Science & Technology

The Science Guy, Debating Faith, and the Ethical Duty Not To Engage

/ Jack Marshall / 64 Comments

creationism

Thanks for nothing, Science Guy.

You know, back when I was in college (stop me if I’ve told this story here before), a call-in show on one of the local TV talk shows (called “Cracker Barrel”)  staged a debate on the existence of God. On the “God exists” side was a religious fanatic named Mrs. Warren who had achieved Boston notoriety by picketing local banks for some reason; my father, in fact, had a confrontation with her in his capacity as a savings bank executive. On the atheist side was none other than Madeline Murray O’Hair, she of the Supreme Court case knocking down school prayer.

The “debate” was idiotic, unfair from the start since Mrs. Warren was a prattling dolt who also spoke in what sounded like a fake Italian accent, like Chico Marx, making it even harder to take her seriously. Mostly it was idiotic, though, because such debates can’t be anything but idiotic—the adversaries are not using the same assumptions, definitions, or modes of analysis. O’Hair would mention a scientific study, and Mrs. Warren would quote the Bible, which had to be true because God dictated it. As will always happen when one is debating a fool, O’Hair was dragged into the depths of stupid argument—and whatever she was, she was not stupid—by recounting that she realized that there was no God when her son was lost on a jungle expedition, and though she prayed for his return, he never came back. After being barely restrained by my roommates from calling into the show and shouting “MOM! I’m back! It’s a miracle!” (for some reason they thought it would be in bad taste), I got a toilet paper roll, put it up to the receiver and called into the show’s call-screener as “Jehovah,”from “Beyond.”

To my amazement, they put me through, and I heard the host cheerily utter the words, “Our next caller is Jehovah. Welcome to Cracker Barrel, Jehovah!” Echoing into my cardboard megaphone in my best Burning Bush voice, I told Madeline that I was the Lord God, and that I appreciated her testing the faith of the righteous with her blasphemy, and that despite the consensus among my archangel advisors in Heaven, I would not turn her into a pillar of salt.” Then the host said, “Thank you for your call, God!” and I was done. O’Hare was laughing.

The much-hyped debate over evolution between Bill Nye, a kids show performer with a legitimate science background, and Ken Ham, an extreme creationist whose views are ridiculous even by creationist standards, was just as foolish as the Cracker Barrel fiasco but far more harmful. Continue reading →

A Titanic Fraud Sinks At Last

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

loraine titanic

Frauds, fakes, hoaxers, swindlers, con artists and scamsters occupy a dark corner of humanity’s family tree. They steal from the innocent, undermine and discourage legitimate charity, make well-intentioned public policy suspect and inefficient, distort history and human knowledge, and cause the the public to be more callous and cynical. These venal liars not only are unethical, but they make ethics themselves appear naive and foolish. This week, a scam of long-standing that began with a mysterious woman who claimed to be a grown infant believed to have died on the Titanic was finally, through DNA evidence and the obsessive work of Titanic history buffs, proven to be what it was…a lie. Continue reading →

Ford’s Hypothetical Ethical Dilemma

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments
"Oh-oh...Lindsay's behind the wheel again..."

“Oh-oh…Lindsay’s behind the wheel again…”

Ford’s Global VP/Marketing and Sales, Jim Farley, was waxing on about data privacy as a participant in a panel discussion at an electronics trade show in Las Vegas. He was making a point regrading how much data Ford has on its customers, and its possible uses, and stunned audience members when he said, “We know everyone who breaks the law, we know when you’re doing it. We have GPS in your car, so we know what you’re doing. By the way, we don’t supply that data to anyone.” Ford knows when drivers of its automobiles break the law? That raises all kinds of concerns, and obviously Ford’s PR folks and lawyers didn’t care to deal with them. The next day, after a lot of publicity, Farley “clarified” his statements, saying, “I absolutely left the wrong impression about how Ford operates. We do not track our customers in their cars without their approval or their consent. The statement I made in my eyes was hypothetical and I want to clear this up.”

Well, you know how much I like hypotheticals. Besides, how will we be sure that Ford, if it can monitor our driving, won’t monitor our driving, or at least someone’s driving? Constitutional law specialist and blogger Eugene Volokh has an interesting post about the legal and liability implication’s of Ford’s peculiar spying ability. Introducing his analysis, he writes, Continue reading →

Now THIS Is Irresponsible Broadcast Journalism

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

"Rarrit!" [Translation: ]

“Rarrit!” [Translation: “Potentially, it’s connected to that-“ ]

This jaw-droppingly stupid conversation actually took place on CBS This Morning, as hosts Charlie Rose and Norah O’Donnell mused about the extreme cold hitting the U.S., and attempted to connect it to that shared mission of the media, environmentalists, and anti-capitalists, global warming, though when you are using epic cold as your proof, “climate change” sounds a lot less silly:

CHARLIE ROSE: Is it stronger/weaker this year than it has been in the past?

