A Class Assignment For Business Law

On By southwerkIn business ethics4 Comments
A Class Assignment For Business Law

Extra Credit Class Assignments

James Pilant’s Business Law Class

014-1All these are voluntary for extra credit. If you do one, it has to be turned in both in hard copy and as an attachment to an e-mail.

Each of these assignments is worth 10 points. Watch the film and then answer the questions attached to the link.

I want you to watch the entire film

Each link is to an online video of the film which is totally free. If you have a service like Netlfix or Hulu and you can get the film there that will be fine.

The question I want you to answer is listed beneath the film.

How much should you write? Okay, look, you’re not twelve. A yes or no response followed by a single sentence will get you nothing. Write it so that if you were another person reading it, you would realize that the author has seen the whole movie and had given serious thought to the questions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYKijBENJ78

Love Affair

Charles Boyar has two choices in the film, he can marry a rich socialite and live a life of ease or he can pursue a relationship with a woman without independent means and spend the rest of his life trying to make a precarious living as a painter. Which does he choose and why? Now, explain what decision you would make (choose whichever character you wish). How does his decision and your decision stack up against modern economic thought as expressed in the media?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpOtNRGfYzc

Persuasion

Once upon a time, a well placed woman of wealth and breeding is persuaded by her friends and family to not marry a handsome captain from the navy. Ten years later he is wealthy and her family’s fortune has dissipated.

The captain can now choose younger, prettier women with better social status. Who does he choose? Why do you think he made that choice? Once again, tell me whether or not under current popular romantic ideas, who should he marry and why?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG1QmTpGTrs

Jane Eyre

Does beauty allow women to change social class, to move up in the world, so to speak? And if so, what if the woman is plain? Does that make a difference? Can a woman marry up in social class based on ability? Why or why not? Does the story strike you as realistic? Could that really happen? Would you do what they did?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cf0-GsXDzI

Rebecca

Rebecca is given a place in high society. How does she adapt? Would you have made the same decisions that she made? Do you believe her husband’s story? Why or why not?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmdPj_XbF30

Pygmalion

Watch the film and answer this question, would it have been better if Higgins had left her in the gutter?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY1U-a2lWH4

Cyborg She

Our hero uses time travel to solve his problems in the past. What is more important to him, love or money? But what of his cyborg love interest, what is most important to her? And remember she isn’t always what you think she is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q6WxPnDLGA&list=PL853F7DF3A248A315

Japan Sinks

(This one is in parts.)

In the film, the Japanese react as a people (as a whole) to the upcoming disaster but are saved by an individual’s sacrifice. Is there a conflict between solidarity of the population and the importance of the individual? Also what if he had acted with the morals of a Wall Street Banker, shouldn’t he happily abandon his country and his friends while cashing in on the underwater salvage of Japanese treasures?

http://vimeo.com/39063669

Ninotchka

At the time the film was made, there was little really known about the Soviet Union, but you know a lot about capitalism from having lived in the United States. Is capitalism portrayed accurately in the film? Why or why not?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gqwXeHI85A

Father Brown, the Detective (1954)

Why isn’t Father Brown exclusively focused on stopping the theft? What are his motives in this movie? Please explain.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJKWguqabUU

Young Mr. Lincoln

What is Lincoln after? Where does his ambition take him? Watch the film and from what Henry Fonda playing Lincoln says about himself and what he wants to do, describe his ethical motivations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLVh5o-k2v0

The Mark of Zorro

(This one is silent.)

Why doesn’t our hero remain in Spain? After all, there are many women there and he has plenty of money.

Watch the film and discover from what he says, what his motives are.

Why would anyone want to be a hero? Wouldn’t it be better  to be rich? Why or why not?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKpA0dWyTyo&index=2&list=PLJJ7npDpPJ_OWOfitlWNjdBnKgpRWJmH-

Windstruck

Take a look at Korean culture through the lens of this film, and tell me the differences between America and Korea when it comes to capitalism?

Why Pay Women Less?

On By southwerkIn business ethics
Why Pay Women Less?

