Quizzes

Ethics Quiz: Sydney’s Expressive Yearbook Photo

/ Jack Marshall / 88 Comments

My high school was never like this.

The photo above, believe it or not, was submitted to the Durango (Colorado) High School Yearbook as the senior photo of one Sydney Spies. The yearbook staff rejected it as inappropriate, and young Sydney is crying foul, saying that her First Amendment rights have been violated. Opinions differ on what message her photo was intended to convey. Suffice it to say that “Well, it’s late! I think I’ll go finish my algebra homework, read the Wall Street Journal and turn in!” is not one of the popular options.

Your Question in this week’s Ethics Quiz: Which party is in the wrong here? Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Case of the Fake But Accurate Social Security Card

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

A conundrum I have been asked to solve:

A mother is working to get her foreign adopted child a new copy of his Social Security card, which was lost. The child is a citizen since infancy, and a SS number has been assigned to him, but the process for a naturalized alien to get another is long and fraught with red tape, delays and frustration. So far, replacing the card has taken ten months, though it was supposed to take three. Now the son is waiting for the card to be issued. Social Security says it is waiting for final approval from Immigration, and Immigration says that there is a bottle neck, but not to worry.

Meanwhile, the boy has a standing job offer for a job that he is excited about and that would help family finances considerably. He cannot be processed without a Social Security card, however. And the job will not be held open forever.

For $250, a friend of the mother’s can get a counterfeit Social Security card with the son’s real number on it. He can have it in a week,

Your Question, in the last Ethics Quiz of 2011:

Granted that getting such a fake card is illegal, is it unethical?

None of the agencies involved dispute his citizenship, that he is enrolled in Social Security or that his number is valid. He has a document from Social Security that lists his number. The fake card would not assert anything that wasn’t true, except that he actually had the official card. He would be offering fake proof, but fake proof of something that is undisputed and true.

Is this one of the rare cases when conduct would be both illegal and ethical?

I’ll take your responses and update this with commentary later.

Ethics Quiz, Killer Pizza Edition: Can School “No-Tolerance” Be Dumber Than THIS?

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I grant you: THIS is a scary pizza. What Nick Taylor had, however, was not.

Nicholas Taylor is 10-years-old and attends David Youree Elementary School in Smyrna, Tenn., 30 miles southeast of Nashville. He is currently serving a week-long sentence at “the quiet table” during lunch time and has had to endure gun safety lectures. What was his terrible offense?

He “threatened” other students at his lunch table with a piece of pizza that was shaped vaguely like a gun because of the bites that had been taken out of it. Yes, some pathetic, parent and culture-warped weenie of a fellow student complained to a teacher that Nick was making “threatening gestures” with his partially-eaten pizza-gun.  Taylor denied it. That meant he was lying. More punishment.

Your Ethics Quiz Question—and you better not get this one wrong!—is : Can political correctness “no-tolerance” idiocy in the schools get any worse than punishing a child for the shape of his pizza slice? Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: “Ethics Dunce: An Unknown Diner”…. Just Desserts?

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

What would Jesus do if he got a crappy card like this instead of a fair tip?

The tale of the diner who left a pre-printed proselytizing card, disguised to look like a $10 bill, in lieu of a tip has attracted a surprising amount of interest on other sites. (The card began, “Some things are better than money…like your eternal salvation,” and went on to extol the benefits of religion.) Some of the comments raise ethical issues of their own. On Reddit, this interesting exchange occurred:

First Commenter: “I had a table of four leave me one of these and sixteen cents on their $40+ bill. The next time that they came in, which was the next Sunday after their church service they were completely ignored by all staff including managers. Forty minutes for their drinks, an hour and a half for their food, and a swift walk-by to throw the bill on their table was their service from then on.”

Second Commenter: What you SHOULD have done is this: Made their order, brought it to them, then, just as they were about to start eating, you should’ve taken the food away and replaced it with a piece of paper that said SOME THINGS ARE BETTER THAN FOOD…

Third Commenter: And did that make you feel good? Why not just refuse them service?

 First Commenter: Couldn’t actually refuse service for corporate bullshit reasons. This was a chain restaurant. Trust me we all wanted to tell them to GTFO and take their proselytizing bullshit with them. And yes it made every employee feel good to treat them like shit. Servers work for less than half of minimum wage, and a religious pamphlet does not help pay the bills.

Your Ethics Quiz to begin Thanksgiving week is a multiple choice: Which of the responses to the card is the ethical one?

Possible Answers:

1. Giving the group lousy and rude service.

2. Leaving the ironic message after taking awy their food.

3. Refusing them service.

4. None of them. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Apologies For A Sandusky Joke?

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

My uneasy relationship with the TSA continues.

Yes, I've sunk so low that I actually seek this out...

Today I was returning home from Atlanta, and its monster of an airport has one the cattle pen systems for going through security–a long, ling, line to all gates that keeps dividing and dividing, ultimately sending you down one of about 20 chutes to be scanned, stripped and yelled at. It is difficult to pick your chute, but in my case, it is crucial: Atlanta doesn’t have the full-body scanning devices in every line, and without it, I get gated, beeped, and sexually molested, thanks to my artificial hip.

It took ducking under a couple of barriers, but I finally got to an x-ray conveyor belt near a scanner, and had removed my laptop (separate bin) belt, jacket and shoes (not allowed in a bin in some cities, allowed in others) and lined them all up with my bag and brief case when an agent (none too politely) told me that they were closing that line, and directed me to another one, two lanes over. I lugged the three bins, bag and brief case over to that line, only to discover that it didn’t have a scanner.

