games

The Ethics Scrooge On The Starbucks Pay-It-Forward Ponzi Scheme

/ Jack Marshall / 86 Comments

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

The Ethics Scrooge here.

If you think I’m going to get all misty eyed about the “random acts of kindness” fun and games Florida Starbucks customers have been amusing themselves with lately,  you are sadly mistaken.

The happy-talk story of the week—and I admit, the nation needed one—concerned a St. Petersburg, Florida Starbucks where an early morning customer at the drive-through window decided to “pay it forward” and buy coffee for the next person in line.That customer emulated the spirit of the Kevin Spacey weepie,  and bought a drink for the next person in line at the drive-through, and so it continued throughout the day, with 378 customers purchasing drinks for the strangers in line behind them, a so-called altruism chain that lasted 11 hours.

Awww. Continue reading →

Further Thoughts On “The Vampire Candidate”

/ Jack Marshall / 90 Comments

dracula for congress

I don’t want to make this Vampire Day, but after reading the comments so far on today’s Ethics Quiz involving Florida Congressional candidate/ fantasy vampire role-play enthusiast Jake Rush, I realize that the original post omitted some important points and queries. Here, in no particular order, are my further thoughts:

  • The Ick Factor? Both conservative and liberal commentators are ridiculing Rush, essentially concluding that his hobby disqualifies him as a serious candidate. The most quoted source referred to the images embraced by Rush’s role-playing group as “disturbing,” “bizarre,” and “unsettling.” Do these reactions signal a rejection of Rush’s values, or is this a clear-cut example of the “Ick Factor,” which is often mistaken for unethical conduct? Strange does not mean wrong or unethical.
  • Trust. When we elect leaders, we must trust them. “Strange” by definition suggests unpredictability; if we don’t understand why people do what they do, it is hard for us to know how they will behave, and if we don’t know how they will behave, we can’t rationally trust them.
  • Integrity. I should have raised the issue of integrity, for it is critical to the problem. Integrity is essential to trust, and a candidate like Rush raises the question: “Who, or what, is this guy?” Is he a “straight-shooting” conservative who likes to play vampire in his spare time, just like some politicians like to play poker or watch synchronized swimming (now that’s what I call weird), or is he a wannabe creature of the night who is just playing a conservative Republican in the daytime to conform to the expectations of conventional society? If there is doubt about that, then his integrity is in question.

Continue reading →

Public School Ethics: The Assassin Game

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments
"All right, class, Answer this: in the term 'assassin game.' which word describes the actual nature of what is being described? No seriously, help me here, because I can't figure it out..."

“All right, class, Answer this: in the term ‘assassin game.’ which word describes the actual nature of what is being described? No seriously, help me here, because I can’t figure it out…”

Montgomery  County Maryland’s Blair High School is embroiled in a controversy over the popularity of a student game known as “Assassin,” a role playing elimination game where players “kill” competitors using fake weapons, or, as in the Blair version of the game, their fingers. The game in various forms—it is also known as Gotcha, KAOS (Killing as organized sport), Juggernaut, Battle Royal, Paranoia, Killer, Elimination, or Circle of Death—has been around for decades. Proof: I played it in college, and had a blast. If you like that sort of thing, the game is fun, and whether you like it or not, it is harmless.

Ah, but some kinds of fun are no longer acceptable in large swathes of post-Newtown, thought-controlling, anti-gun, hysteric-dominated America, especially liberal enclaves like the Maryland suburbs. As a result, you get sentiments  like these:

  •   “I don’t think a game called Assassin is appropriate in schools. I want kids to be social with each other, but not in a ‘Gotcha’ . . . sort of way. It’s just inappropriate in our society.”—Blair Principal Renay Johnson

What’s “inappropriate?” Fantasy? Role playing games? Games that evoke entertainment and fiction portraying conflict and violence? Fun? Thoughts and attitudes that you don’t agree with or approve of? Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “More School Abuse of Students and Culture: The Deadly Cupcake Caper”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Kids playing soldiers

Karl Penny adds some useful perspective on children’s war games, which were referenced in my post about the school that deemed tiny toy World War II soldiers like the ones featured in “Toy Story” a threat to student peace and safety. Here is his Comment of the Day to the post, More School Abuse of Students and Culture: The Deadly Cupcake Caper:

“My friends and I used to organize war games, armed with toy guns, with which we would industriously go about “killing” each other. Today, of course, we are all psychopathic, gun-obsessed, would-be killers, just waiting for the trigger event that will send us off to wreak the next massacre at someplace where people gather.

“If I had uttered the preceding sarcasm at any sort of school function, I’d shortly be explaining to the police that no, officer, I’d never dream of shooting up anyplace, and I just spoke carelessly, and I’ll never do it again, and please don’t take me to jail…. For heavens sake. Continue reading →

The Great Scrabble Cheating Scandal

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

And you get a 50 point bonus for CHEATERS…

Over at Slate, Stefan Fatsis, one of the competitors at the recently completed National Scrabble Championship—Olympics? What Olympics?— gives background and details to the cheating scandal that put the Championship front and center in the blogosphere  and cable news fare, if only for a little while.

