Everyday Ethics

As the holiday season finally, mercifully ends, many of us find ourselves on the receiving end of at least one miserable holiday gift.  Perhaps the item is the wrong size or color, a common but forgivable mistake, albeit a slightly insulting one when the giver has grossly over-estimated your size.  Or perhaps the item is [...]

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Every year at this time, a familiar debate emerges regarding how we ought to wish one another a pleasant holiday season.  For some, this time of year is about Christmas, and Christmas is a Christian holiday, so we ought to be saying “Merry Christmas.”  For others, this time of year is important for many faiths [...]

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Representative and candidate for Senator Todd Akin recently made a truly ridiculous comment about the frequency of pregnancy due to rape, which has caused a flurry of discussion regarding Republican nominee for President Mitt Romney’s position on abortion.
Akin, who has long-expressed opposition to abortion even in cases of rape, was seemingly attempting to [...]

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With apologies for the badly rhyming title, the current debate spurned by Chick-Fil-A CEO Dan Cathy’s comments about the proper structure of marriage has led to a serious backlash from both gay-marriage supporters and defenders of either Cathy’s comments, or his right to make them.  Clearly, this is a good place for some philosophical analysis, [...]

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The Jerry Sandusky scandal continues to change the landscape of Penn State University.  Sandusky’s recent conviction on dozens of criminal charges related to sexual misconduct with children led to, among other things, a debate about whether to remove the statue of legendary football coach Joe Paterno, from its prominent place outside Penn State’s Beaver Stadium.
According [...]

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The recently released report from independent investigator Louis Freeh was an important moment in the unfolding of the  Penn State-Jerry Sandusky scandal.  Freeh’s investigation revealed a culture of deference to Penn State’s late, and legendary head football coach, Joe Paterno.  According to Freeh, Paterno participated in a cover-up of the allegations against former assistant coach [...]

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If you’re like me, you probably wonder how, in an era of overwhelming prosperity for numerous people, when technology and medicine have advanced more in the last ten years than in the previous fifty, we continue to be unable to solve the basic moral problem of how to get along with each other.
Then I take [...]

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Last time, I offered several arguments against allowing same-sex couples to get married.  In the interest of fairness, I now want to offer a couple of arguments in favor of allowing same-sex marriage, to see if they survive a similar level of scrutiny.
One might wonder why we should bother with such an activity, since we [...]

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It has recently come to light that the New Orleans Saints, under the direction of defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, engaged in a practice of paying “bounties,” financial benefits awarded to players who made extremely hard or vicious hits on certain opposing players.  While the precise details of these bounties is apparently open to debate, the [...]

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The latest issue of Sports Illustrated’s famous swimsuit issue is now on newstands, its cover graced by a scantily bikini-clad Kate Upton.  Miss Upton is something of a phenom in the world of modeling (or super-modeling, as the case may be), and has also made something of a name for herself by exchanging snide comments [...]

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