BRYAN WALSH, TIME SENIOR EDITOR: …There is – some theories, actually, that some of the warming, actually, you’re seeing up in the Arctic might be changing the atmospheric circulation in that part of the world – actually causing those winds to weaken, and maybe, makes these cold spells a little more likely than they otherwise be….We had a few strong snowstorms – this despite the fact that we’re still seeing warming happening in the winter and the rest of the year. So, there is some theory that, maybe, this is changing the atmosphere, making it more likely.

NORAH O’DONNELL: …I mean, this is the first time I’ve heard the phrase ‘polar vortex’, and I don’t feel I’m out of it. I mean, were you familiar with it?

WALSH: I was not that familiar with it – no – but now, of course, it’s one of those terms that’s –  that’s everywhere….

ROSE: Is it definitely connected to global warming?

WALSH: Potentially, it’s connected to that-

ROSE: Potentially-

WALSH: These, these – been happening already. What’s new, perhaps, is the fact that the winds may actually [be] weakening. That could be due to warming in the Arctic; changing the atmospheric circulation; therefore, making it more likely for that cold, dense air to escape the vortex – spill down to us.

Now who can argue with that? Continue reading →

College Admissions Diversity Deception, Student Ethics Corruption

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

shabazz_Wisconsin

See that young black man in the photo above, gracing the cover of the University of Wisconsin admissions brochure? The one apparently cheering for the Badgers at a Wisconsin football game? His name is Diallo Shabazz, and as a student at the school in 2000 had never been to a game in his life when someone photoshopped his head into a crowd shot to let potential applicants know how diverse the University of Wisconsin was. This infamous incident, which Jon Stewart had a ball with in the day (is the Daily Show really that old?), is apparently more the norm that we thought at the time.

Tim Pippert is a sociologist at Augsburg College in Minnesota. He and his researchers looked at more than 10,000 images from college brochures to compare the racial composition of students in the pictures to the colleges’ actual demographics. They discovered that diversity, as depicted in the brochures, was over-represented. “When we looked at African-Americans in those schools that were predominantly white, the actual percentage in those campuses was only about 5 percent of the student body,” Pippert told NPR. “They were photographed at 14.5 percent.” Continue reading →

The Republicans Devolve

/ Jack Marshall / 79 Comments

devolutionWhether your party is becoming more ignorant, or whether ignorant people are increasingly drawn to your party, the conclusions to be drawn when over 50% of those who identify as members also proudly admit that they have a 19th Century understanding of the universe cannot be called encouraging. Thus the Pew Research Center’s just released data showing that only 43% of Republicans understand and accept evolution is bad news for that party, and indeed for the nation as a whole.

Democrats have nothing to be proud of, as just two thirds (67%) of them told Pew that they believe in evolution, but at least the members of that party are getting smarter: the last poll, in 2009, showed 64% had absorbed the conclusions of Charles Darwin and Stephen Jay Gould. Republicans, in contrast, have gone backwards, dropping from 54% to the current, pathetic figure. For the American public as a whole, the takeaway is that a full 33% are incompetent at life, for that is what complete confusion about and misunderstanding of the world around us means in practical terms. Continue reading →

Worlds Are Colliding! A Conflicted Holiday Invitation For Ethics Alarms Readers, Their Friends And Families…

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

A-christmas-carol1

Now I know how George Costanza felt. This time it is the world of Ethics Jack and Theater Jack that are colliding….

The American Century Theater, the small, Arlington, Virginia-based non-profit professional theater company—you know, one of those “culture palaces” that rich people give to so they can “hobnob” with each other (our performing space is in a Middle School) according to Robert Reich—which I helped found and have served as Artistic Director for 18 years— is producing a unique—and free—dramatized version of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” that Ethics Alarms readers can actually “attend” and enjoy with the families, friends and ghosts.

Using a technique pioneered by Ethics Jack’s company ProEthics for Continuing Legal Education teleseminars under the auspices of Virginia Continuing Legal Education,  the production will recreate the sound and feel of old time radio drama using modern teleconferencing technology. All of the actors are snug in their own homes, using telephones as their microphones, as their vocal portrayals are mixed, live, with music and sound effects by sound designer Ed Moser, also The American Century Theater’s technical director. More than 20 current and former professional actors from  Maryland to Utah will be involved, creating an hour-long, live recreation of a script adapted from the Golden Age of radio drama, when Campbell’s Soup presented an annual live broadcast of “A Christmas Carol” starring Lionel Barrymore ( you know him best as “Mister Potter”) as Scrooge, to millions of families across the country every Christmas Eve.

Theater Jack is the director of the show, which you can listen to over your own phone, or better yet, through the speaker phone with your family taking in the sounds of the classic tale by your side.

How do you do this?

It’s as simple as licking a candy cane!

Anyone wishing to hear the broadcast will only have to call in a few minutes before 8 PM, E.S.T., on Sunday next, December 22. The  audience Dial-in number is 1-443-453-0034, followed by entering the Christmas Carol Conference Code: 758246. Then, upon entering the virtual theater, audience members must press *4 to mute their lines (if only theater audiences and their cell phones were so neatly muted!) and wait for the show to begin. There will be no charge to the listening audience for “A Christmas Carol,” except for regular long distance rates where they apply.

Feel free to let your friends, colleagues and neighbors know about the event, and consider this worlds collision-risking invitation my thanks to you for helping Ethics Alarms have a banner year of ethics debate and illumination.

