We Now Know Scientific Pronouncements Are Frequently Garbage, So We Also Should Know “The ’60s Parenting Practices We Now Know Were Terrible For Kids’ Brains” Is Mostly Crap…

Being raised in the Sixties, I was naturally curious about the article in Media Feed titled “The ’60s parenting practices we now know were terrible for kids’ brains.” What I discovered, as one usually will with social science essays with an agenda, is carefully cherry-picked research being used to support an author’s already pre-determined position. You know, “Science!”

“Science” has been so thoroughly polluted by the political left to justify its objectives and claim absolute authority for propositions that are far from determined (or determinable) that the public should be conditioned to doubt any claim that begins, as this one does, “This article explores a dozen once-standard practices and uses modern research to explain why they were tough on a child’s developing brain, emotional health, and long-term well-being.” Here is what modern research as revealed in recent years: it can’t be trusted. It can’t be trusted because researchers and scientists can’t be trusted, and interlocutors like Kaitlyn Farley, the gullible (or dishonest) author, don’t know enough about science to interpret studies with appropriate skepticism. (I just checked: Kaitlyn claims to be, among other things, an AI trainer who specializes in “content creation.” That explains a lot about the article.)

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Announcement: “Fuck” Has Been Officially Upgraded From Taboo Obscenity to Mainstream Colloquialism

This battle was lost long ago.

“Wheel of Fortune” has launched a new “What the Fun?” category because it implies “fuck.” The One Million Moms group is disgusted and outraged. “The once family-friendly ‘Wheel of Fortune’ game show is no more,” its site declared on October 30. “Unfortunately, the recently added puzzle category ‘What the Fun’ aims at a mature, modern audience with insinuated profanity making it no longer suitable for family viewing.”

“It is not the show it was with this implication of the f-word,” it continued. “Parents will have to explain to their children that the primetime program they were once allowed to watch is no longer a clean show.” The page included a link for a petition on which to pledge never to watch the show again unless the category is eliminated. More than 12,500 have signed.

Imagine a life so devoid of meaning and so full of discretionary time that one can organize a campaign to change a “Wheel of Fortune” category.

I have news for the conservative group, and by now it is old news. “Fuck” is now just acceptable naughtiness, and not the taboo obscenity it once was. Ditto “shit.” There are lots of reason why this has happened, and things like “What the Fun” are a big one.

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Ethics Quiz: My Father’s Dream Prank

My father, Jack A. Marshall Sr. was always remarkably fatalistic about death, much to the chagrin of my mother. She was never amused when he repeated his supposed desire to be displayed sitting in a chair, eyes open, at his wake with a metal plate in the floor in front of his casket that would trigger a recording when mourners stepped on it. Then a recording would boom out in his voice saying, “Hello! I’m so glad that you came!”

Dad was half-kidding, but only half. My father hated the solemnity of funerals and found open casket wakes barbaric. Yet I have to believe he would have been secretly honored by the send-off the military gave him when he was buried at Arlington, with the horse-drawn caisson, the riderless steed and the 21-gun salute.

Today I learned that someone actually carried out my father’s threatened posthumous prank, but even in worst taste than what he proposed. The Wills, Trusts, & Estates Prof Blog reveals that Irish grandpa Shay Bradley, a Dublin native, arranged that after his death in 2019 a recording of his voice would be played at his funeral from inside his grave. Mourners heard repeated banging noises that sounded like they were coming from the interior of the coffin. “Hello? It is dark in here! Let me out! I can hear you! Is that the priest I can hear? I am in the box, can you hear that?” his voice could be heard shouting, in apparent panic.

Hilarity ensued.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Is executing such a prank at a funeral ethical?

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Ethical Motive, Stupid Idea: The 6 pound Smart Phone

There are quite a few posts on Ethics Alarms about the scourge of smart phones: mothers’ eyes glued to the screen when they should be watching the kids; dog-owners ignoring their canine companions on walks, teens interacting with the web while ignoring the world around them; narcissism-feeding selfies; intrusive assholes looking for social media fame while destroying any semblance of privacy by taking photos and videos of everyone and everything, and more.