The Equal Opportunity Employment Commission has filed a lawsuit against ten oil companies for paying women less than men for the same job. Take a moment and look at this quote with a link to the source – which I will follow with my own thoughts.

These Companies Are Paying Women Less Than Men, According To Lawsuit | ThinkProgress
p0067-image
Why Pay Women Less?

The company, which has employed at least 37 clerks since 2010, has also been paying female clerks less than men over that time, according to the complaint. Yet the agency says both genders were doing “substantially equal work under similar working conditions.”

For example, a male clerk with one year of accountant experience and 11 years as a store manager with some bookkeeping experience was paid a starting wage of $17.74 an hour in 2010 and eventually paid $21 an hour, according to the complaint. Yet a woman hired at the same time as him who had 17 years of accounting experience made just $15.07 when she was hired and only ever got up to $16.93, more than a $3 per hour pay gap. Another woman with 10 years experience running her own business and five years bookkeeping experience was also hired at a lower starting wage and only made it to $17.91 an hour by 2013.

via These Companies Are Paying Women Less Than Men, According To Lawsuit | ThinkProgress.

Okay, why?

These companies undoubtedly use computers to calculate salaries and benefits and obviously paying women less than men is going to show up statistically and must be well known in the company. There are fields in which it is possible to claim that men “deserve” more than women, although I have serious doubts about those claims. But what is the field of endeavor here in which women are paid less – accounting. Are numbers subject to physical strength? Can the figures on a page be subject to testosterone influence? Can male posturing move an apostrophe in a large number? I think not.

So, if there is no performance based reason for paying women less, what is it? I have three theories: greed, hatred or custom. If it is greed, you pay women less because it is profitable, there’s money in it. And while that does make logical sense, I’m not really comfortable saying that is the reason. What about custom? The practice of paying women less is quite common and often done throughout entire industries. We can say with assurance that throughout American history women have been paid less (or not allowed to work at all). So, both custom and greed make sense. Greed provides motive and custom provides justification.

I don’t know if those are sufficient reasons. A couple of years ago, I was working on an article about the Fukushima Nuclear disaster. There is a Japanese web site that covers continuing developments and the owners are kind enough to translate a good part of it into English. They said that there had been a change in the birth rate between males and females in the area. I thought that was interesting and might be a good lead. So, I did an Internet search. I never did find out if the numbers had changed. I was swept into a world of Internet misogyny, the likes of which I had no idea existed. The first thousand search results were male oriented web sites explaining how men were oppressed by women, how stupid women were and how to manipulate women. I’m pleased to say that the search engines have changed and those web sites no longer come up on a neutral search. If you want to read that kind of thing, you’ll have to look for it more directly.

I have come to suspect that many males consciously and probably many unconsciously resent women in the workplace and a salary differential is only one aspect of that disdain. Obviously this is just my theory attempting to explain why paying women less is so common.

Business ethics like any discussion of morality and human decisions sometimes leaves you pondering the mysteries of the human heart. Why do we do the things we do, especially when they seem to make little sense.

The corporate format is a human creation that exercises enormous power but sometimes it seems as if our understanding of what is right and wrong has not risen to the same level as our organizational talents.

James Pilant

How Do They Get Caught?

On By southwerkIn business ethics
How Do They Get Caught?

One of the joys of teaching is how clever students can be and I have been and continue to be very fortunate in the students who have come to my classes. One day I was explaining how it is illegal to fire someone based on race or sex and a hand goes up. My student goes, “Professor Pilant, since we live in a fire at will nation, how would anyone ever get caught firing someone over sex or race when they could always say they fired them for something else?”

How do they get caught?
How do they get caught?

And I got to tell them the truth, businesses get caught because when they fire someone it is not unusual for them to tell them directly or put it in writing why they did so even when it is illegal. My class was bewildered by this. After all, aren’t these defendants often large corporations with their own lawyers? So once again I told them the truth, many managers fire without ever consulting with the legal department or in the case of small businesses without consulting with an attorney even if they have one on retainer. This didn’t help. They became even more bewildered.

