Thursday, April 25, 2013

Saudi Arabia seeking to prevent women from seeing handsome men: will we soon see unisex burqas?

There surely must be more to this story. Someone powerful must have wanted to get rid of these men, and I doubt that it had anything to do with their appearance.

But if male attractiveness becomes a real problem in the future, the religious police could simply hand out paper bags, with two holes to see through, to any men they deem excessively good looking. It would be cheap, and not as miserably hot as the heavy veils and clothing that women are forced to wear.


Saudi Arabia Reportedly Deports Men for Being ‘Too Handsome’
By Melissa Locker
Time
April 17, 2013

It’s a good problem to have, but it’s still a problem for three men who have reportedly been deported from Saudi Arabia for being “too handsome.”

The men were visiting Saudi Arabia from the United Arab Emirates to attend the annual Jenadrivah Heritage & Cultural Festival in Riyadh. They were apparently minding their own business when members of Saudi Arabia’s religious police entered the pavilion and forcibly removed them from the festival. Their offense? They were considered “too handsome” to stay for fear that women would find them irresistible, according to the Arabic-language newspaper Elaph.

(MORE: Saudi Prince Backs Letting Women Drive)

“A festival official said the three Emiratis were taken out on the grounds they are too handsome and that the Commission [for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice] members feared female visitors could fall for them,” Elaph reported this week, as quoted on the website Arabian Business. The Emirati men were subsequently deported to Abu Dhabi. In Saudi Arabia women are largely prohibited from interacting with unrelated males.

Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke in 2012 paid $20.7 million

Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke in 2012 paid $20.7 million
AP
April 22, 2013

NEW YORK The compensation of Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) CEO Mike Duke increased 14 percent to $20.7 million in 2012, mainly because his performance-based cash bonus swelled, according to an Associated Press review of the retailer's regulatory filing.

Duke received a base salary of $1.3 million, up 4 percent from the year-ago period. His stock awards of $13.6 million rose 4 percent from the previous year. But Duke's performance-based cash bonus rose to $4.4 million in 2012, up from $2.9 million in the previous fiscal year.

Wal-Mart says loss likely from bribery investigations
More pension funds sue Walmart over bribery scheme
Lawmakers: Walmart CEO in 2005 knew about bribery

The AP calculation is based on a regulatory filing...

Sunday, April 21, 2013

What is ethics?

What is Ethics?
Developed by Manuel Velasquez, Claire Andre, Thomas Shanks, S.J., and Michael J. Meyer
Santa Clara University

...Ethics is two things.

First, ethics refers to well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues. Ethics, for example, refers to those standards that impose the reasonable obligations to refrain from rape, stealing, murder, assault, slander, and fraud. Ethical standards also include those that enjoin virtues of honesty, compassion, and loyalty. And, ethical standards include standards relating to rights, such as the right to life, the right to freedom from injury, and the right to privacy. Such standards are adequate standards of ethics because they are supported by consistent and well-founded reasons.

Secondly, ethics refers to the study and development of one's ethical standards. As mentioned above, feelings, laws, and social norms can deviate from what is ethical. So it is necessary to constantly examine one's standards to ensure that they are reasonable and well-founded. Ethics also means, then, the continuous effort of studying our own moral beliefs and our moral conduct, and striving to ensure that we, and the institutions we help to shape, live up to standards that are reasonable and solidly-based...