But start-up company Matter Neuroscience has a solution! Their masterstroke is to create the most inconvenient smartphone case imaginable to make using one’s phone tiring and uncomfortable. It’s stainless steel phone case weighs 6 pounds, mote than a 16-inch MacBook Pro laptop and light dumb-bell. Two separate pieces that screw together around the phone ensure that you can’t wait to put the damn thing away unless you’re a pro arm-wrestling champ in training.

The stainless steel smartphone case won’t fit in your pocket and becomes more annoying the more you check your phone. The 6-pound smartphone case is currently in the crowdfunding stage on Kickstarter, but you can pre-order one for $210, or opt for the brass version, which is heavier and costs a $500.

I cannot imagine any adult, even one acknowledging that he or she is addicted to cell phones, buying one that is inherently inconvenient to use. Maybe, maybe, giving unwieldy phones to one’s kids will have some appeal, using the “Look, it’s this, two vans with a string, or nothing” ultimatum.

I doubt it, however. The too-heavy phone gets ethics points for good intentions, but loses them and more for incompetence.

Matter Neuroscience has a $75,000 crowdfunding goal, but has raised just $17,000.

Sic Transit Gloria: Lindsay Lohan’s Record For “Worst Excuse Ever” Drops to Third Place

Back in 2007, when Lindsay was young, hot and seemingly had a long career of Hollywood stardom stretching out before her, I awarded the actress the championship for most brazen and manifestly ridiculous excuse ever. She had just been arrested for driving intoxicated and possession of cocaine, which had been found in the pocket of her jeans. Lindsay’s professions of innocence were that 1) she wasn’t driving her own car and 2) “These aren’t my pants!”

But like so many records, this one was short-lived. In 2012, The Smoking Gun reported that in Wisconsin police responded to a domestic abuse call to find Mrs. Michael West [Note: NOT the spouse of the Ethics Alarms commenter] bleeding from her face and saying that her husband Michael beat and tried to strangle her. Confronted by the officers, Mr. West (above, next to Lindsay) explained that he was innocent. A ghost did it.

That pushed Lindsay to second place, and those standings held for another 13 years…until this month. Brian and Sara Wilks [above] of Houston, Texas were at Miramar Beach with their four children on October 11when they left their baby alone under a tent for about an hour as they walked up the beach with their more mobile offspring. Officers responded to reports of an unattended infant on the beach, and witnesses told police that the baby had been left alone while the family wandered off. When Brian, 40, and Sara, 37, returned to the scene they found police waiting as some charitable bystanders took care of the infant. Mom and Dad admitted to placing the child under the tent for a nap before leaving with their other children.

Their explanation of how an infant ended up alone on a public beach for more than an hour?

They “lost track of time.”

You know: it can happen to anyone! And up go the Wilkses to the top of the “Worst Excuse Ever” rankings. Sorry Lindsay.

The Villain In The Phillies-Marlins Ball Heist Was NOT the Obnoxious Phillies Fan…

No, indeed.

The incident that has “gone viral” from the stands at a Phillies-Marlins game in Miami is covered in the videos above. Phillies outfielder Harrison Bader hit a home run into the left field seats. The ball hit the bleachers and rolled around as four fans tried to nab the souvenir. A man appeared to win the battle, returned to his seat and gave the ball to his young his son, who rewarded him with a hug.

Enter Cruella DeVille. A woman who had been scrambling for the ball, wearing Phillies gear, confronted the man and demanded the ball, claiming she had a hold of it before he got it. The father complied, taking the ball out of his son’s glove and handing it to the woman. Of course the incident was filmed and posted on social media, with the unidentified woman being quickly dubbed “Phillies Karen.”

Sensing a public relations opportunity, the staff at the Marlins’ LoanDepot Park (another horribly named baseball park: money isn’t everything, guys!) wanted to make things right, so they sent a stadium employee to give the son and his sister a goody bag full of baseball stuff.

Awwwww…

The villain in this incident was not the horrible woman. (She doesn’t know her baseball ball-chasing rules, incidentally. In those scrambles for bouncing balls, whoever gets a firm grip on the ball first wins fair and square. I have been in many of these tussles, one of which featured a little old lady snatching the ball from me —a Mickey Mantle foul!—just as I thought I had it in my grasp….) No, the villain was the weenie father.

What a disgrace. This guy gave up in the face of an unjust and unreasonable confrontation because he didn’t have the guts to tell the woman to buzz off, de-gifting his son of a prize—it was his birthday!—in the process. In that moment, he taught to boy many things, none of them good. Don’t fight for what’s yours. Let bullies win. Avoid unpleasant confrontations at all costs, even when it means letting unethical tactics prevail.

