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Pledge condemns cheaters to Hell, MTSU students asked to sign
[Quote:]
Frustrated over cheating allegations, one professor at Middle Tennessee State University took the idea of a traditional honor code in a controversial direction.
Suspecting that one of his MBA candidates had just cheated on an exam, Professor Thomas Tang had each of them sign a pledge that said if they had cheated, they’d be condemned to an eternity in Hell.
The pledge went on to say if the student cheated they will “be sorry for the rest of [their] life and go to Hell.”
These are MBA candidates, so they have no soul to begin with… As is shown in this part of the item:
Professor Tang admits, he may have overreacted but says he was particularly because the course had previously covered the chapter on ethics.
Not a semester, or course, no. A chapter. A whole chapter!
Cartoons
Most U.S. youths unfit to serve, data show
[Quote:]
U.S. military-age youth are increasingly unfit to serve — mostly because they’re in such lousy shape.
According to the latest Pentagon figures, a full 35 percent, or more than one-third, of the roughly 31.2 million Americans aged 17 to 24 are unqualified for military service because of physical and medical issues. And, said Curt Gilroy, the Pentagon’s director of accessions, “the major component of this is obesity. We have an obesity crisis in the country. There’s no question about it.”
The Pentagon draws its data from the Centers for Disease Control, which regularly tracks obesity. The steadily rising trend is not good news for military recruiters, despite their recent successes, nor for the overall health of the U.S. population.
In 1987, according to the CDC, a mere 6 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds, or about 1 out of 20, were obese. In 2008, 22 years later, 23 percent of that age group — almost 1 out of 4 — was considered to be obese.
[..]
“Kids are just not able to do push-ups,” Gilroy said. “And they can’t do pull-ups. And they can’t run.”
The reasons are “almost common knowledge, Gilroy said — what he called “the couch potato syndrome” and the widespread elimination of scholastic physical fitness programs.
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Convicted CIA Spy Says “We Broke the Law”
[Quote:]
One of the 23 Americans convicted today by an Italian court says the United States “broke the law” in the CIA kidnapping of a Muslim cleric Abu Omar in Milan in 2003.
“And we are paying for the mistakes right now, whoever authorized and approved this,” said former CIA officer Sabrina deSousa in an interview to be broadcast tonight on ABC’s World News with Charles Gibson.
DeSousa says the U.S. “abandoned and betrayed” her and the others who were put on trial for the kidnapping. She was sentenced in absentia to five years in prison.
JPMorgan paying $700 million to settle SEC charges
[Quote:]
JPMorgan Chase & Co. has agreed to a settlement worth more than $700 million over federal regulators’ charges that it made unlawful payments to friends of public officials to win municipal bond business in Jefferson County, Ala.
[..]
“The transactions were complex but the scheme was simple,” SEC Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami said in a statement. “Senior JPMorgan bankers made unlawful payments to win business and earn fees.”
Corruption this big should get the company disbanded instead.
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Bailed-Out US Banks Setting Stage for Pay Bonanza
[Quote:]
Eight major banks which were at the front of the line for government bailouts have already set aside $117.6 billion this year to pay employees, almost as much as they paid in all of 2008, a Reuters analysis has found.
If the banks continued that pace, they would far surpass what they paid in 2008 though fall short of the watershed paydays of 2007, when the financial sector was still booming, the analysis found.
[..]
“Banks don’t appear to have learned much, at least on the compensation side, from what we’ve been through,” said Cornelius Hurley, director of the Morin Center for Banking and Financial Law at Boston University. “Don’t tell me you are bringing me back to the good old days of yesterday. Getting back to pre-Bear Stearns or Lehman is not fixing it. It is setting us up for another fall.”
If the banks don’t learn, we should. Just one lesson is enough: “let them rot and go bankrupt next time.”
A good pun is its own reword.
Italian court finds CIA agents guilty of kidnapping terrorism suspect
[Quote:]
Twenty-three Americans were tonight convicted of kidnapping by an Italian court at the end of the first trial anywhere in the world involving the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” programme for abducting terrorist suspects.
The former head of the CIA in Milan Robert Lady was given an eight-year jail sentence for his part in the seizure of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, known as Abu Omar, who claimed that he was subsequently tortured in Egypt. Lady’s superior, Jeff Castelli, the then head of the CIA in Italy, and two other Americans were acquitted on the grounds that they enjoyed diplomatic immunity.
But another 21 alleged CIA operatives and a US air force officer were each sentenced to five years in jail. All were tried in absentia and those who were convicted will be regarded as fugitives under Italian law.
Pirate Party Gets Second Seat in European Parliament
[Quote:]
With the Lisbon Treaty being signed by all European Union member states, the Pirate Party has gained another seat in the European Parliament. The second Pirate Party seat will be occupied by the 22 year old Amelia Andersdotter, who will become the youngest Member of the European Parliament.
First of all what the F are you talking about? Saying the MBA students have no soul?????? Who are you to say this? Every human being has a soul…duh! I am a student in the class and everything has been resolved…so we hope.
So you start your argument with “First…” and mention only one point. You then dismiss that point with “duh!” and no arguments whatsoever. Also, your irony meter is clearly broken.
So, yes, I believe that you are indeed a student from that class.
Assuming you meant ‘soul’ this in non-religious terms, which I think was not realized on the 1st comment, I submit signaling out MBA students is an error (..actually a gross generalization). I am sure there are plenty MBAs that will maintain good conscience throughout their careers. The problem of lack of ethics and social conscientiousness paints a wide swath across many formal disciplines and “trades”. Witness the current health care debate in the US for example. Do you think those responsible for the 10s of thousands without health insurance have a soul? I think not. And what about the lobbyists, most of which I doubt have MBAs, engaged to derail it? And then the lawyers… etc. Conclusion – lack of ethics and social conscience is a very broad problem, and, I may add, hardly new under the sun. That of course does not mean we ever should shrink from exposing it wherever and when we can.
There are no souls, metaphorical or otherwise. As Baldrick once said, “Irony is like goldy or silvery, only made of iron.”
People who troop into MBA programs or get legal training are often doing it because it has been a sure ticket for a clever-ish person to get a well-paying job (e.g. lobbyist), in the past. However, once the foundation of a society is undermined, this may become less common.
Very infrequently it is possible for a system to be changed from within. Never waste a good crisis. Repent, sinners!