Ethics: April 2007 Archive Page

Told to express emotion for a creative-writing class, high-school senior Allen Lee penned an essay so disturbing to his teacher, school administrators and police that he was charged with disorderly conduct, officials said Wednesday.

Lee, 18, a straight-A student at Cary-Grove High School in Cary, Ill., was arrested Tuesday near his home and charged with the misdemeanor for an essay that police described as violently disturbing but not directed toward any specific person or location.--Jeff Long and Carolyn Starks --Illinois police arrest teen after teacher "disturbed" by essay (Seattle Times)

The vast majority of gamers know life is not a Doom level - these rules are merely simplifications and abstractions that streamline very complex actions for smoother gameplay. We know when someone is shot in the head they do not lose 20 hitpoints. Games are not an excuse for their worldview, but rather a useful metaphor that allows us to jump into their heads for awhile.

One thing that kept striking me while playing is that Dylan and Eric, despite being younger, seem much more self-aware than what we've learned about Cho. Most of the dialogue in the game is taken verbatim from their writings, recordings, and police reports, and I buy it as a legitimate and thoughtful glimpse into their pseudo-nihilistic mindset at the time of the attacks. Perhaps this ability to reflect comes from having a sounding board in each other, whereas Cho was a loner. The result was the same pointless carnage, of course. But it does convince me that they knew what they were doing was wrong in every possible, concievable sense of the word. Perhaps that makes them all the more evil, and truly worthy of hell, if it exists, despite their lower body count. --Mike Duncan --Super Columbine Massacre (Bad Rhetoric)

Some good commentary on a game that was easy to win (in that it wasn't technically difficult to rack up points and be victorious in battle after battle) but very hard to play (in that I had to overcome emotional resistance to the fact that I was expected to make the plot progress by gunning down icons representing high school students and teachers).

I've been meaning to write down more thoughts on this game, and I guess reading this post was all the prompting I needed.

An early sequence in which we are supposed to sneak through the school and plant bombs without being caught was quite annoying. For no good reason, the game refused to let players save anywhere but the parking lot. That mean that if you got caught in the hall, you had to start that sequence over. If you planted one bomb and then got caught, you had to start over. If you planted both bombs but didn't make it out to the parking lot without being chased by a hall monitor, you had to start over.

After the bombs don't go off, I had a moment of relief -- even though I knew exactly what was supposed to happen next. I was supposed to start killing.

I had to take a break -- I was on a train ride to a conference where, I delivered a talk that used this game as a reference point. Even though it was a minor reference, I didn't feel right talking about the game without finishing it, so I went back to it.

When I targeted someone in the parking lot and approached, expecting the fight sequence to kick in, instead I got an encounter with a kid that Eric and Dylan apparently knew well enough to spare.

That was a masterful stroke on the part of the designer, Danny Ledonne. I don't know whether it's possible to target someone else first, but for a moment, because I was ready to kill this simulated character, but the game spared my target. For a moment, I felt like I was a worse person than the real killers whose steps I had been retracing, since I made the choice to kill someone they chose to spare.

And once I got back inside the school, this time armed with weapons and able to save the game wherever the hell I wanted, I understood why the opening level was so tedious and pointless. It made me hate the hall monitors for making me go back and play the bomb-planting sequence over again dozens of times.

While those two design choices made me want to keep playing in order to see how the game would screw with my emotions again, assaulting the people in the various rooms quickly became tedious. The students rarely ever fight back, and when the occasional jock throws a punch, the damage is minimal. But every so often, instead of the same old battle sequence, the game would deliver a brief exchange of dialog or even a full-blown flashback.

I didn't want to empathize with the player-characters, but I found myself going "awwww" in sympathy when a girl doesn't pick up the phone or return a call from Eric Harris; then when the flashback ended, the game went into the usual combat sequence, jerking me out of a sympathetic reverie into the cold realization that the backstory only fueled the hatred of the real killers.

A rather unlikely scenario has Eric and Dylan rescuing a kid who is being beaten up in the bathroom. I don't think there is an option to target this kid along with his tormentors. Once the tormentors are gone, the kid offers you a heath powerup and leaves. I find it hard to believe that anyone would beat up a kid in the bathroom while gunfire is going off in the hall, but the sequence does argue that Eric and Dylan saw themselves as heroes of some sort; still, my willing suspension of disbelief didn't quite cover this vignette.