Merry Christmas!

-A-Christmas-Carol

Ethics Quote Of The Week: Peggy Noonan

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

 “A fellow very friendly to the administration, a longtime supporter, cornered me at a holiday party recently to ask, with true perplexity: “How could any president put his entire reputation on the line with a program and not be on the phone every day pushing people and making sure it will work? Do you know of any president who wouldn’t do that?” I couldn’t think of one, and it’s the same question I’d been asking myself. The questioner had been the manager of a great institution, a high stakes 24/7 operation with a lot of moving parts. He knew Murphy’s law—if it can go wrong, it will. Managers—presidents—have to obsess, have to put the fear of God, as Mr. Obama says, into those below them in the line of authority. They don’t have to get down in the weeds every day but they have to know there are weeds, and that things get caught in them. It’s a leader’s job… to be skeptical that grand schemes will work as intended. You have to guide and goad and be careful. And this president wasn’t.”

—-Former Reagan muse and current pundit Peggy Noonan in a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “Low-Information Leadership.”

At least President Pierce had an excuse.

At least President Pierce had an excuse.

This is, of course, rank incompetence, but worse than that, it is arrogant, willful, shocking and frightening incompetence. It gives me no pleasure to say that I saw the signs of this years ago, for  years ago there was reason to be hopeful. Presidents learn, most of them, anyway. This one, without any experience to speak of in governing, management, leadership or even organizational process, not only hasn’t learned, but has never shown the slightest recognition that he has anything to learn. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Print the Legend Ethics: The War of the Worlds Panic”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

war_worlds

Bravo and thanks to penn for a thoughtful and thought-provoking personal reminiscence that supports my recent post about the claim that the famous panic over Orson Welles’ famous 1938 “War of the Worlds” radio drama never happened. Here is his fascinating Comment of the Day on Print the Legend Ethics: The “War of the Worlds” Panic:

This story came up every Hallowe’en in my family as I was growing up. We had family living in Toms River and in Lakewood, NJ (about 35 miles from Grover’s Mill) at the time Orson did his thing. The different reactions to the broadcast by the people living in the two places resulted in a minor family schism which continues to this day in the attitudes of their descendants.

It was a city mouse/country mouse situation. The Lakewood adults were elementary school teachers — the sophisticates. They listened to that program as a matter of course and as they later reported, they declared this one silly from the very beginning. But then, all science fiction was silly to them (really! space ships and aleeums? pshaw!) — my father (it was his side of the family) always contended they had no imagination. My mother recalled, however, many years later (and after taking several psychology courses at the New School), that commercials or not, she was convinced they had been very disturbed, if not downright scared. Scared enough to sit through the whole “silly” program in the first place, and for the rest of their lives to focus an uncharacteristic rage on the writers … for using the name of a real location in the program. [I think this naming of Grover’s Mill may account for some of the anxiety, if not the panic — people were sooo trusting of the media in those days .. . .] Continue reading →

Stop Lying To Us: Whatever It Is, A “Glitch” It’s Not

/ Jack Marshall / 141 Comments
Now that my head has explode, I need the website to work more than ever, because it's a pre-existing condition...

Now that my head has exploded, I need the website to work more than ever, because it’s a pre-existing condition! Oh, the irony!

The willingness of the media to embrace a carefully chosen cover-word favored by the Obama Administration to try to minimize the disgraceful failure of the Affordable Care Act website to function by deceiving the public regarding its seriousness and implications must be condemned, while not minimizing the blatant absence of respect and transparency President Obama is displaying by allowing such Orwellian tactics to take place with his approval.

Ah, that “transparent” administration! Where did it go? How despicable, and the sycophants, media hacks and Obama apologists are equally despicable for winking at such a cynical attempt at brain-washing by euphemism. The message: “Hey, no big deal! Nothing to see here! We’re doing fine! It’s minor!” It’s not minor. The episode, typical of the whole Obama experience, is reminiscent of one of my favorite exchanges in “Jurassic Park,” after the computer system has failed and prehistoric carnivores are running amuck:

 John Hammond: All major theme parks have delays. When they opened Disneyland in 1956, nothing worked!
Dr. Ian Malcolm: Yeah, but, John, if The Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don’t eat the tourists.

The catastrophic failure of  Healthcare.gov is no “glitch.” Look it up! A glitch is a minor flaw; every definition of it includes “minor.” Most include “self-correcting.” The horrible design of the website has stalled the effective launch of Obamacare, wasted hundreds of thousands of hours, foiled many millions of dollars worth of efforts to correct the problem, and remains unsolved after three weeks! That’s no “glitch.” That’s not minor. That’s not just an inevitable flaw that even the best systems have to adjust to when they get started. That’s a failure. The O-ring that blew up the Space Shuttle wasn’t a glitch, and nobody had the wretched bad taste and disrespect for the victims to spin it as such. Three Mile Island wasn’t a glitch; the Eastern Seaboard Blackout wasn’t a glitch; 9/11 wasn’t a glitch;  Benghazi wasn’t a glitch. Neither is this. Continue reading →