Resources / Ripples & Wipeouts

For the New Year, we have no answers, but lots of questions.  Consider this set, which we “ripped from the headlines,” and feel free to add some of your own questions in our Comments section.

1) If you clone your dog, which means the new puppy has a genetic make up identical to the “donor dog,” can you expect that puppy to behave exactly like your original pet?  Is it, in effect, the same dog?

2) What about identical human twins?  Which is the clone?

3) Is each individual – human or animal – truly unique, independent of its DNA?  What about souls?  Click for the Clone Story

3) If a terrorist group in Mexico were lobbing missiles across the border into Texas, what do you think the US would do?  MIddle East story

4) Is Big Pharma’s voluntary moratorium on giving doctors branded trinkets like pens and mugs going to diminish the industry’s influence on the medications that those docs prescribe?

5) Of all the drugs that are introduced each year, how many really do something different or better than existing medications? 

6) What percentage of the retail price of a new pharmaceutical goes for advertising? Big Pharma story

7) Do federal judges, including members of the Supreme Court, deserve a pay raise?

8) Should the increased social status and other privileges of the position be considered part of judges’ compensation?

9) How does the current economic situation impact decisions on raises for government employees?  Judges’ Compensation story

10) Oprah says she gained her weight back due to a thyroid condition.  Isn’t that what every fat person says? 

11) Is losing weight just a matter of self-discipline – eat less and work out more – or are there things about weight gain that modern medicine just doesn’t understand? Weight Loss story

12) If Caroline Kennedy gets Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat, will that be consistent with what most people consider “American values?” Caroline Kennedy story

13) What does it say about stewardship and due diligence by boards of directors when several nonprofits and even an important foundation go out of business because of bad investments with Bernard Madoff?

14) What kind of training should nonprofit board members receive to help them make sound financial judgments and investment decisions? Madoff story

15) Should highly charged historical subjects – the Holocaust for example – receive sympathetic treatment when addressed in films, plays, novels and the like? 

16) What about historical accuracy?  And what is historical accuracy anyway?  How do we know?  Holocast Film story

17) Was it reasonable for NYS Gov. David Patterson to be angry about SNL’s portrayal of him as clumsy and bumbling because of his legal blindness? 

18) Is it off limits for comedians to make fun of people with disabilities?  What about gender, race, sexual orientation, national origin, etc.?  Where do we draw the line?  Is there a line at all? SNL Patterson story

19) Should Facebook continue to remove photos of breast-feeding women when nipples are shown? 

20) The media routinely show photos of male nipples, as in photos of Barack Obama at the beach or pictures of transman Thomas Beatie (who birthed a child and is again pregnant) on his Facebook Cause page.  Why is that acceptable when photos of female nipples are not? Facebook story