The extended sequence in hell also got tedious; the boys are separated at first, and for the first time the enemies are capable of doing some real damage, so I felt a sense of accomplishment when I reached the checkpoint that reunited the boys. From then on, survival was simply a matter of learning which enemies to target first when they attack in groups, and occasionally running past enemies to search for treasure chests in which more powerful weapons and other powerups are lurking. It was an easy matter wiping out the enemies on the way back.

The monotony of the hell sequence was occasionally broken up by visits to other parts of hell, where for instance one can meet icons of various historical figures and figures from pop culture (such as an alien or JonBenet Ramsey) who have a few thoughtful words to exchange (and, for some strange reason, video game characters). It wasn't always clear to me why these characters were in hell, or why if the killers denied the existence of God they would expect a traditional hell with fiery rivers and demons, or why Satan seems perfectly happy that Eric and Dylan just wasted most of the inhabitants of hell, why John Lennon doesn't seem to mind playing "Imagine" ("No hell below us... above us only sky") while he's depicted in a very traditional hell, or why for that matter the pop culture figures in the other regions of hell are not supposed to be targets for the killer's rage.

Once I understood that the tedium Ledonnne imposed during the early High School levels had a payback, I guess I got my hopes up.

I guess I'm saying that I wanted more story interspersed with the action.

There is a final payoff of sorts, where Satan gives you a flying dragon that you can use to move to any part of the huge Hell level, but since I had methodically swept through every enemy on my quest to finish the game, there was very little for me to do except fly to all four corners of the screen and pick up a couple of necessary inventory items. Being able to fly around hell seemed like such a paltry victory. I guess it was too much to ask for the demons to unite and lead an assault on heaven, a la Paradise Lost.

After the game proper is over, an extended series of non-interactive cut scenes delivers Ledonne's final message.

I interpreted the sequence in which a parade of speakers walks up to a podium on the steps of Columbine High School as Ledonne's attempt to quote from multiple authorities and survivors who got it all wrong.

A final sequence (was it really final? I'd have to check my saved games one more time to be sure of the sequence) showing slides of the killers looking like ordinary boys made me sick. I thought it pushed too hard for a sympathetic response; every one of their victims deserved such a respectful and detailed slideshow, and I would have spent hours watching it in order to atone for and exorcise the feeling of complicity with which the game left me.

It was six hours before opening night. Sarah Holdren, director of a Yale student production, had just entered the theater for a routine pre-performance errand when the man who runs the hall gave her an update: In the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, a Yale administrator decided that she didn't want any weapons used or portrayed during theatrical productions. --Elia Powers --Stage Fright (Inside Higher Ed)

Puh-leese.

Grown-ups and all but the youngest kids know that the swords on stage aren't real. And those young kids probably won't be able to sit through a live theater performance that isn't tailored to them, so they would not likely be in the audience.

At their first meeting with journalists since taking over Russia's largest independent radio news network, the managers had startling news of their own: from now on, they said, at least 50 percent of the reports about Russia must be "positive."

In addition, opposition leaders could not be mentioned on the air and the United States was to be portrayed as an enemy, journalists employed by the network, Russian News Service, say they were told by the new managers, who are allies of the Kremlin. --Andrew E. Kramer --50% Good News Is the Bad News in Russian Radio (NY Times)

This is a frightening development.

i am in an abusive relationship right now have been in it for 7 months now. i dont feel the best. we allways fight he makes me feel like crap like i am nothing like everything is my fault. he promises me he ownt ever do it again this has happened over 20 times. and than he hits chokes slaps and hurts me again he apoligizes than we fight for no reason again and he gets jeoulos again it happens again. he is very jeoulos and controlling. not even letting me go to the mall with my sister. thinking i am allways cheating on him. it is hurting me bad. tonight is the night i am going to leave him. i hope that i am being serious when i say this because every other time i said this i allways end up going back with him. i just cannot believe i had to go through this allready only 17 years old. bye. --racheli am in an abusive relationship right now (blogs.setonhill.edu)

Somebody recently left this comment on a blog entry on Nathaniel Hawthorne that one of my students posted in 2004. As the administrator of blogs.setonhill.edu, I see all the comments that come in for approval, and I regularly approve all the course-related comments so that online discussions don't shrivel on the vine. In the past few days, somebody has been reading blog entries, posting a quick but seemingly relevant comment, and then leaving link to a spam portal. So I've been looking more closely at what I would ordinarily approve or delete, and this submission caught my eye.

