The NFL Has Allegedly Safer Helmets. Hmmmmm….

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I wouldn’t trust the NFL as far as I could throw a football, so excuse my cynicism.

The most unethical sports league on the planet announced that its players will be able to choose between 12 new helmets next season. Five of the new helmets, we are told by the league and the NFL Players Association, “performed better in laboratory tests” than any helmet that has ever been worn in the NFL. Quarterbacks will be able to choose choice a helmet made by Vicis and another one made by Riddell designed specifically to reduce a quarterback’s head trauma from hitting the ground, the cause of most quarterback concussions. Other positions have their own specially-designed helmets to choose from.

The NFL first introduced position-specific helmets in 2022 for linemen. So far all of the new “safer” helmets are voluntary (except in practice games) and players have not been enthusiastic. The NFL also provides optional “guardian caps,” soft shell covers on top of helmets that provide extra cushioning and enhanced safety for head-to-head contact. These have no been popular with players, perhaps because they look like that thing above.

The NFL and the NFLPA now distribute a poster illustrating how helmets rank based on their performance in lab tests. This season there will be three individual posters , one for offensive linemen, defensive linemen and quarterbacks, supposedly to educate players about their helmet choices.

Now comes the cynicism: why is this so complicated? Why is the choice of helmets left to the players? Why aren’t the safest helmets mandatory during the season? Imagine a seat belt law that gave motorists a choice of a dozen different seat belts, with the option to choose none at all also being in the mix.

It looks to me like a lawyer-devised strategy to reduce the league’s liability for CTE cases. If a player sticks with the old-fashioned helmet and ends up with IQ of a summer sausage in his fifties, the NFL can claims that it was assumption of the risk.

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Sources: NFL, NBC

Regarding Those “Shocking” Poll Numbers…

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

OK, this should really be the lead graphic…

but Claude Rains is always welcome here because he makes me laugh, and boy do I need one today.

Over the weekend the Axis needed one, because its members were freaking out over polls by organizations that in the past (like 2020), reliably employed their unethical bias to inflate pro-Democrat Presidential race poll numbers, now showing Joe Biden substantially trailing Donald Trump. Here’s another one:

James Carville is a good stand-in for the whole amusing spectacle…

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Hamas-Israel War Ethics Train Wreck Update: A Case Study in How a News Aggregator Forfeits Trust

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

The escalation overnight in the anti-Israel, pro-Jew-killing demonstrations at Columbia University, temporarily at the top of the campus progressives-showing-their-true-stripes and “Oops, I guess we indoctrinated these gullible kids a little too much!” hit parades, was the breaking news I woke up to at 5 am when Spuds asked to go out. I have some ethics observations about this whole disturbing development (the Gaza support on campuses, not Spuds’ bathroom habits), which the Biden administration deserves to have hung around its neck like a stinking dead albatross for signaling that the U.S. sympathizes with terrorists just so it might pick up some Muslim votes in Michigan. In the process of researching that post, I encountered the reason for this one.

Deciding that the immediacy of the 1968 flashbacks justified bumping another post that I have almost completed, I checked the usually reliable news aggregating site Memeorandum (Ann Althouse’s favorite!) to find some early reports and commentary on the student terrorism fans at Columbia taking over Hamilton Hall. And I found…nothing. The top stories as of this moment [remember, by the time you read this, the list may have changed]:

#1: The Kristi Noem dog story! You see, that’s a top story because it reflects poorly on Republicans.

#2 according to the site is an FBI report that crime in the U.S. is really decreasing under Biden—as if there is any reason to trust the FBI any more, and as everyone I know in Northern Virginia is terrified to go into D.C. This is second on the list because it is going to take a huge “It isn’t what it is” push to convince voters that all of those chains moving out of inner cities because of runaway shoplifting are really doing it because they are racist.

#3? Another hit on a Republican, this time from that paragon of objectivity, Rolling Stone.

Coming in at #4…well, I don’t have to belabor the point. There are seventeen more “top stories,” including one about India operating a spy ring in Australia, and the drama at Columbia isn’t anywhere to be found.

Eureka! Now I know that whoever is running this news aggregator site is manipulating the news and trying to mislead the public in support of Joe Biden and the Democrats. Similarly, we have learned that the eruption of anti-Israel, anti-Semitic passion across the nation is just one more example of what a terrible, weak, foolish POTUS Joe Biden is, and how ethically corrupt his party and its supporters have become.

