Marc | February 10, 2009
Tom Ricks has a series of posts on the Battle of Wanat last summer over at Foreign Policy that is well worth reading for a number of reasons. First of all, Tom has done some excellent research and, unlike many, offers questions rather than answers (although he has a few of those). Second, his research, [...]
Marc | November 18, 2008
For over a month, now I have been wresting with ideas about education, training and ethics. Last night, I received an email from a student asking me if we could have an extra class added into my course in applied epistemology so that everyone who is presenting could have more time for their presentations. In [...]
Marc | October 1, 2008
Note: This is a very difficult post for me to write. The difficulty doesn’t lie with the subject area but, rather, in what language I will have to use in order to try and communicate my thoughts on the topic.
One of the axiomatic assumptions that professions, as a group, seem to hold is a taken-for-granted [...]
Marc | September 30, 2008
One of the nice things about being a pessimistic romantic is that one can still have a sense of wonder about everyday things. That sense of wonder kicked in again today upon reading a very nice, plain English exposition by Cobalt on why Anthropologists working with the US military can be unethical (actual, “a dick”; [...]
Marc | September 23, 2008
Canadian universities are suffering from an ethical failure of nerve.
Many of us have become diffident about our roles as professors, administrators, staff and students. We seldom engage in genuine debate about the university’s role in society. We seldom discuss the good and bad uses to which our research might be put. We seldom ask ourselves [...]
Marc | September 2, 2008
One of the more interesting ethical problems in the Anthropologists cannon is the question of when you are required to lie. For me, it is not only three particular question of when you must lie but, in reality, the perceptual assumptions that structure that “ethical” injunction. This wasn’t much of a problem for me in [...]
Marc | August 3, 2008
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
“The Scottish Play”, Act 5, Scene 5
To pleasant songs my work was erstwhile given, and bright were all my labours then; but [...]
Marc | August 1, 2008
The personal is political
Carol Hanish (?)
I don’t usually write about politics. This isn’t because I don’t have strong political beliefs (I do) but, rather, because I prefer to devote my time and energies to other things. This wasn’t always the case, as a few of my close friends know, and I like to [...]
Marc | July 19, 2008
One of the most interesting problems with any system of ethics is the twinned questions of a) what is the system grounded in and b) why should I, as an individual, care? I’m sure that most people are familiar with the old, probably apocryphal, story of a philosophy exam with one question on it [...]
Marc | July 16, 2008
so when one dispassionately and accurately speaks of cluster bombing, depleted uranium, torture at Abu Ghraib, and laying siege to civilian population centres, the response is not that it is just “rhetoric.”
Max Forte at openanthropology (NB: there is something weird with the cascading style sheets which interferes with italic script so I have changed the [...]
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