CBC Blogging Manifesto Tired of waiting for CBC, Canada’s national public broadcaster, to come up with a blogging policy, CBC bloggers – including the infamous pseudonymous blogger
A. Ouimet – charge ahead and write one themselves.
posted by joeclark
on Aug 13, 2006 -
12 comments
Dead Ringers: the Science Museum asks us the question "should we upgrade our mobile phone?" "
No" and "
no" say the Times and the Observer, but we still do: on average every 18 months. What's the problem? Well it isn't just the lead, arsenic, beryllium and
brominated fire-retardant cases (pollutants all) disappearing into our land fills (which are not covered by the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive [
WEEE] in Europe). Coltan also goes into our phones. It occurs mainly in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and as such our demand for upgrades has been
contributing to a war (despite mobile phone companies' claims to the contrary, coltan is not regulated like timber). If we must upgrade, we can at least
recycle or hack our
old phones.
posted by nthdegx
on Aug 7, 2006 -
49 comments
Charlotte Observer photographer Patrick Schneider has been fired. After a 2003
incident in which the North Carolina Press Association stripped him of his awards for three pictures (before and after can be seen
here) the Observer has fired Schneider over the alteration of
this image. The question remains among photojournalists: is it
unethical to alter a photo in such a way that it more closely resembles what the eye saw and the camera is unable to capture, or is this a deceptive practice that damages the public's trust?
posted by TheGoldenOne
on Jul 28, 2006 -
78 comments
The Human Speechome Project - "A baby is to be
monitored by a network of microphones and video cameras for 14 hours a day, 365 days a year, in an effort to unravel the seemingly miraculous process by which children acquire language.". Selected video
clips.
Paper (PDF, 750KB). To test hypotheses of how children learn, Prof Deb Roy's team at MIT will develop machine learning systems that “step into the shoes” of his son by processing the sights and sounds of three years of life at home. Total storage required:
1.4 petabytes.
posted by Gyan
on Jul 23, 2006 -
21 comments
Harry Reid accepted free boxing tickets from the Nevada Athletic Commission says John Solomon of the AP. Solomon implies that Reid might have gotten himself into an ethical dilemma as the
NAC opposes the creation of a federal boxing commission, something the Senate was
considering at the time. The article also tosses in some digs at Reid by repeating the claim that Reid is involved in the
Abramoff scandal.
However,
Media Matters points out that Reid did not act in the NAC's favor and instead allowed the passage of legislation that would create a federal commission, in opposition to the giftgiver's wishes. This is
not the
first time Solomon has attacked Reid.
Politics/News-filter
posted by papakwanz
on May 31, 2006 -
34 comments
Whooops! While making a required filing to the state ethics commission, Ohio Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Kenneth Blackwell finds Diebold shares in his stock portfolio that he now claims to have bought "accidentally." Yes,
that Diebold -- the e-voting company whose chairman promised to "
deliver the vote" to George Bush. And yes,
that Blackwell, whose state
helped deliver the White House to the GOP. Blackwell insists that the humble amount of Diebold stock was in one of those "
blind trust" type of arrangements that worked out so rewardingly for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.
[newsfilter via RawStory.]
posted by digaman
on Apr 4, 2006 -
108 comments
Can we have an intelligent non-religion-bashing discussion about this article? ". . . perhaps the most shocking implication of my inquiry into the role religion plays in our lives" : ". . . those who have an unquestioning faith in the correctness of the moral teachings of their religion are a problem: If they haven't conscientiously considered, on their own, whether their pastors or priests or rabbis or imams are worthy of such delegated authority over their lives, then they are taking a personally immoral stand. Please RTFA before commenting.
posted by spock
on Jan 26, 2006 -
175 comments
Lifeboat ethics. "
Terror had assumed the throne of reason, and passion had become judgment." After the ship
William Brown sank on a voyage from England to America in 1841, its longboat with 41 passengers and crew aboard leaked badly and began sinking. To stay afloat, the first mate ordered sailors to throw men and women overboard: those remaining were saved and eventually rescued. One sailor who followed orders, Alexander Holmes, was convicted of manslaughter after he returned to Philadelphia in 1842. This true story inspired a famous
fictional case, many
legal opinions,
two movies, and a recent
book. What would you have done in the same life-or-death situation?
