Tag Archives: ethics

On the morality of a carbon-intensive lifestyle

Nils Gilman looks at the morality (or lack thereof) of our carbon-intensive way of life, by way of analogy with antebellum slavery.  The average (mean) global citizen today wields roughly 20 times the intrinsic power of a single human being … Continue reading

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Womb for Rent

Surrogate pregnancies are becoming common in India.  For roughly the cost of having your own baby in the US healthcare system, you can outsource the task of giving birth to a Gujarati woman.  It sounds like there’s a wide range … Continue reading

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Markets and Morals

A good talk from Chautauqua on the interaction between markets and morals.  Some interesting examples of morally ambiguous markets: countries paying one another to take on refugee acceptance obligations and the outsourcing pregnancy to impoverished surrogate mothers in Gujarat, India.  … Continue reading

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A Thousand Splendid Power Plants

Xcel Energy’s Valmont East Terraforming Station in Boulder, CO. As a side effect, it powers all the lights you see in the background. James Watt’s industrial revolution was fired by coal, is fired by coal, and shall be fired by … Continue reading

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Links for the week of March 4th, 2010

If you want to follow my shared links in real time instead of as a weekly digest, head over to Delicious. You can search them there easily too.

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A Letter to Richard Rhodes

Dear Richard Rhodes, Thank you for writing The Making of the Atomic Bomb.  It was beautiful, and terrible, in the way I imagine a nuclear detonation might be.  It deeply changed the way I think and feel about history, about … Continue reading

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