As you are likely to have heard by now, the Los Angeles Times recently conducted and published a value-added analysis of some of the city’s elementary school teachers, using data that had been collected by the school district but never previously analyzed in this way. There was a nice summary of the value-added analysis and …
Plagiarism by college students has gotten some attention in the New York Times lately, and it occurs to me that I have dropped the ball on a series of posts about plagiarism that I started earlier this summer. Although I had planned to write other stuff next, I’m instead going to allow myself to be …
Here’s the third post in a series on cheating/academic dishonesty in college (first post, second post). A year and a half ago, I taught an introduction to philosophy course independently. The lectures were in person, but the tests were online because the class only met once per week and I didn’t want to use up …
This old post, on the moral status of donating blood, still attracts a trickle of Google searches to this blog. I wonder who the searchers are — perhaps people trying to get motivated to donate, people trying to rationalize not donating, or biomedical ethics paper writers? Anyway, I hadn’t donated blood in over six months …
Somewhere between my ex-vegan interview at Let Them Eat Meat, the blog Hunt.Gather.Love, and Paleohacks, it was at least once recommended to me that I read Lierre Keith’s “The Vegetarian Myth.” So, I did. The author spent 20 years as a vegan. Understandably, veganism became ever nearer and dearer to her identity, but it also ruined …
Last time, I discussed some problems with the theory that, when you cheat, “you’re only cheating yourself.” Today, I have a few things to say on the wrongness of cheating. These are by no means comprehensive or ground breaking, just some food for thought. First, I’ll backtrack just a little and say that there is …
As a graduate teaching assistant and course instructor, I’ve encountered cheating and plagiarism a number of times. I know that many of my friends encounter similar issues as well. So, to mark the end of this semester, I thought I’d start a mini-series of posts on the subject. First up: the “you’re only cheating yourself” …
Last week, I received this fortune in a fortune cookie: “Turn your thoughts within — find yourself” People say things like this quite alot. It sounds very romantic and exciting to describe one’s trials and tribulations as being in the service of some greater, higher goal — that of finding oneself. Now, I’m not particularly …
This post at Overcoming Bias caught my eye the other day: I Am Sexist Basically, Robin Hanson points out that a common definition and usage of “sexism” — having a “belief or attitude that one gender or sex is inferior to, less competent, or less valuable than the other” is flawed. It makes scientific observation …
I tweeted this recently: Philosophy poll: T/F — Death is a necessary condition for the meaningfulness of life; immortality is incompatible with meaningfulness. Here are the totally unrepresentative results: False — 6 True — 3 (assuming that this response counts as a “true”) For whatever it’s worth, my vote is “false.” Assuming that the meaningfulness of one’s life …