Here’s a third: journalism in this culture is untrustworthy and a metaphorical dagger in the back of democracy….but we knew that.

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Did You Know Donald Trump Will Violate the Constitution? You Know, Like Biden’s Department of Agriculture…But That’s GOOD Discrimination, See…

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The Biden Administration’s Department of Agriculture (USDA) is distributing disaster and pandemic relief funds to farmers based on their race and gender, in direct defiance of the equal protection provisions in the U.S. Constitution and U.S. law. The USDA openly prioritizes relief money to “socially disadvantaged” farmers: women, American Indians or Alaskan Natives, Asians or Asian-Americans, blacks or African-Americans, Hispanics or Hispanic-Americans, and Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders. White men, not so much. Farmers who fail to meet the “socially disadvantaged” criteria have received far less assistance for their losses than if they were of a different race or sex. Can’t do that—but the racists, bigots and woke in Joe’s USDA do it anyway. USDA has a smoking gun form, CCC-860, Socially Disadvantaged, Limited Resource, Beginning and Veteran Farmer or Rancher Certification, hopeful recipients of government aid must file to swear that they are not evil, undeserving, patriarchal and racist white males:

“I certify that I am a member of a group listed below, whose members have been subject to racial, ethnic, or gender prejudice because of their identity as members of a group without regard to their individual qualities. (Check all that apply but note that if only “women” is checked without selecting the other category, the selection does not make the applicant socially disadvantaged for conservation programs).”

  • Women.
  • American Indians or Alaskan Natives, Asians or Asian Americans, Black or African Americans, Native Hawaiians or other Pacific Islanders, Hispanics.

That’s pretty clear, no? And yet, in a masterpiece of “It isn’t what it is” rhetorical dishonesty, the form then says,

“In accordance with Federal civil rights law and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) civil rights regulations and policies, the USDA, its Agencies, offices, and employees, and institutions participating in or administering USDA programs are prohibited from discriminating based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity (including gender expression), sexual orientation, disability, age, marital status, family/parental status, income derived from a public assistance program, political beliefs, or reprisal or retaliation for prior civil rights activity, in any program or activity conducted or funded by USDA.”

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This Is How My Late Wife Grace Handled the Euthanizing of a Dog…

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Some of the comments on this post compel me to cross-post the following story from Facebook, as I continue to try to deal with the sudden loss of my wife on Leap Year. The contrast with Kristi Noem’s cruel and impulsive shooting of a young dog that displeased her didn’t occur to me for some reason until I read the recent posts of readers here.

Today I was driving home from the vet’s with Spuds and his newly drained ear, and “I Will,” Paul’s sweet little song from the White Album came on the radio. (“Who knows how long I’ve loved you…”)

Grace envied singers and always wanted to sing herself, but was convinced that she couldn’t…I tried to tell her that she didn’t have a bad voice and should take some coaching, but she wouldn’t do it. When she wanted to sing, only with me, she deliberately used a fake voice, either a high falsetto or sometimes a weird guttural voice that sounded eerily like Pazuzu in “The Exorcist.”

Grace shared her mother’s and oldest sister Edie’s deep connection to animals: all three loved them so much the animals could sense it. If one of our dogs or Kibber the cat had some wound or problem to be tended to, they would only let Grace do it: it was almost mystical.

When our beloved 160 lb. English Mastiff, Patience, had her cancer return in her seventh year (Grace paid $12,000 for her treatment when the cancer first appeared and didn’t tell me for years…I didn’t mind: Patience was worth it, and it bought her another year), the sweet, sensitive dog was so brave…she had no appetite and was fading away, but she always wagged her huge tail when Grace came near. One day, as we knew Patience was running out of time, I returned from an errand to find Grace lying on the floor with her head at Patience’s ear. She was singing softly in her real voice, “I Will” to Patience as the dog slowly wagged her tail. Grace had tears pouring down her face, and pretty soon, so did I.

Over the next few days, Grace sang that song to Patience every time she seemed uncomfortable or agitated, usually beginning with, “Don’t be afraid!” and then, softly, “Who knows how long I’ve loves you…” And Patience would look into her eyes, and wag.

Three days later, we called a vet who made house visits to come and end our dog’s suffering. We probably waited too long. Patience had to tell us it was time by wandering out of our back yard down the hill into the bamboo; I had to persuade her to come back. She had gone off to die. As the vet fed the fatal drug into the vein in Patience’s leg, Grace was lying right by Patience’s side with her arm around her. She sang “Who knows how long I’ve loved you” until that big tail stopped, and Patience was gone.

