This curious book, compiled and published by the U.S. Government, is a catalog of examples of ethical failure among federal employees. As explained in the intro:
The Standards of Conduct Office of the Department of Defense General Counsel’s Office has assembled the following selection of cases of ethical failure for use as a training tool. Our goal is to provide DoD personnel with real examples of Federal employees who have intentionally or unwittingly violated the standards of conduct. Some cases are humorous, some sad, and all are real. Some will anger you as a Federal employee and some will anger you as an American taxpayer.
Some of the categories of ethical failure include Abuse of Position, Bribery, Conflicts of Interest, Credit-Card Abuse, Financial Disclosure Violations, Fraud, Gift Violations, Travel Violations, Misuse of Government Resources and Personnel, and Time and Attendance Violations.
You can
download a word document of the entire book for free from the DoD. Or, you can
buy a hard copy from Amazon.
It was last updated in 2015. Can't wait for the post-Trump era edition!
Click each image for greater readability.
Source.
The year is 1482. The Vatican has just released a statement that reads, "ordaining women into the priesthood was a sin on par with pedophilia." Nobody blinks and life goes on... oh, gosh, I'm sorry! It wasn't 1482 after all. That statement was issued this year. Just a few days ago, in fact. You can see how I might have gotten the dates wrong, though, since that kind of misogynous declaration couldn't possibly hold true today. Unfortunately, they really said it. But why?
Author Tim Padgett, in Time magazine, explains it "When any institution is as convinced of its own moral infallibility as the Catholic Church is, it tends to lash out at criticism - especially charges as serious as the priestly rape of children - with Dostoyevskian paranoia. And the church then fortifies its less popular stances, like an all-male priesthood or the condemnation of gays, in the process becoming even more uncompromising." And don't start thinking that Mr. Padgett is against the Church, or Christianity, in any way. He was sitting in mass, watching his daughter serve as an altar girl, on Sunday, when he got the idea for his article.
A Lawyer in Jolly old Britain has invented
a new method of killing lobsters. The "Crusta-Stun" (presumably a shortening of crustacean and stun gun) will retail for
about £2,000. That's around $3,300. Yikes.
This "humane" way to dispatch your lobster is supposedly even sanctioned by PETA. If we invented machines big enough for cows, does that mean beef's back on the menu too?
The image above originally comes from
MAKE
A 22-year-old, who is using the pseudonym Natalie Dylan for safety reasons, is going through a legal brothel in Nevada to sell her virginity. Why? She's got bills to pay, of course. Dylan says she's already taken a polygraph test to prove her virginal status, and is also willing to undergo a medical exam.
The Story. Let's hope she never did any horseback riding when she was younger.
Let us all learn from Jeff's struggle the true meaning of popularity and hewing to our ideals. And just remember: "Grandma's going to be aaall RIGHT!"