By David Crary from The Washington Post. "Vancouver, British Columbia -- A carbon-neutral torch relay. A multimillion dollar partnership with Canada's aboriginals. Bouquets for medal winners made by former prostitutes and drug addicts. Even before the first event - and the first big protest...

By Mark Lynas from New Statesman. "In my view, the historical responsibility question is an unassailable argument for adaptation financing. It is a clear legal principle that if you cause damage you must pay compensation. (Indeed, the $100bn in initial financing put on the table at Copenhagen was...

From The Economist "What do the following have in common: the bar code, congestion charging, the cervical Pap smear and the internet? All emerged from work done at America’s pre-eminent research universities. The central contention of Jonathan Cole’s book is that these mighty institutions are “creative...

by Evan Lerner from Seed Magazine "Today, down in the descriptively named Research Triangle in North Carolina, more than 250 scientists, journalists, bloggers, programmers, and multi-hyphenated combinations thereof are planning the future of science communication on the web. (Practicing what it...

Interview by Nathan Gardels for New Perspectives Quarterly Czeslaw Milosz, the great Polish poet and essayist who died in 2004, was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1980. Just after the publication of A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry and his memoir, Road-side Dog...

by Mike Barrowcliffe in Times Online "Professor Gail Heyman, of the University of California, questioned 130 students and their parents about parental lying. She was surprised to find that more than 80 per cent of parents lied at some point, even those who insisted to their children that it was...

This column makes some interesting observations and assertions about morality and the virtues in politics. "Democratic citizenship is a decidedly moral undertaking; that is to say, republics are founded on the possibility of public virtue. It is essential, however, to distinguish public virtue from...

Maui Hudson Ethical review is an integral part of the process of developing research and considering issues associated with the production of knowledge. It is part of a system that primarily legitimises western traditions of inquiry and reinforces western assumptions about knowledge and its benefit to...

Jessica M. Salerno, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Margaret C. Stevenson, Tisha R. A. Wiley, Bette L. Bottoms, Roberto Vaca Jr., Pamela S. Pimentel In three studies, we investigated support for applying sex offender registry laws to juveniles. Family law attorneys supported registry laws less for juveniles than...

John Cottingham The virtue of integrity does not appear explicitly in either the Aristotelian or the Judaeo-Christian list of virtues, but elements of both ethical systems implicitly acknowledge the importance of a unified and integrated life. This paper argues that integrity is indispensible for a good...

By Casey LaFrance and Jennifer M Allen This study focuses on one arena of public administration in which the balancing act between various accountability considerations is especially visible: local law enforcement management, and one of the many accountability conflicts that law enforcement CEOs face...

James R. Otteson Adam Smith raised a series of obstacles to effective large-scale social planning. In this paper, I draw these Smithian obstacles together to construct what I call the “Great Mind Fallacy,” or the belief that there exists some person or persons who can overcome the obstacles Smith raises...

Stanley Wolpert History has illuminated every field of human endeavor—science as well as the arts—embracing countless modern disciplines, expanding its focus on change over time to comprehend entire nations, cultures, and civilizations, each far more complex than any individual life. But at its best...

Russell E. Johnson , Kyle W. Groff , Meng U. Taing Although organizational commitment is a multidimensional construct, researchers have tended to examine the independent effects of its different forms. However, doing so creates potential problems of model misspecification and under-prediction if interactions...

Keith R. Brown Moral boundaries are often conceptualized as an expression of an individual's identity or belief system. However, social forces greatly influence how and when consumers activate moral boundaries. Utilizing a dramaturgical perspective, this article shows that the activation of moral...

Nancy E. Snow Abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq confront us with the question of how seemingly ordinary soldiers could have perpetrated harms against prisoners. In this essay I argue that a Stoic approach to the virtues can provide a bulwark against the social and personal forces that can lead to abusive...

Felipe De Brigard, Eric Mandelbaum, David Ripley Some theorists think that the more we get to know about the neural underpinnings of our behaviors, the less likely we will be to hold people responsible for their actions. This intuition has driven some to suspect that as neuroscience gains insight into...