So, I said this – “We live in a nation where businessmen are thought well of. They are given an automatic level of respect whether or not they deserve it. They appear on the covers of magazines. PR firms write endless text glorifying their lives and they are considered to be authorities on everything from education to government to foreign policy. I saw a few weeks ago where a community college’s future plans were made by a set of businessmen (referred to as community leaders) with the help of the President of the school and no one else, not a student, not a professor, not a public official, not an expert in the field of education, just businessmen. That’s how high that respect can go. And they believe it. And believing it they feel they understand the world in a way that others cannot. So, they do things without checking because they believe they already know what is right and correct.”

I would like to note that I ran the search “firing pregnant women” on Yahoo-search. The first search result said this subject falls into employment discrimination law and the second one listed the congressional act making firing women for being pregnant illegal. So, the story with its quote below is astonishing since even the thinnest internet search uncovers the correct answer.

That people who run companies especially small businesses deserve respect is in my mind, a foregone conclusion. It must be hard to do a lot of the tasks involved in creating and maintaining a business. But we need to remember the lesson of the ancient Greeks of the dangers of hubris, overwhelming pride. It is good to have confidence in what you are doing, except that according to the Greeks living an examined life also meant knowing when you’ve found your limits and going no further. Many a Greek story revolves around people destroying themselves because of their pride.

There are real limitations in the training and experience of those in the field of business. They are certainly valuable citizens but there are many kinds of knowledge, kinds of experience and valid ways of looking at the world and its problems that are outside the world of business.

James Pilant

 

Nonprofit Ordered To Pay $75,000 Over ‘No Pregnancy In The Workplace’ Policy | ThinkProgress

United Bible Fellowship Ministries, Inc., which provides housing and care to people with disabilities, will have to pay a former employee $75,000 for firing her after she became pregnant to settle a lawsuit brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

The organization has had a “no pregnancy in the workplace” policy in place that meant it fired anyone who became pregnant and refused to hire anyone applying for a position while pregnant. It admitted that the former employee, Sharmira Johnson, performed her job as a resource technician providing care to residents well and didn’t have any medical restrictions that would keep her from carrying out her duties. Yet it fired her, arguing it was justifiable in order to ensure her safety, that of her unborn baby, and the safety of its clients.

via Nonprofit Ordered To Pay $75,000 Over ‘No Pregnancy In The Workplace’ Policy | ThinkProgress.

Four Years of Weed?

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Four Years of Weed?

Ben Stein is opposed to making college free because “college is just a chance to get high.” (A small part of the reporting article is quoted with a link below the essay. jp) This is a kind of journalism, but only a kind. It was on  a news program and it’s designed not to inform, not to enlighten but to shock and, in this case, denigrate millions of American who go, have gone or will go to college. I assume this will be good for ratings but it doesn’t add much to the discussion of what should be done about rising tuition and student loan burdens.

I teach college classes. Most of my students work and many have families. Regular attendance in both my classes and at their jobs tend to suggest that they are not spending an inordinate amount of time using drugs. Among certain circles there is an amazing delight in denigrating young people today calling them entitled, talking about helicopter parenting, talking about how lazy they are, etc. etc. and on. There are differences between today’s students and those in the previous generations. I did some teaching in the distance past and those students (1993) were more questing and intellectually curious about the world than my current students but that’s pretty easy to chalk up to the current addiction to standardized testing. This generation is quite good at sucking up facts and giving them back to you. Their high school education pushed them in that direction. I can’t blame them for that kind of radical re-programming.

I have some familiarity with Ben Stein and I think he sincerely believes what he is saying. And what’s more, I think he enjoys saying it. He sees himself as a provocateur telling difficult truths to a “politically correct” society. But while what he says is shocking, that doesn’t mean that it has any validity and since taking verbal potshots at the current generation seems to be massive public sport in this country, I don’t see political correctness acting as a defense in any way.

It would have been nice and ethical business for there to have been an intelligent discussion of the serious issue of free college or even an intelligent discussion of college drug use. Be we didn’t get either one here.

In a society professing democratic values, the presentation of ideas in conflict is important. But here we have a news program catering to a particular demographic by denigrating and slandering an entire generation of Americans. This is not ethical.

