Tag: ethics
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This Beautiful Creature Must die
We’re all addicted to the new 80s-themed Peta computer game to which The Smiths have lent their 1980s song, Meat is Murder. It’s quite retro with 8-bit audio and pixelated graphics and it’s also very addictive. The song grates on your nerves after a while though. Daniel is the reigning champion with a score of…
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Is Pokémon Go immoral?
Ben brought back an English newspaper from Russia. He thought I might be interested because there’s an article about Pokémon Go in it. Here’s an excerpt: Nintendo refuses to reveal when the game will be released in Russia. But Russia’s traditional values crusaders are already worried nonetheless. “It feels like the devil arrived through [Pokémon] and…
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Elizabeth’s secret admirer and Animals Asia
I think Elizabeth has a secret admirer. Only I know who he is so he’s not very secret. A friend of mine has a son in Elizabeth’s class and my friend told me that her son recently mentioned that he has secret friends and Elizabeth is his secret friend. Then he added that when he’s 18 and…
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Pissing in the streets and self-driving cars
A friend sent me this article about a Scottish councillor who was recently fined for urinating in public. What was particularly ironic about it is that this councillor was responsible for closing public toilets in an effort to save money. I’ve already had a couple of rants about men pissing in the street – I’m not a…
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Easter, ethics, and Debussy
As usual I fell for all the April Fools’ Day jokes yesterday including the one about Jeremy Clarkson joining the fossil fuel divestment movement. I guess I was just feeling hopeful 🙂 The kids have been asking me lots of questions about Easter that I’m having problems answering like “How does the Easter Bunny travel?” and…
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Ethical investments?
I just got around to joining the superannuation program offered by my employer in the UK and so I thought I’d investigate fossil fuel divestment. After all, I don’t want my, er, £364 going into the pockets of fossil fuel companies. I’m sure fossil fuel companies are shivering with fear just at the thought of…
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The Life You Can Save
Whenever I find myself debating right and wrong, I wonder what Peter Singer would say. He’s the most rational thinker on the planet, in my opinion, and so I will sometimes say to myself, “What would Peter Singer do in this situation?”. For those who’ve never heard of him, he’s an Australian philosopher, the Ira W.…
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A new word: Reducetarian
I just watched an interesting TedX talk about the negative connotations behind the words vegan and vegetarian. Tell a stranger you’re a vegan and they make all sorts of negative assumptions about you. This is why I prefer to call myself a plant-eater. A friend of mine once told me that when they first found…
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Ode to a Vegetarian Haggis
Fossilcycle posted this wonderful poem to the comments on my post about vegetarian haggis. It’s a re-writing of a Robert Burns poem and I liked it so much I thought it deserved its own post. Ode To A Vegetarian Haggis Tim Dalling January 1993 Oh vegetarian haggis whit a view Thou glorious, steaming bag of…
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Vegetarian haggis: Take 2
Another week, another vegetarian haggis to sample. This one is made by Macsween and was bought from Sainsburys. I liked this one even more than the last one. It was delicious. Not too dry, not mushy, just perfect and with a lovely texture and flavour. It was also very filling. I got the ingredients off…
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Red lentil and tomato soup
We had a really yummy red lentil and tomato soup at the cafe at Newton Dee on Saturday and even Daniel expressed his approval so I thought I’d trying making one for lunch today. Lentils are a great source of protein and iron, and they’re also very cheap. My soup was yummy and it passed the Daniel…
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Masturbation is sinful!
But only for men and only if you’re Catholic. We women can masturbate as often as we want 🙂 Ok, this is complete nonsense. Masturbation is not a moral issue and nor is sex for that matter. The reason I’m bringing it up is because Richard Dawkins found himself in the middle of a Twitter storm…
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The world needs all kinds of minds
Temple Grandin is an American autistic woman who, through her work as a consultant for the meat industry, has made significant improvements to conditions for animals at abattoirs. According to PETA,”Dr. Grandin’s improvements to animal-handling systems found in slaughterhouses have decreased the amount of fear and pain that animals experience in their final hours, and…
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Weekday vegetarianism
I saw this TED talk today about being a weekday vegetarian and thought it was quite good. I know that many people are put off by vegan/vegetarianism because it seems like an impossible task. But it needn’t be done militantly and as Graham Hill makes clear in this video, eating less meat is still beneficial…
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Taking life
A little while ago I promised to write about taking life as a follow on from my post about eating plants. It’s Christmas Day today, the kids are playing happily with gifts, and so now is a good time to tackle it. When is it wrong to take the life of a living being? In…
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Do climate change policies hurt the world’s poor?
There’s something about what Bjorn Lomborg writes that makes me cross. He’s got an article on Project Syndicate in which he argues that environmental policy is hurting the world’s poor. He’s specifically referring to climate change policy and he thinks that what the developing world really needs is access to cheap fossil fuels. The article…
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On eating plants
I thought I’d explain in this post a bit about what my tagline “eats plants” actually means. I have been reluctant to write about this here before because I don’t want to come across as judgemental of what other people eat. We each make the best decisions we can and so here I want to…
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Don’t believe what you read in the Daily Mail
It goes without saying doesn’t it? But judging by the comments on a couple of recent climate change articles by Daily Mail journalist David Rose here and here, people will believe anything. Last week, David Rose wrote an article telling us all that the we are headed for global cooling. This week, he has an…
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Business ethics and the value of nature
Most people are familiar with the Hippocratic Oath as a do-no-harm pledge for doctors and physicians, but not many will have heard of the MBA Oath. It is the do-no-harm oath for graduating MBA students and the world’s most famous school of business, Harvard business school, adopted it in 2009. Some of the promises made by students…
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