He also taught his son that his father is a weenie. Good to know, I guess.

The Organization That Will Help You Kill Yourself for $20,000…What a Deal! [Corrected]

“People” magazine is carrying the depressing story of Maureen Slough, (above), an Irish woman, 58, who told her family she was going on vacation to Lithuania with a friend. However, she confided to two friends that she would really be traveling alone to Switzerland, where a non-profit there would help her to kill herself.

And that’s what she did, after paying the organization, Pegasos, in Liestal, Switzerland, £15,000 (a bit more than 20,000 U.S. dollars) for the assistance.

A brief digression: Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland and had been since 1942. It isn’t euthanasia which is illegal but often isn’t punished here in the U.S. and elsewhere: the patients kill themselves with prescribed drugs, and doctors aren’t involved beyond writing a legal prescription. (Writing a prescription for a drug that the doctor knows the patient will use to commit suicide is, in my view, a violation of medical ethics.)

Maureen’s adult daughter received a text message on WhatsApp from Pegasos informing her that her mother had died. That was nice of them. “What was worse was not only did I get the text on WhatsApp, they had advised me that her ashes would be posted to me in 6-8 weeks,” she said. “In that very moment, because I was alone, I just sat there with the baby and cried… I just felt like my world ended.”

Later, Slough’s ashes arrived.

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The Ethicist Rejects Unconditional Love

I don’t.

“My Brother’s an Unpleasant Drunk. Can I Cut Him Off?” the headline to The New York Time’s weekly ethics advice column reads. Well, obviously you can cit him off, but this is ethics: should you cut him off? I must confess, I developed a healthy dislike of the inquirer, who may not be a drunk but is also unpleasant. He writes in part…

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Melania and Vanity Fair

One of the nauseating Axis catch-phrases is that Trump’s is not a “normal” Presidency. That is true, but it is the people saying that who have made it so. A particularly petty example, which I rank near the organized effort to stop Trump in his first term from participating in the Kennedy Center Honors program (that worked out well!) is the catty, mean girls decision to keep Melania Trump, obviously one of the most attractive and glamorous of all First Ladies (she makes Jackie Kennedy look like a Muppet) of all the women’s magazines, when covers featuring the First Lady had previously been routine. Puppet President enabler Jill Biden was judges worthy of several covers, but not Melania Trump. Nah, there’s no ladies magazine media bias!

The snotty boycott reached its apotheosis earlier this month, when sources reported that staffers at Conde Nast’s “Vanity Fair” threatened a walk-out over the possibility of a Melania Trump cover. A “mid-level editor” supposedly said that she’d “walk out the motherfucking door, and half my staff will follow me” if the magazine tried to “normalize this despot and his wife.” “Normalize.” “Despot.”

Nice. How fair and rational. Also reportedly, Melania told the magazine to get lost when it proposed a cover after snubbing her (because her husband is eeeevil) all this time. Good.

Just because the Trump-Haters have been trying to tear the nation apart doesn’t obligate the victims of their vendetta to prostate themselves to make peace.

Another Bonkers Question To “Social Q’s”

Who are these people?

A mere summary won’t do the full craziness of this question to the NYT’s manners advice column full justice, so here’s the whole, ugly thing:

My husband’s brother, mid-60s, has always been single. Before his parents died, he lived with them. While attending a violent political rally that my husband and I opposed early in the pandemic, he contracted Covid, then infected his mother and behaved irresponsibly in managing her care. She died soon after. We have had no real relationship with him in years. Still, he emails suggestions of gifts he would like for birthdays and Christmas. We send them, and he responds with thank-you notes. When he asks what we would like, we respond that we don’t want any gifts. He sends them anyway, and we donate them to charity. We do not acknowledge them, which we normally would do. Recently, he expressed a desire for acknowledgment of his gifts. How should we handle this?

I’m not going to read columnist Phillip Galanes’s answer to this one because I declared him an irredeemable woke bigot quite a while ago. I’m insulted that he thinks any reader worthy of human association would be interested in such a family’s pathology. Shunning a family member is an extreme move that had better be justifiable; shunning him without letting him know he’s being shunned is not just cruel, it’s weird.

Considerations:

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