Fatsis has two complaints about the coverage: first, that the cheater (he palmed extra blank tiles to help him make high scoring words) was a kid, not an adult, and thus the media abuse heaped on him for his transgression was unduly harsh and cruel, and second, that…

“Two of the greatest players of all time, joined in one of the most remarkable finishes Scrabble has ever seen, and all anyone wants to talk about is a kid who made a terrible mistake.”

He’s dead wrong on both points. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Ethics Quiz: The Peculiar Ethics of Carnival Games”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Reader John Owens supplies  perspective and expertise on carnivals and local fairs in his Comment of the Day regarding the post “Ethics Quiz: The Peculiar Ethics of Carnival Games.”    Here it is: Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Peculiar Ethics of Carnival Games

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

The AARP website has a post about rigged carnival games, a topic that I have always found intriguing from an ethics perspective. The games…The Basketball Shoot, The Balloon Dart Throw, The Ring Toss, The Milk Bottle Pyramid, The Duck Pond and the rest…are rigged, and I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know they were rigged. It didn’t stop me from playing the silly things. A carnival is a state of mind, a flashback to the days of P.T. Barnum and flim-flam artists. An ethical carnival? Isn’t that an oxymoron? We eat terrible food, pay to go on disappointing rides, listen to barkers who we know are lying through their teeth, and play games that are scams in order to win cheesy prizes worth a fraction of what we paid out to win them and that we wouldn’t dream of buying outside a carnival anyway. That’s the carnival experience. It’s all unethical, and we consent to it.

Or is this just a rationalization? Is capitulation the proper ethical course, or should we carefully regulate carnival games, make sure all of the food is cholesterol-lite and sugar-free, and force the barkers to issue disclaimers and warnings like the recitations in TV drug commercials?

That’s your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz for the day, my friends:

Do traditional unethical practices become ethical in the culture of a carnival and similar environments, where the public voluntarily participates in and consents to its own victimization?

With cotton candy dancing in my head, corn dogs singing their siren song and images of the Wild Man of Borneo howling in my fevered brain, I have to confess that my inclination is to say, “Yes.”

And you?

_______________________________________________

Spark: AARP

Graphic: Photolibra

Ten Lessons from the “Dog Wars” Debate

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Wait! Calm down! This is a CARTOON dog.

The “Dog Wars” Android phone app is apparently down for the count, the victim of too many complaints, threats and accusations that it was evil and irresponsible and promotes real, live dog-fighting, even though almost nobody sane makes similar claims about other video games. As with the subject of most posts on Ethics Alarms, however, the ethics issue lingers on, whether or not the specific incident that sparked the commentary has been resolved.

The comments, often passionate, that this post elicited have been fascinating, and had much to teach, even when the comments themselves were dubious. Here are ten lessons from the debate over the game and the Ethics Alarms commentary about it.

1. Ethics alarms aren’t always right. So many comments about “Dog Wars”, here and around the web, consist of various versions of, “That’s just wrong!” Well, why is it “just wrong”? Continue reading →

Imaginary Bird Cruelty: Ethical; Imaginary Dog Cruelty….?

/ Jack Marshall / 97 Comments

If you think the birds are angry, wait til you hear the anti-dog-fighting activists.

We’re just keeping our finger crossed that Michael Vick doesn’t have this app on his phone.

“Dog Wars,” a new video game available free of charge on the Android smart phone market. The game allows players to choose, feed, train and fight virtual dogs against the dogs of other players. Predictably, animal rights, anti-dog fighting groups and social critics want the app dropped.

“Dog Wars” may be in poor taste, but it’s not unethical. Guiding pixels shaped as dogs in tiny phone screen-size battles has no more to do with cruelty to animals than biting the head off of a chocolate Easter Bunny or eating animal crackers.  Critics are saying that the game teaches people how to prepare real dogs for real fights? Right…and “Risk” teaches people how to take over the world. Continue reading →

No-Hit Piñatas and the Killers of Childhood

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

This is a no-hit piñata. Send it to Hell.

The latest device invented by childhood-fearing adults is the “no-hit piñata,”a new invention designed to make the ancient traditional child’s game less violent. Instead of hitting the colorful paper container with sticks to get at the candy and toys inside, the children pull strings, and the piñata opens non-violently.

What fun.

This is just another sally from the growing number of whimsy-challenged and anti-violence-addled parents and psychologists, who won’t rest until no child ever again picks up a stick to use as an imaginary gun, plays soldier, watches the Roadrunner push Wile E. Coyote off a cliff, or participates in a dodge ball game. Continue reading →