James Pilant

i_224Addicting Info – Ben Stein Against Making College Free: Poor Kids Only Care About Getting High (VIDEO)

Stein ended his rant by saying that although discipline and education seem to be the only things (according to him) that stand in the way of poor people securing middle-class status, he doesn’t like the idea of education being free because college is mostly just “four years of smoking the neon-green chronic.”

Noting that the interview was taking a turn for the worst, Cavuto jumped in and said, “Look at the time here. Look at the time!” Stein completely missed the verbal cue, and added that for many kids, “college is just a chance to get high! Why are we going to subsidize it?”

via Addicting Info – Ben Stein Against Making College Free: Poor Kids Only Care About Getting High (VIDEO).

Psychological Hostage by Kelsey Palmer

On By southwerkIn Editorial

(Writing a guest column today is Kelsey Palmer.)

Psychological Hostage

Abuse, malefaction, molestation, violation, physical, mental, trauma, Rape. This is not an unknown word among us. Often we would hear it being yelled by teenage boys in the crowded halls of high school, but what was fun for them to yell is not fun at all. Sadly, it is not an unknown action to too many of us. Usually women. Many many women that really mean “yes” when they say “no”.  Really mean “continue” when they “stop”. No! Some say they deserved it. Others say they led the guy on. Call them Femi-Nazis for trying to bring to justice a criminal act against them! How dare you. How dare you all for thinking in the slightest that this is a small matter. No! Rape is a criminal act or is it? It leaves scars, physical and emotional. Then there are women who think they can cry wolf when there are so many who actually see it.

!!@@#dddddd444193mIn light of rape, it is a criminal act. When someone (usually male) chooses to molest another (usually female) it is not out of the kindness in their hearts. It is not them looking out for the other. It is someone deciding to take away the freedom and rights the other has. That is why it is a crime! It is in violation of the rights we hold as humans, but you would never guess that from the way the law enforcers handle it. Thousands of unsolved cases and why? Because they are too expensive and time consuming. What about what this person had to go through? What about the turmoil this person has to face, the fear that their rapist is still out there lurking in the shadows. I would like to say I am proud of congress for finally doing something about this, but this should have been worked through years ago. Before the rape kits began piling up to extreme heights. Of course, like many other things America was slow to realize that this was an important matter and because of this many have suffered.

In continuation of my sentence before, many have suffered. No one can truly understand the psychological difficulties that come with a scene such as this until they have lived through it themselves. The trauma that comes with it at times can be more than one can bear.  It makes a person want lock themselves into a dark room, curl into a ball, and never allow anyone to come near them again. One could never understand the power of the mind until years after an event something as simple as a scent could bring it all hurtling back. Stuck in your mind till you forcibly distract yourself. It can cause a perfectly normal person to feel like a monster because of the horrible thoughts and ideas that come to their mind. To do to others what was done to them. Some are lucky enough to bypass these mind games and others have to shove them out until they are gone. Suffering in every step of the process because they have been broken just because some man decided it would be fun. And because of that man one could think that they will never be worthy of another because they have been used and abused like some dog’s toy with no soul, life, or future. Definitely no ability to make decisions for themselves. There are scars that exist far beyond the eye can see and the victims of a crime like this have them. So they go to the police in the hopes to find some peace of mind, but instead they are greeted by the high prices of rape kits. You might as well stamp a sign on the door saying “Have you been raped? Sorry, we won’t help you.” Even if a girl has the ability to do a rape kit all that will happen is it will be thrown into the back of a lab to collect dust until years later a bored detective decides to give it a shot. It still might not be that girl’s kit though, since there is a pile of these kits from over the years. To conclude, I feel that if America would get a grip and find a heart this would have been solved already because they would understand the pain that came with these crimes.

My last thought for this paper is that women should not cry wolf unless they see one. What I mean by this is that if a woman has sex and then regrets it they should not file rape. If a teen has sex, but does not want to get in trouble they should not file rape. If a woman is not raped, they should not say they are. I am not saying this is always the case because it rarely is, but it should not happen. When this happens, people are less likely to believe those who are actually raped. When women who are raped go unnoticed all of the psychological issues I spoke of before only progress because they need help! If there are so many cases of true rape that we already “do not have time for” we definitely do not have time for those that are not rape at all.

