Reading Time: 4 minutes You refrain from making prohibited right-on-red turns, even when the way is clear and there are no police around. You follow the laws and pay your taxes, on time and without exaggerating deductible expenses. You tell the truth, even when it’s hard and you could probably get away with lying. You behave this way not […]
ethics
Posted inEthics and Morality
When living kids become organ donors
Reading Time: 4 minutes The passage below, quoting “Anna,” the traumatized child protagonist in Jodi Picoult’s disquieting novel, My Sister’s Keeper, sets the messy table for this essay: My parents tried to make things normal, but that’s a relative term. The truth is, I was never really a kid. To be honest, neither were Kate and Jesse. I guess maybe […]
Posted inEthics and Morality
Psychics are just overdressed, unethical strippers
Reading Time: 3 minutes Mystery and intrigue make for great entertainment, especially when it ends with an answer to a burning question or the exposure of a hidden truth—or in the case of a stripper, body parts. When I stepped out onto the stage and into the fake smoke and black lights, I scanned the faces of my audience, […]
Posted inEconomics
Bankman-Fried arrested—Now what’s to be done about Ponzinomics?
Reading Time: 5 minutes On December 12, Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested at his apartment complex in the Albany resort in the Bahamas, after US prosecutors sent formal notice to local officials that they had filed criminal charges against him. The founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which Bankman-Fried announced was filing for bankruptcy on November 11, had been scheduled […]
Posted inThe Secular
20 secular moral beacons
Reading Time: 15 minutes Mother Teresa. The Dalai Lama. Martin Luther King. Gandhi. If you ask most people to think of prominent individuals who represent the highest of moral activism, the apex of humanitarianism, the aspirational essence of care, compassion, and justice —these are the names that will spring quickest from their lips. It’s a fine list. Aside from […]
Posted inEthics and Morality
I don’t want to be friends just because you’re an atheist
Reading Time: 5 minutes In 2016, I was invited to speak at a conference for Humanist Students UK (the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies, as it was called at the time) at the University of Sheffield. I was dating an English guy then and was excited to share my enjoyment of networking with humanists. He […]
Posted inNews
Living synthetic embryo, made from stem cells, grown without a uterus
Reading Time: < 1 minute On Monday, Cell published the results of embryonic experiments carried out by the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, which has been studying the potential of stem cells to give rise to entire embryonic structures. Its latest findings reveal the capacity to culture mouse stem cells to the state of an 8.5-day-old embryo—without the use […]
Posted inEthics and Morality
Is ‘sentientism’ really better in practice than humanism?
Reading Time: 5 minutes Imagine a world where all sentient beings – human or otherwise – have recognized and protected rights. That’s sentientism. But is it better?
Posted inCulture
The ground ball statistic: Hidden glory grounded in the seemingly mundane
Reading Time: 5 minutes OnlySky · The ground ball statistic: Hidden glory grounded in the seemingly mundane Lacrosse fans from all over the world will tune in to watch the NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Championship, featuring a Maryland team poised for history. But lacrosse aficionados will be attending to a facet of the game the neophyte will likely miss: ground […]
Posted inEthics and Morality
Truth Social is going to be huge! Also, that stripper really likes you.
Reading Time: 2 minutes My job as a stripper was to lie. Well, mostly. I presented a fantasy—an illusion. I told customers what they wanted to hear, and showed them what they wanted to see. And I swear, I really did like some customers, but the ones I didn’t like never knew it. That was part of the performance. […]