I signed up to the bone marrow donation register at a drive at my university. Although I always intended to go through with the donation if I ever matched for somebody, I can’t say I believed that I would hear anything more of it. I actually remember one of my medic friends at the sign […]
Read more "Donating bone marrow – it’s more fun than it sounds (I promise)"Imagine a farm. You probably picture sunny fields; a big green tractor; a ruddy, good humoured farmer; a trusty sheepdog. To most people, this is not an unpalatable scene. It is to this image that people appeal when they say that ‘one bad day’ ain’t so bad for the animal. You wouldn’t feel so hard […]
Read more "So here’s the thing with ‘one bad day’: How factory farming ruined ‘ethical’ meat"I am vegan, and I think that everyone else should probably be vegan too. This position is a difficult one to reconcile with not being a dick, or considered one. Refusing baked goods someone has brought in at work, being difficult to cook for, just ordering chips when out for a meal, all of it […]
Read more "It’s fine to be vegan, deal with it."The ‘trolley problem’ has served to torment the friends of amateur philosophers for decades. First articulated in its modern form by Philippa Foot in 1967, the quandary is designed to explore basic moral principals underpinning utilitarian ethics. Imagine yourself in a train yard, standing before a lever which can change the route of oncoming trains. […]
Read more "How to program a moral machine"With the pulling last week of the beleaguered American Health Care Act (AHCA) by Paul Ryan from a vote in congress, the limits of the republican party’s loyalty to Trump seem for the first time to have been properly shaken. A close ideological parity of republicans to their latest president has never been very believable […]
Read more "Trouble in Trumpland: Does the AHCA’s failure mark the beginning of the end?"No penalty on earth will stop people from stealing, if it is their only way of getting food. It would be far more to the point to provide everyone with some means of livelihood’ These words, penned half a millennium ago by Thomas More in Utopia is the first recorded advocation of the concept of […]
Read more "Has the time come for universal basic income?"
So it goes 