'The credit score of the future'

Anybody who's ever spent any significant time on the web has asked the question: exactly how much does the Internet know about me? Most everyone has experienced those annoying targeted ads in the sidebar. But after reading an article in Newsweek on the topic, I was surprised to find out the extent to which personal information is being collected. The article imagines a future where anyone can access a wealth of your personal information from the web :

Think HMOs, loan applications, romantic partners. Let’s say you’ve been hitting up a burger joint twice a week, and you happen to joke, in a post on Twitter, how all the meat must be wreaking havoc on your cholesterol. Suddenly your health-insurance premiums go up. Now imagine your job is listed on Salary.com; your vacation preferences linked to Orbitz. Think how this could affect your social standing, or your ability to negotiate a raise or apply for a loan.

We talk in class about the FBI tracking seemingly innocent people without warrants. To me this trend seems to be a similar breach of privacy. What Internet sites you visit should be protected by law the First Amendment as a form of free speech. Insurance providers and employers should not be allowed to discriminate based on this information. More than anything this article definitely makes me think twice about where I go on the Internet.

Meta-Post

Looking back at the blog posts that I've done this quarter the first thing that jumps out at me is my tendency to examine the philosophical side of our class discussions. I tend to pose ideas and questions that address why things are the way they are. The two posts where I really did this are "The easiest moral question we've ever had to face" and "'Made with Organic Oats and Soybeans' (And a Bit of Philosophy)". I've said things like, "when scripture is morally wrong, where do we turn for moral guidance?", "the common belief in America is that the most efficient and time-effective way is the best" and "What if the Neo-Nazi movement could buy the rights to the history of the Holocaust?". I wasn't surprised by this trend in my writing; it's usually how I like to think about things. But I have to ask myself: by focusing on the big picture am I making my posts too impersonal and therefore unattractive to my fellow classmates?
The answer, I believe, is yes and no. In "The easiest moral question..." I keep it strictly philosophical. The post, while intellectually stimulating, could comes off as lifeless and cold. "Made with Organic Oats..." on the other hand wrapped my philosophical musings in a nice personal story about a hurried breakfast. That's probably why it got two great comments and "The easiest moral question..." got zero. This is definitely something I'll keep in mind for later posts.
Please assess this post: 'The easiest moral question we've ever had to face'

Benjamin Darling

Our focus on slavery in class recently reminded me of one of my favorite songs (imbedded above). "The Story of Benjamin Darling, Part 1" is by State Radio off of their 2007 album, Year of the Crow. The song is a retelling of a true New England legend about the slave, Benjamin Darling. In the late 1700's he was enslaved to a captain of a boat that traversed the east coast. When the boat was hit by a storm Benjamin saved his master as the boat was wrecked. In return the master freed Benjamin and gave him land on Malaga Island on the mouth of the New Meadows River in Maine. Ben started a family here which eventually grew into an isolated mixed-race community called the Maroon Society. Meanwhile nearby Phippsburg, Maine was becoming a popular summer vacation spot for rich New Englanders. To make the town more attractive the people of Phippsburg decided to rid themselves of the Maroon Society. They attacked Malaga Island by night and killed or sold into slavery all of its inhabitants.
Besides making a great song this story, while only pertinent to a small group of people, has a lot of historical importance. It disproves a number of misconceptions about slavery: that all slaves were field hands tortured by their owners, that there were no significant black communities during slavery, and that all white Northerners were sympathetic to blacks.

'The easiest moral question we've ever had to face'

Earlier this week I found enough free-time to watch one of my favorite shows, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The episode concluded as always with a one-on-one interview with a guest. This night's interviewee was Sam Harris author of The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values. It's a very compelling interview. However, a very small portion is relevant to class. When discussing why he believes science can answer moral questions as well as, if not better than, religion Harris says, "The God of Abraham gets slavery wrong. Slavery is probably the easiest moral question we've ever had to face...[Scripture] doesn't get that right."
Not being familiar with the scriptures that he is talking about, I have to take Harris' word, whose job it is to study and write about religion, as truth. While most everyone would agree that slavery is immoral, this quote made me think of a more modern debate. In my mind the same thing can be said about the interpretation of the Bible that condemns gay marriage. Those who use the Bible to support the movement to ban gay marriage need only look at the example of slavery to see that conventional wisdom can be greater than religious doctrine in moral debate.
The daunting and complicated question these examples pose, and which I now pose to you, is when scripture is morally wrong, where do we turn for moral guidance? What, if any, other guiding principles do we share to tell us when something is wrong or right? Harris would argue that the answer is science but I don't fully buy that. Then again I pretty much undecided on all aspects of this question. Slavery may have been the easiest moral question; however, it begets one of the tougher ones.