I have already sent a quick e-mail to the address the poster provided, but who knows whether it was real or fake. I have no evidence that the poster is in any way connected to Seton Hill University... I presume she just found a page that had keywords she was searching for.

I guess I am just feeling pretty emotionally raw as I think about the latest news... I've submitted an article proposal that looks at Super Columbine Massacre RPG! as a form of new media composition, and when I heard about Cho's multimedia manifesto, I realized that I would have to read it in order to write the article I proposed. That's not a cheerful thought.

Maybe someone in Rachel's life can help her make a sensible choice before it's too late.

Every culture has its pathologies, and ours is self-reliance. From some mix of our frontier past, our Little House on the Prairie heritage, our Thoreauvian desire for solitude, and our amazing wealth we've derived a level of independence never seen before on this round earth. We've built an economy where we need no one else; with a credit card, you can harvest the world's bounty from the privacy of your room. And we've built a culture much the same -- the dream houses those architects build, needless to say, come with a plasma screen in every room. As long as we can go on earning good money in our own tiny niche, we don't need a helping hand from a soul -- save, of course, from the invisible hand that cups us all in its benign grip.

There are a couple of problems with this fine scenario, of course. One is: we're miserable. --Bill McKibben --Old MacDonald Had A Farmers' Market -- total self-sufficiency is a noble, misguided ideal (In Character)

The laws of Roombotics, published on iRobot's website, are basic ethical rules governing Roomba conduct. The first law states that the device "must not suck up jewelry or other valuables, or through inaction, allow valuables to be sucked up." The second law prescribes that Roomba "must obey vacuuming orders given to it by humans except when such orders would conflict with the first law." The third and final law authorizes a Roomba to "protect its own ability to suction dust and debris as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second law." --Roomba Violates All Three Laws Of Roombotics (The Onion)

Rumours that Chiang, 23, was the mass murderer swept across the world after links to his gun-obsessed blogs were posted on social networking website Facebook and similar sites. More than 180,000 people visited his sites, with many noting the similarities between him and the man described in accounts of the Virginia Tech tragedy.

Some went so far as to jump to a conclusion. "Early 20s, Asian man, vtech student. Fits the bill," wrote one commenter on one of Chiang's blogs. Another simply wrote: "Why why why why why?"

His blogs are decorated with a multitude of photos of Chiang posing with semi-automatic weapons and Russian rifles and training at a marine camp. His last post before the killings showed him proudly standing alongside his collection of 14 Russian Mosin Nagant M44 weapons. --Kenneth Nguyen --Judged by the internet (The Age)

I asked my journalism students today... if they heard gunfire on campus, would they pull out their cell phone camera and head towards it, hoping to get a scoop?

I told them they should get to safety.

When I learned that the young man who was identified as the shooter was an English major, the whole incident became suddenly more real. It shouldn't have -- the human tragedy would not be less heartrending if the student had chosen different coursework. So now, on top of all the other emotions that I'm feeling as I contemplate the event, I feel guilt.

My journalism students are doing next week's podcasts on local reaction to the massacre.

Gamers like me have spent years railing against ill-informed parents and politicians who've blamed games for making kids violent, unimaginative, fat or worse. But now we're in a weird position: We're the first generation that is young enough to have grown up playing games, but old enough to have kids.

So it turns out that, whoops, now we've got to make sober calls about what sort of entertainment is good or bad for our children. And what, precisely, are we deciding? --Clive Thompson --You Grew Up Playing Shoot'em-Up Games. Why Can't Your Kids? (Wired)

On Sunday, April 15, Westmoreland County residents will remember the victims of Nazism by observing Yom HaShoah, the Holocaust Memorial Day. --Interfaith Community to Observe Holocaust Memorial Day (National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education)

I just got back from taking my nine-year-old son to this service, which was very moving.

The service began in the Congregation Emanu-El Israel synagogue, with a moving service that had people in the congregation reading names of victims, resistance fighters, and martyrs (rescuers) of all walks of life.