posted by cenoxo
on Jan 7, 2006 -
57 comments
Economist Steven Levitt, author of
Freakonomics, has long
posited a controversial thesis that legalized abortion help reduced crime, by reducing unwanted children, prone to crime. However, a new paper
argues that Levitt (& Donohue) made serious errors in their research. Properly analysed, abortion has no significant effect on crime. Levitt
disagrees, of course.
posted by daksya
on Dec 4, 2005 -
46 comments
EMBO's report on Time and Aging (free access) contains an essay wherein the author, Karin Knorr Cetina, from the University of Konstanz, Germany, argues that death and aging used to be major issues that defined what it means to be human and helped us find our place in society by showing us the limits of what is possible to achieve as a human. With the advances in science, particularly
biological advances in slowing aging and
technological advances in extending human function, we no longer accept our fate. Instead of accepting that we all grow old and die so we should take our place in society, with the expectation that if we contribute, society will take care of us, too, we now have promises being made by science that death and aging are no longer inevitable. Where are we headed, then? If we can no longer find our place by finding the limits of achievement and accepting our place within them, how do we work as a collective?
posted by Mr. Gunn
on Jul 25, 2005 -
15 comments
Is Civilization Decaying? Will technological progress be accompanied by moral progress? Notes on a 1923 debate between J. B. S. Haldane (
Daedalus) and Bertrand Russell (
Icarus).
"As John Brunner pointed out in an article in the New Scientist in 1993, these two books ... inspired two generations of science fiction writers."
posted by painquale
on Jul 10, 2005 -
11 comments
I clicked this link today while perusing
this MSNBC blog (which is occasionally amusing). It seems that ArticleBot's hackles have been raised, and they are on the defensive against
mainstream media (aka
MSM). I'm not exactly sure what their point is, but I really hate it when people "overuse" the "quotation" marks in their "unique content". I would have totally left it alone if they had not called attention to themselves by responding in this manner. Plus the assistance they are offering reminds me a little of
these MIT geniuses (previously discussed on MeFi
here and
here) except designed to spider search engines. I'm sure it's completely legal, but the ethics are questionable to say the least.
posted by shoppingforsanity
on Apr 26, 2005 -
89 comments
Got Conscience? His company did $22 million in business last year, moving American manufacturing plants offshore. "It's not right," Hosea says. "But if I don't do it, someone else is gonna do it." Interesting, if it’s true, is that he tells his potential clients that what they’re about to do is wrong.
posted by tizzie
on Apr 26, 2005 -
21 comments
The Ethics of Deep Self-Modification. What will happen when machines gain the ability to modify their own psychology? Do we have a responsibility to step in? What happens when we have the ability to modify
ourselves? Philosopher
Peter Suber has dedicated himself to issues of self-modification... not just in psychology, but also in
constitutional law. Small wonder that this is the guy who invented
Nomic. His site is littered with great stuff; he now is primarily involved with the open access movement. Check out his
open access primer and
blog.
posted by painquale
on Jan 3, 2005 -
14 comments
The False Controversy of Stem Cell Research. Kinsley: In fact, thinking it through is a moral obligation, especially if you are on the side of the argument that wants to stop or slow this research.
It's not complicated. An embryo used in stem-cell research (and fertility treatments) is three to five days past conception. It consists of a few dozen cells that together are too small to be seen without a microscope. It has no consciousness, no self-awareness, no ability to feel love or pain. The smallest insect is far more human in every respect except potential.
posted by skallas
on May 31, 2004 -
64 comments
Interview with David Crosby. "The people who run record companies now wouldn't know a song if it flew up their nose and died. They haven't a clue, and they don't care. You tell them that, and they go, 'Yeah? So, your point is?' Because ...they don't care. They're actually sort of proud that they don't care.... Now they're going in the tank, because the world has changed, and they did not change with it...I think the only way to sell records that I know about now that does look really, really, really promising is iTunes."
posted by weston
on May 30, 2004 -
46 comments
"The Conscientious Objector Policy Act" just passed the Michigan Assembly, and awaits voting in the state Senate.
The bill legalizes the right for a doctor, or any health provider, to deny treatment based on "ethical, moral, or religious grounds." In addition to the obvious notion of restricting abortion, in the most extreme example the bill technically allows doctors to deny treatment to gays simply for believing that homosexuality is immoral.
posted by XQUZYPHYR
on Apr 22, 2004 -
90 comments
