entrapment

The Philosophy Prof’s “Animal House” Ethics Quiz, Part I

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

I would have made this story an ethics quiz if I wasn’t so certain of the answer.

Garret Merriam, associate professor of philosophy at Sacramento State University, was curious about how many of his students would cheat on his Introduction to Ethics course take-home final exam. First he checked Google to see if some of the questions on his upcoming exam were already online, and found a copy of one of his previous final exams on the website Quizlet, which allows users to upload exam questions and answers to its site to help students cheat. (Mental note: Make Quizlet an Unethical Website Of the Month).

After emailing a request to Quizlet to take down his exam (they did), he had an inspiration. He created and uploaded to the sitet a copy of his planned final, consisting entirely of multiple choice questions, with not just wrong answers but obviously wrong answers. “My thinking was that anyone who gave a sufficient number of those same answers would be exposing themselves, not only as someone who cheated by looking up the final online, but who didn’t even pay enough attention in class to notice how wrong the answers were,” he wrote later.

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The Worst Sting Of All

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Not funny, not clever, not necessary. Just cruel.

Not funny, not clever, not necessary. Just cruel.

The combination of the 24-hour cable news glut and the internet causes some significant  distortions in public perception. The public periodically thinks that sharks are mounting an organized assault on humanity, for example, which is bad for sharks. The public believes that gun violence is suddenly worse than ever in the U.S., when it is in fact dropping dramatically, which is good for hysteria-based gun control efforts.  It believes that storms like the recent tornadoes are more frequent and more deadly than they have ever been, leading ignorant news reporters and Congressmen to link the deaths to global warming. This good for Al Gore. In my case, stories like this one, which I would have blissfully been unaware of earlier in my life, come across by computer screen every day, leading me to contemplate moving to Pago Pago, or Mars out of despair for the decline of fairness and intelligence in the human race. I will steady myself and presume that without more detailed evidence, it is foolish to conclude the police and the schools are not, in fact, in league with Satan.

Only some of them are.

In Temecula, California, an undercover cop masquerading as a student orchestrated a drug bust in a Temecula Valley Unified School District high school by befriending and manipulating an autistic boy into obtaining small amounts of marijuana. You can read the whole awful tale here (the boy’s family is suing). Continue reading →

The Unethical Indignation of Mandy Caruso, a.k.a. “Black Cat”

/ Jack Marshall / 103 Comments

Mandy, who is incensed that anyone would think that she wants them to think about her boobs.

Let me stipulate that nothing a woman may do, say or wear excuses rudeness, crudeness, disrespectful comments, sexual harassment, sexual assault or abuse, including, of course, rape. This is unequivocal.

Now let me say that the vociferous complaints by Mandy Caruso on her blog regarding the comments she received at Comic Con as a direct result of her dressing like the Marvel Comics super-heroine Black Cat smack of hypocrisy and a “gotcha!” mentality that is strikingly unfair.

Mandy costumed herself as Black Cat at the famous convention for comic book fans, gamers and fantasy buffs, and she has the physical assets to do it. As you can see in the illustration linked above, TBC is a spectacularly endowed, athletic woman who appears in a black mask and skin-tight, curve-hugging leather suit. She makes D.C.’s Catwoman look like a boy. Characters like Black Cat are drawn specifically to appeal to the sexual fantasies of comic book fans, who are overwhelmingly  teenage boys or single men with the sensibilities of teenage boys. The most extreme of these attend events like Comic Con. Continue reading →

Ethics Train Wreck On Facebook: Jessica Studebaker and the Sneaky Voelkerts

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The imaginary Jessica Studebaker

David and Angela Voelkert are so obviously perfect for each other. It’s just a tragedy that they can’t get along.

By the time the couple’s multiple deceptions were sorted out, Angela had been scared out of her wits, David had spent four days in jail, and federal prosecutors looked like they had never heard of Facebook. The perfect recipe for an ethics train wreck—lies, more lies, and incompetence—and that’s exactly what they got.

Last Friday, the FBI arrested David Voelkert, 38, a South Bend, Indiana man who had recently exchanged messages with a 17-year-old Facebook friend named Jessica Studebaker. As described in an FBI affidavit, Voelkert’s Facebook exchanges with Studebaker included telling her that he had placed a GPS device in his ex-wife’s car to surreptitiously monitor her movements, and that he was looking for “someone to take care of” Angela Voelkert, so the teen “ should find someone at your school…that would put a cap in her ass for $10,000.” Continue reading →