Next door in a social hall at the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, filmmaker Debbie Brukman showed her documentary, "Perla: The Last of the Seven Dwarfs," a fascinating story of a family of Romanian Jewish family of seven siblings, each no taller than 90 cm, who were deported to Auschwitz. They and their family members were kept alive due to the special interest of the infamous Mengele. The last of the seven siblings died in 2001, and the film is built around an interview with her.

I was surprised that this film doesn't seem to have a web presence anywhere, but this article in the Bonita Daily News has good information about the film.

A CBS News producer was fired and the network apologized after a Katie Couric video essay on libraries was found to be plagiarized from The Wall Street Journal. --Producer for Katie Couric Fired -- For Lifting from 'Wall St Journal'  (AP | Editor & Publisher)

Here's a copy of Jeffrey Zaslow's "Of the Places You'll Go, Is the Library Still One of Them?"

Update: Rosemary Frezza says this is the text she copied from Couric's page before it was taken down and replaced with a correction:

Hi, everyone.

I still remember when I got my first library card, browsing through the stacks for my favorite books.

For kids today, the library is more removed from their lives. It's a last-ditch place to go if they need to find something out...if Google doesn't turn it up FIRST.

Sure, children still like libraries, but books aren't the draw. A recent study found kids use libraries more for DVDs, story hours and computers than for checking out books.

Many kids skip the library altogether and head for the store. Sales of juvenile books rose 60 percent from 2002 to 2005. It's an encouraging sign that kids value reading, but many tech-savvy kids never experience the joy of using the library's shelves as a place to discover new worlds. And students are arriving in college unable to navigate libraries with a Dewey decimal system many have never used.

You local library is still worth checking out, and so are the books.

That's a page from my Notebook.

She also sent me a link to a screencap.

The News Limited story suggested that net-savvy types were giving up on blogging and turning their attention to MySpace. The owner of Myspace is, of course, News Limited. Also conveniently not disclosed was the fact that, according to the Gartner report, use of MySpace has been falling steadily during the past year.

[...]

Jorn Barger says "lazy and sensational" journalists have dismissed blogs as mere diaries, neglecting the social benefit of collecting a network of links to information sources -- archiving and drawing connections between items that would otherwise be scattered and soon-forgotten. Peter Merholz reckons most blogs should probably have a readership of about five people but thinks there's nothing wrong with that. --Dan Silkstone --The blogs that ate cyberspace (The Age)

Students at the George Mason University School of Law received a double whammy last week: First, Dean Daniel D. Polsby sent an e-mail informing them of a "special town hall meeting" scheduled for Monday where they could meet a candidate for a tenure-track job -- a 22-year-old candidate who had once posted online class notes containing a racial epithet while a law student at Harvard in 2002. Then the next day, Polsby canceled the meeting, writing that the controversial would-be professor "is no longer a candidate." --Andy Guess --Words He Can't Escape (Inside Higher Ed)

Yet another example of the power of words -- especially words posted online. I'm often amazed at how frequently students believe that something that they post online won't or shouldn't be found by an audience wider than their original intended readers.

Colleges and universities must inform students about the particular dangers they face online. But if schools actively monitor their students' online activities and students are aware of this policy, they may have a duty of care that includes preventing any illegal acts committed as a result of information posted online.

Thus, schools should inform their students about the potential dangers of using social networking Web sites, but should also be careful not to become liable if the students engage in illegal behavior. --Sheldon Steinbach and Lynn Deavers --The Brave New World of MySpace and Facebook (Inside Higher Ed)

The researchers gave the example of a secondary school in an unnamed northern city, which dropped the Holocaust as a subject for GCSE coursework.

The report said teachers feared confronting 'anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils'.

It added: "In another department, the Holocaust was taught despite anti-Semitic sentiment among some pupils.

"But the same department deliberately avoided teaching the Crusades at Key Stage 3 (11- to 14-year-olds) because their balanced treatment of the topic would have challenged what was taught in some local mosques."

A third school found itself 'strongly challenged by some Christian parents for their treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict-and the history of the state of Israel that did not accord with the teachings of their denomination'. --Laura Clark --Teachers drop the Holocaust to avoid offending Muslims (Daily Mail)

This article (about the UK) gives just enough details to be enraging, but not enough details to invite public action.