That did it. I erupted at one of the agents, telling her that I did not care to be felt up at 8 in the morning, thanks, and had made a good faith effort to direct myself to a scanner, being foiled by the agent and by the fact that there are no signs warning people like me where a testicle massage is the only option.

“Why aren’t there signs?” I asked.

“I don’t know. There should be,” she said, as she helped me move my stuff to a scanner accessible line. “You should write the TSA and the airport.”

I laughed bitterly. “I’m sure that will do a lot of good. Do you all jsut like feeling up passengers? Is that the reason?”

A woman behind me laughed and said, “It sure seems like it!”

“Well, you know,” I said to her, “I hear Jerry Sandusky is trying to get a job as a screener!”

Her guffaw was interrupted by 7’8″ TSA agent, who said, loudly, “No he’s not, and I’m offended by that statement.”

My response, after a second’s consideration, was this: “I’m sorry I offended you. But I’m not apologizing.”

Your ethics quiz of the day: Should I have apologized? Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Is It Fair To Take A Criminal Defendant’s Constitutional Right Away If He Keeps Abusing It?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

"Watch the pencil! WATCH THE PENCIL!!!"

Joshua Monson, standing trial in Washington State for drug charges and multiple criminal assaults, keeps stabbing his lawyers with pens and pencils  mid-trial. He just stabbed his third—the others withdrew because of the conflict of interest created when you are afraid that your client wants to kill you—so the judge ruled that Monson had forfeited his right to counsel under the 6th Amendment in the Bill of Rights. Judge David Kurtz said Monson will have to defend himself without the assistance of counsel and will be strapped to a special chair for the rest of the trial. Kurtz advised jurors to ignore the incident, the restraints and the absence of a lawyer.  Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Is Harold Camping Too Deluded and Untrustworthy To Be Irresponsible?

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

If he tells you to jump out the window and you do it, are you responsible, or is he?

Harold Camping, who earlier this year had thousands of people convinced that the world would end on May 21 (it didn’t, in case you haven’t been reading the papers), is now really, really, really sure he has the right date, and is sending this message to the faithful:

“Thus we can be sure that the whole world, with the exception of those who are presently saved (the elect), are under the judgment of God, and will be annihilated together with the whole physical world on October 21, 2011, on the last day of the present five months period. On that day the true believers (the elect) will be raptured. We must remember that only God knows who His elect are that He saved prior to May 21…I do believe that we’re getting very near the very end…. If [God] had not kept us from knowing everything that we didn’t know, we would not have been able to be used of Him to bring about the tremendous event that occurred on May 21 of this year, and which probably will be finished out on October 21, that’s coming very shortly. That looks like it will be at this point, it looks like it will be the final end of everything.” Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Does This Show That The Media Is Getting Better, or Worse?

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Soon, the press may just make up ALL its stories (From Bad Reporting Comics)

Here’s a real head-scratcher. On September 9, the Associated Press ran this story, critical of Gov. Rick Perry:

Texas wildfire victims wondering where Perry is

BASTROP, Texas (AP) — Residents affected by a devastating Central Texas wildfire are growing impatient with state officials and questioning why Gov. Rick Perry hasn’t spent more time there.

 Some residents yelled at Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst when he visited the command center in Bastrop County Friday, asking where Perry is and why they haven’t had any housing help. Wildfires have destroyed nearly 1,400 homes about 25 miles from Austin.  Perry, running for the Republican nomination for president, interrupted his campaign and returned to Texas for two days before heading to California for a debate Wednesday. He is now fundraising in California.

Perry’s office said “everything that needs to be done to respond to these fires is being done.” Dewhurst said the White House hasn’t yet replied to a request for federal aid.

Then, Saturday morning, this appeared where the story had been: Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Truck Nutz vs. Schweddy Balls

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Remember Truck Nutz? That may the name of Ben and Jerry's next flavor, if Schweddy Balls catches on...

I’ve been driving or lecturing all day and may be a little punchy.  Yet having last posted on Ethics Alarms about Ben and Jerry’s crude homage to Alec Baldwin (FULL DISCLOSURE: I would be likely to find any homage to Alec Baldwin offensive, since I find Alec Baldwin offensive) and juvenile word-play, I found myself wondering: which is more uncivil and disrespectful, Ben and Jerry’s new Schweddy Balls ice cream, or the large, red, swinging plastic scrotum decorations that some truckers hand at the tail end of their rigs, Truck Nutz?

So that’s your Ethics Quiz, dear readers, as we head into the weekend: Which is more arrogantly disdainful of public decorum, decency, and respect for one’s fellow community members? Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: If This Is Wrong, Why Does It Make Us Cheer?

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Robert Harding, post Holly. The Duke would have been proud of her. Should we be?

In Des Moines, a man who told police later that he “likes young girls” tried to lure one into his clutches, and ended up with a black eye and a several bruises. Robert C. Harding attempted to coax Holly Pullen’s 13-year-old daughter into an alley outside the Pullen home.The teen got her mother to go into the alley instead, and when Holly Pullen asked what he wanted, Harding said he wanted to marry and have sex with her daughter. Then he offered to buy her. Holly promptly beat the the snot out of him. (Harding was later tracked down by Pullen’s husband and others, and turned in to the police.)

This was violent, vigilante justice. It was also technically assault and battery. Your Ethics Quiz question is this:

Given all of these reasons why Holly’s conduct was unethical, why do we viscerally approve of it? Continue reading →