To conclude my paper, rape is a horrible thing that must be stopped in some way or another or at least diminished. Women going unnoticed and criminals continuing to be free is not the American dream I had in mind and I know that many people feel the same. These women need peace, help, and the ability to recover from the pain that has been forced upon them. This is not an easy task to undergo due to the fact that there are so many victims, but I know that if we just try to help them and solve their cases not only will they have more peace, but we will show the men that there WILL be consequences for these actions. In this way they will hopefully think twice before making such a damaging and idiotic decision.

Kelsey Palmer

Slate is Tedious

On By southwerkIn business ethics
Slate is Tedious
Slate is Tedious
Slate is Tedious

Today, I just gave up. I looked at the endless columns and Jackson Pollack arrangement of files, and said “Screw it, I’ll just read something else.”

That was my morning visit to the web site for Slate. I refer to it as a web site but that is overt praise for it. A proper nomenclature for the Internet would have some term for blindingly inaccessible sites, some short hand phrase that means “We hate you. Go away.”

Slate has some of the best writing on the Internet. Rebecca Schuman is magnificent. Few writers have ever had such a grasp of the contradictions and weirdness of the academic world. Dahlia Lithwick knows the law and can write about it with power and intelligence. Amanda Marcotte and her take on women’s issues is provocative and fun. And so on. But they are in different spots all over the web site, often multiple times.

Slate is a checkerboard designed by a madman, a psychopath with a hatred for good writing and humanity in general. The squares are colorful and, I’m sure, eminently satisfying for a four year old. As you go down the page, the squares change in order and size and importance and your eye tires of looking from side to side, up and down, and diagonally trying to make sense of this rubric’s cube’s disorder.

Before I read Slate each morning, I read the Guardian and Salon. Salon is my favorite. The writing isn’t better but going down the single column of offerings I see everything I want and pick out what I find important. But the Guardian is gold. It features a very high level of complexity and a wide variety of topics. Yet, they are presented in an intelligent, compelling format which is a joy to navigate. If I were one of the exalted royalty publishing at Slate, I would choose something like that.

But I have faith that they will continue on their present course and that it will only change with the people running the magazine are changed. That site cost a lot of money to set up and they’re not going to “waste it,” although they already have.

Will I read Slate tomorrow?

Yes. Rebecca, Dahlia and Amanda’s writing is calling for me and I will not resist the pull. And I have discovered that if I drink an extra cup of coffee, something iced and sweet, it improves my mood enough to get through the site. So, tomorrow, I go with full knowledge, once more, to the abyss.

James Pilant

 

Bruce Weinstein’s New Book

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics5 Comments
Bruce Weinstein’s New Book

Bruce Weinstein is also known as “The Ethics Guy.” I consider him a friend and enjoy and approve of his work. He has a blog which I recommend you visit, favorite, and return to often.

And now he has a new book called, The Good Ones: Ten Crucial Qualities of High-Character Employees. You can get it on Amazon, here.

His theme is that character is critical to success but it is not given priority in the hiring process. So, he gives guidance on what to look for in an employee that indicates high character.

He’s, of course, right, and since he has been dealing with these issues for some years, he has insights worth sharing.

Buy the book.

James Pilant

Business Ethics in the News 5/12/2015

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics2 Comments
Business Ethics in the News 5/12/2015

Reading the business news every morning as is my habit is a depressing experience. Every single day some business person is doing something illegal, immoral or stupid. And often it is not one or two stories but a half dozen.

Is there is a war between the ethical and unethical in the world of business, the news media tend to give the impression of a strongly successful offensive on the part of the vile and the cruel. The pursuit of the profit motive in the not so distant past often involved providing a service or selling a product. Today, you get a real sense of predatory practice.

For example:

House Republicans are again attacking measures aimed at protecting U.S. troops from predatory lending practices, two weeks after a similar GOP effort failed.