I’m so glad that Grace never heard the Kristi Noem story.

“Bias Makes Harvard Incredibly Stupid,” the Series! Today’s Episode: “The Law of Holes”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

One of the downsides of denouncing my alma mater is that I only hear about its latest unethical conduct when the story imposes itself on my consciousness or when the alumni magazine arrives, usually containing news that it a month old or more. I was going to write about the last two, post-Claudine Gay presidency issues, which were fascinating as exercises in denial, spin, and self-delusion: the framing of Harvard’s most recent debacle was essentially that “something happened” to Old Ivy, you know, like an earthquake or a plague of frogs. These are supposed to be smart people. Instead, America is auditing a Harvard course on just how stupid bias can make us. Well, that’s a lot more useful than a lot of Harvard courses now.

But even I didn’t see this coming: I didn’t think Harvard could be this stupid. I really didn’t; when I saw this headline in the Washington Free Beacon, my first thought was that I had hit the Babylon Bee on an unfunny day. No, not only was it true, the story was two weeks old.

As the Harvard Crimson had announced on April 16, Vivian Hunt (seen here in a student production of “The Handmaiden’s Tale” or something—I don’t know what the hell she’s wearing or why, but it’s weird)…

… is the newly appointed head of the Harvard Board of Overseers. Hunt is a Harvard College alum, female, black, a likely affirmative action success, and a vocal DEI activist, even more of one, arguably, than disgraced ex-prez Claudine Gay.

Hunt is nearly “patient zero” for the DEI plague. In 2015 she co-authored the McKinsey consulting firm’s influential and dishonest paper, “Why diversity matters,”based on data that has recently been shown to be junk as many (like me) long suspected. She has vigorously argued that meritocracy “isn’t good enough” and urged the private sector to hire based on color and gender rather than that old-fashioned, busted, racist, “talent, ability, and demonstrated success” formula.

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Time for Some Ethical Clarity Regarding the Hamas-Israel War…

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

1. Advocating for Gaza or Gazans is advocating for Palestinians and Hamas.

2. Advocating for Palestinians and Hamas is advocating anti-Semitism and genocide—of Jews.

3. Advocating for Palestinians and Hamas is also advocating for, rationalizing , enabling and encouraging terrorism.

4. Any public statements from President Biden or his administration critical of Israel’s handling of the war helps achieve Hamas’s objectives. Helping to achieve Hamas’s objectives as a consequence of its terrorist attack validates the use of terrorism as a means of achieving Palestinian ends.

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Ethics Quote of the Week: David Marcus

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Marcus is an American entrepreneur. His depressing but revealing (though hardly surprising quote is in this tweet, which also relates nicely to the previous post:

Hey Douthat! How About Coming Right Out and Stating That U.S. College Students Are Indoctrinated into Radical, Progressive, Marxist Ideology?

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Talk about burying the lede.

Sort-of conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat issued what might have been a useful column, What Students Read Before They Protest, about the reasons why students at Columbia and other “elite” educational institutions are demonstrating in favor of Hamas, terrorism, anti-Semitism, and wiping Israel off the face of the earth. But Douthat, who can write clearly and forcefully when he wants to (or, I suppose, when his woke and biased editors let him) instead buries his own objective in foggy rhetoric, Authentic Frontier Gibberish and equivocation to such an extent that 1) few will have the patience to read it and 2) the importance of his point is diluted and lost.

This is how Jonathan Turley used to write until he was red-pilled.

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“Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” For Some Strange Reason, Sayeth the NYT, Trump Doesn’t Trust Our Intelligence Agencies…

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Wow, what could possibly account for that? The man is paranoid!

I missed “Campaign Puts Trump and the Spy Agencies on a Collision Course” in the Times two weeks ago. Fortunately a non-Ethics Alarms-reading friend sent me this column by the usually astute and trustworthy Holman Jenkins at the Wall Street Journal. (Aside: I continue to wonder why so few of my friends and long-time associates read this blog, and none of my family members. It must be me, or as one friend who does read Ethics Alarms once said in a moment of self-doubt, “All my best friends hate me.”) His assessment of the significance of the piece tracks exactly with mine, and he seems to be coming from a similar point of view: he doesn’t have any illusions about Donald Trump, but he still finds the Times’ dishonest and biased coverage of him since Trump’s election despicable. Except this one initial arch comment—Gee, imagine not trusting intelligence agencies!—I’ll leave the commentary to Jenkins with a few footnotes from me:

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