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Some advertisers have been appealing to Sept. 11 to tell their own stories. Part of the appeal for this sort of thing is what's called in logic an "appeal to emotion" - if you use a symbol people have a powerful emotional connection to, they will be more easily swayed or drawn to you, or in this case to your product.

I suppose I'm a little biased when it comes to the Invisible Children, but I truly believe Obama made the right decision in trying to help free the child soldiers from Joseph Kony by sending in troops to help form a plan to capture Kony. I know there are many people who are outraged and flabbergasted as to why our country is doing this, but I think a large part of that is because they don't fully understand everything that's going on. If you really want to know more, invisiblechildren.com they explain everything.

This is a video that talks about the news release of Obama deploying 100 US troops to Central Africa to help find and bring Joseph Kony (a man who has engaged Central Africa in war for 26 years, has killed hundreds of thousands, and kidnaps children and forces them to fight in his army) to justice. This group has come together because three guys saw a moral and ethical problem and wanted to do what they could to change it. 

A San Diego City Council committee killed two proposals to strengthen the city's Ethics Commission yesterday - demonstrating that the council has ultimate authority over its own watchdog. The commission sought the ability to subpoena witnesses during its investigations and wanted to make it illegal to knowingly lie or provide false documents to it.

I would not feel the need to belong to a bank that is going to charge me to keep my money with them. The article states that the rule (to charge $5 for every debit card use) only applies to banks with $10 billion or more in assets. If this is the case I would switch to a smaller bank or just use cash. Is this ethical? I would say no, because I have already given all of my money to the bank to lend to other people. How can this be ethical if I have already given them money?

I thought considering last week's reading, this blog post was good to look at. It coincides with Maitland's argument for sweatshops. The part I found most interesting was this: "The most important aspect relating to the morality of sweatshop labor is that it is voluntary. That is, sweatshop laborers get up in the morning and choose to work in a sweatshop instead of doing anyother possible thing on any given day. Why would they do that? It's simple, by working at a sweatshop a laborer is able to earn more for himself and his family than he would otherwise be able to were he not employed at that sweatshop. The laborer has the choice to either perform some other task for money, produce his own goods and services, or go work for the sweatshop. He has made the decision that what he gains by working at the sweatshop is more valuable than what he would gain doing anything else." It begs the question of who gets to decide what these workers do in their lives to support their families and how they should feel about those choices.

Another good reflection on this issue, jdybing. One of the issues with this type of argument is that it's rather theoretical. It simply isn't true of all people that "The laborer has the choice to either perform some other task for money, produce his own goods and services, or go work for the sweatshop." Even if this is true, the next question is whether we should just accept a type of work and working conditions that demoralize people and trivialize the value of their lives. What Maitland says of sweatshops is just as true of the practice of child labor early in the industrial era of the US, where children were not only doing dehumanizing work but doing so under extremely dangerous conditions. It's hard to see how anyone would actually "choose" this type of life given viable options for doing something else.

Professional sports have decided to take the "green" approach as well by implementing energy saving technologies such as wind power, solar panels, and biodegrable corn-based plastic cups. The NDRC has provided way for all major sports to jump on this bandwagon which will inform all of its viewers to perserve this earth.

A friend had shared a picture on Facebook that I saw today. It was copies from two articles about two different crimes. One was of a wealthy white man and one was of a homeless black man. The pictures note the sentences and crimes committed and imply that there was disparity in the sentencing. Here is a post I found on the two cases. What are your thoughts on the different cases?

I did some extra research on these two cases as well (including Snopes). I posted the linke that I did (and only that) for a couple of reasons. 1) Because of the potential inequality of the two cases and 2) because I don't think that most people look past the information give to them. I was glad to see that someone (granted you are the professor, but still) looked into the stories a bit more. I think that also says something about ethics. I recently sent a friend of mine (who was making claims about products other than those she was selling). The claims were that there was bat guano in many brands of mascara. She told me she had heard this from an optometrist but she had never done any research on her own. When I did (because I did not want to make claims that I did not know to be true), I forwarded some of the sources I found to her. In our society, we tend to take things at face value.

Aha, very clever test :) Glad you're doing some of the critical thinking that, as you indicate, we need to be doing much more of. Keep up the good research!

Many of us take our clean and safe water for granted, but others aren't so fotunate. Glad to see we are taking great strides to make a difference; making a World Water Day is a great start.

Good article from Tim O'Reilly (a major innovator in the publishing industry) on Steve Jobs' remark about passion vs. profit: "My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products," Jobs told Isaacson. "[T]he products, not the profits, were the motivation. Sculley flipped these priorities to where the goal was to make money. It's a subtle difference, but it ends up meaning everything."

Excellent article on what money means to you. If you are wealthy, it doesn't neccesarily mean that you are very knowledgeable. This article provides the morals between money.

Article talking about people with more money spend more money. But, I can see this true that even though people with more money than they ever will need still go broke.

"Money may be the root of all evil, but only if you're not honest about what it means to you. "

Everyone is asking the same questions: Have we hit bottom yet? When will the recession end? When will things go back to the way they were? As a chief executive, I'm as eager as anyone to put the recession into the past. A growing economy benefits everyone.

Everyone wants a fast recovery to get things back to normal within our economy. However, we must learn from this huge disaster which could mean staying in thh economic mess a little longer so we do not repeat this blunder again.

There has always been a real ethical issue on what to wear and what not to wear to the office. In this article it talks about that even in the great summer weather, you should always be professional and it points out a few valid guidlines for that.

office summer attire meets common sense

Life or death issues should be the most ethical issues we pride ourselves upon. When there are doctors paying who are simply paying to save themselves from losing their liscences and potentially going to prison, we definately need to take action.

This is the reason I don't see myself going into politics. I have friends who are politicians and have been blasted like this. I'm proud to say that none of those friends have stooped to these tactics. Unfortunately though, when mud is being slung, it's difficult to get out of the trench if you don't throw mud back out. Our society seems to see people who don't fight back as cowards or that they have something to hide, but if they do fight back, they are low.

Wow, I was really surprised by this article. Some lengths that politicians go to in order to look better than one another is absolutely ridiculous. Anyone who knows about the legislation Obama supports can clearly see that high school sex ed and kindergarden sex ed are nothing similar; teaching a kid nothing more than "good touch bad touch" would essentially be the end of it for the younger kids.

Coporate idealists want to make change for businesses to do good and they believe it is within our reach.

Maybe there should be a change to women managing our companies to further help everyone, rather than merely trying to make profit.

Nike placing a big focus environmental sustainability.

Glad to see that Nike has changed its ways to show much more coporate responsibility.

The NBA is currently in a lockout, but a player, techinically an employee, has accepted taking a season off in order for the NBA, or business, to work out their issues.

I think the opening paragraph says it all: "Discussions about ethical issues, not to mention attempts to encourage ethical behavior, are constantly derailed by the invocation of common misstatements of ethical principles. Some of these are honest misconceptions, some are intentional distortions, some are self-serving rationalizations, and some, upon examination, simply make no sense at all."

I do have to disagree with the author's example of consequentialism. Normally, saving a woman from being killed would be ethical, however, going back in time and disrupting the time line (in my opinion) was not. Had he not gone back in time, he wouldn't have had an opportunity to save the woman and in the end, the Nazi's would not have won WWII. Also, in relation to the fallacy of "It's ethical if it's not illegal" - I don't believe that everything that is illegal is immoral or unethical. That is why laws are able to be changed - sometimes the law is wrong or unethical.