend that my time is valuable, and that adding multiple steps, not to mention the need for constant assistance deciphering inadequate instructions and explanations, to accomplish what was once quick and straightforward is neither an improvement nor appreciated.

Usually first-time comments who score Comments of the Day are single issue participants, and are never heard from again. I hope Null Pointer is an exception.

Here is his or her Comment of the Day on the post, WordPress Is Unethical, But It’s Not Just Them:

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