In response to the preceding research report by Professor Steele, television news director Jeffrey Marks suggests that TV news photographers operate in a world not entirely of their own making. They are often treated as pieces of equipment whose insights and judgments are not taken into consideration when newscasts are produced. Seeing the world through a two?inch black and white viewfinder causes some distorted perceptions of reality and a certain detachment from ethical decision making. The author, chairman of the (...) Radio?Television News Directors Association's ethics commutee, offers some suggestions for correcting the ethical morass. (shrink)
This is a periodic table explicitly for chemists rather than physicists. It is derived from Newlands’ columns. It solves many problems such as the positions of hydrogen, helium, beryllium, zinc and the lanthanoids but all within a succinct format.
A study was undertaken of the views of users of two genitourinary medicine (GUM) clinics in England on unlinked anonymous testing (UAT) for HIV. The UAT programme measures the prevalence of HIV in the population, including undiagnosed prevalence, by testing residual blood (from samples taken for clinical purposes) which is anonymised and irreversibly unlinked from the source. 424 clinic users completed an anonymous questionnaire about their knowledge of, and attitudes towards, UAT. Only 1/7 (14%) were aware that blood left over (...) from clinical testing may be tested anonymously for HIV. A large majority (89%) said they would agree to their blood being tested, although 74% wanted the opportunity to consent. These findings indicate broad support for UAT of blood in a group of patients whose samples are included in the HIV surveillance programme. The findings suggest the need for greater attention to be given to the provision of information and, if replicated in a larger survey, may justify a reappraisal of UK policy on UAT. (shrink)
The essay examines contemporary Arab films that express the body's forces. One strategy, common with other world cinemas, is that films carry out different operations at the molar and molecular levels, which correspond to different levels of embodiment and body politics. Another, more unique to Arab cinema, is to cultivate strategies of protecting and enfolding bodies, similar to what Foucault termed ars erotica. Third, they enlist the audience in a struggle to attain what Spinoza called ‘adequate ideas’, ideas that arise (...) immanently from the body's capacities. (shrink)
This book broadens the inquiry into emotion to comprehend a comparative cultural outlook. It begins with an overview of recent work in the West, and then proceeds to the main business of scrutinizing various relevant issues from both Asian and comparative perspectives. Original essays by experts in the field. Finally, Robert Solomon comments and summarizes.
“What’s the big deal?”The meaning of this interrogative depends on the inflection. From the mouths of proponents of public–private partnerships (PPPs) related to food and health, it asks—perhaps with some skepticism or bewilderment—what objections there could possibly be to public–private partnerships intended to address some of our most pressing public health challenges. This is due, in no small part, to the way such partnerships are often characterized by participants and proponents alike: they are a “win–win–win,” for the public sector actor, (...) for the private sector actor, and for the general public or relevant publics (often characterized as consumers).1 Posed by critics of PPPs, the question cynically .. (shrink)
It is now generally recognized that Earth is at risk of a devastating collision with an asteroid or a comet. Impressive strides in our understanding of this threat have been made in recent decades, and various efforts to deal with it have been undertaken. However, the pace of government action hasn’t kept up with the advance of our knowledge. Despite the daunting dimensions of planetary defense, one intrepid NGO has stepped up to the plate: The B612 Foundation has embarked on (...) a half-billion-dollar project, called Sentinel, to map the estimated one million near-Earth objects that could wipe out a city or even end civilization. This article offers an explanation of how it came to be that private citizens have assumed what is arguably government’s primary mandate to "provide for the common defence." It then examines some of the practical – or, if you will, ethical – risks that may be attendant on such a shift of responsibility. Finally, a new policy emphasis is proposed. (shrink)
A sample of students from a private, multicampus, midsize university completed 2 copies of Gardner and Melvin's (1988) Attitudes Toward Cheating Scale a semester before the implementation of a modified honor code. The authors instructed students to complete 1 copy of the scale according to their own opinions and the other copy according to what they thought would be the opinion of a "typical college professor." During the following semester when the honor code went into effect, the authors recruited a (...) second sample of 1st-year students and asked them to complete the 2 scales in the same manner. Although both samples of students reported attitudes toward cheating that were significantly more tolerant than the attitudes they ascribed to professors, scores were virtually identical for both samples. The authors speculate that variables associated with how the honor code was implemented, together with certain demographic characteristics of the institution, mediated the results obtained. (shrink)
Ought Implies Kant defends Kantianism via a critical examination of consequentialism. The latter is shown to be untenable on epistemic grounds; meanwhile, the charge that Kantianism is really consequentialism in disguise is refuted. The book also presents a novel interpretation of Kantianism as according direct duties to other animals.
There is considerable correspondence between theories and models used in biology and the social sciences. One type of model that is in use in both biology and the social sciences is the fitness landscape model. The properties of the fitness landscape model have been applied rather freely in the social domain. This is partly due to the versatility of the model, but it is also due to the difficulties of transferring a model to another domain. We will demonstrate that in (...) order to transfer the biological fitness landscape model to the social science it needs to be substantially modified. We argue that the syntactic structure of the model can remain unaltered, whilst the semantic dimension requires considerable modification in order to fit the specific phenomena in the social sciences. We will first discuss the origin as well as the basic properties of the model. Subsequently, we will demonstrate the considerations and modifications pertaining to such a transfer by showing how and why we altered the model to analyse collective decision-making processes. We will demonstrate that the properties of the target domain allow for a transfer of the syntactic structure but don’t tolerate the semantic transfer. (shrink)
The informal fallacies can be conceived as enthymemes that are formally valid. But, then, what accounts for our sense of their fallaciousness? I explain this in terms of the notion of a warrant.
In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice, “When I use a word … it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” When Alice questions this license, Humpty Dumpty replies, “The question is … which is to be master — that’s all.” The present article offers a lexicon of words that are used by human beings, however unintentionally or ingenuously, to maintain their mastery or prerogatives over other animals. A motivating (...) assumption of the article is that putting on display the verbal menagerie in animal agriculture, animal experimentation, and the rest of the industries and institutions that use nonhuman animals, could go a long way toward eliminating these enterprises, since they are built as much on equivocation as on exploitation. (shrink)
What is the point of teaching about abortion, euthanasia, and capital punishment, if the students are cheating in the course? As much as eighty per cent of our students cheat. Cheating is the norm. Furthermore, ethics courses are not immune. I decided, therefore, to seize the bull by the horns and challenge my ethics students not to cheat. I employed a form of so-called contract grading, which placed the burden of honesty on the students instead of the usual cat-and-mouse of (...) teacher enforcement. Herein I report on the results of this ten-year experiment. (shrink)