The military has been grappling with the financial impact of predatory lending on service members for years. In 2006, Congress passed legislation cracking down on some forms of high-interest credit, particularly payday lending. Lenders responded by exploiting loopholes in the law, and late last year, the Department of Defense proposed a new set of regulations designed to curb these creative workarounds that target troops.

Republicans have been working to kill those regulations before they can take effect. …

Feel nauseated yet? Certain companies (I wouldn’t want to tar all banks and lenders.) are lobbying Congress to make sure their ability to charge incredible interest rates to the troops goes unchanged. And the House of Representatives has already tried once and is trying again to nullify these regulations. I assume they’ll trot out the usual arguments about free markets and individual responsibility.

And how about this –

Blue Bell Creameries, the ice cream and frozen desserts maker that’s been tainted by a listeria crisis, had “strong evidence” that the bacteria was in its Oklahoma plant as of early 2013, the Houston Chronicle is reporting. According to reports the Chronicleobtained from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Blue Bell’s tests had turned up a “presumptive positive” for listeria on the floors, storage pallets, and other nonfood surfaces of its Oklahoma plant. In 2014, Blue Bell tests also found that the level of coliform bacteria in products exceeded the maximum allowed by the state of Oklahoma. On top of all that, the FDA said water condensation in the plant had been trickling into the company’s frozen sherbet containers and possibly its ice cream during production. So yeah. Gross.

So, when did they decide to do something? – When three deaths linked to their ice cream occurred. And now there are ten dead whose demise may be related to eating ice cream.

So, I ask you two questions.

First, how does our form of capitalism reconcile itself with patriotism? Perhaps, you could argue that business is value free, it’s only morality the dictates of the marketplace. And if that is true than selling pay day loans at very high interest rates is the correct thing to do. The ideas of duty and loyalty to a nation are obsolete relics of a time before the great revelation of free market fundamentalism.

Secondly, how does our form of capitalism reconcile itself with public safety? It is obvious that you can make a lot more money making food in unsanitary conditions. Keeping the premises clean and protecting the food from contamination is expensive, time consuming and often subject to failure through human, animal or insect action. What is more important, keeping costs low or protecting the public?

Here is an actual working example. The company knew that they had a problem for more than a year. That’s a lot of ice cream. So, how important was human safety to the decision makers? It appears to have been low on their list of priorities.

So, let me ask a third question. What human value, be it patriotism, be it the preservation of human life, honor, religion, or even love that cannot tossed casually aside in the pursuit of profit? Under free market fundamentalism, isn’t greed the only quality worth cultivating, the great motivator, the basic rule of objectivism?

i_236The proliferation of pay day loan stores around military bases is not an accident; it is the result of a philosophy that says making money is more important than the welfare of American serviceman. Selling contaminated ice cream for more than a year with the direct knowledge that you are doing it, is not an accident, it is not a miscalculation. It is again a result of a philosophy that put profits ahead of one of the most basic rules of humanity, thou shalt no kill.

So, tomorrow morning, I will get up and there will be new articles, new affronts to morality, new descriptions of stupidity and greed, and sometimes, I look at those headlines, those stories, those crimes and I wonder why I believe so firmly in the right in the face of so much evidence that doing wrong is profitable.

The Teacher and Student Gap

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Teaching
The Teacher and Student Gap in Film Understanding

One day, I was teaching about a film, “It Happened One Night.” I was trying to explain the apparently ridiculous custom of showing people driving against a background screen. It looks tacky and breaks your acceptance of the film. It’s the problem with sound. I’ve seen silent films where they took film of people driving in cars and interacting in cars. But sound equipment is bulky. What’s more, the background noise of the automobile and the surroundings play havoc with the recording. So, we have to have a controlled environment. Modern film has access to much more capable equipment and that’s one of the reasons my students prefer to avoid the classic black and whites.

026I suppose one of the hardest things about teaching with film is the enormous disparity in understanding between teacher and student. They don’t get jokes, miss symbolism, never seem to look at the background and, worse of all, have trouble staying interested for more than twenty minutes. Their hands drift inexorably toward their electronic devices to check text and e-mail, an electronic reality more important to them than the Joseph Campbell style myths conveyed by film.

The way they talk, touch, perceive love and honor, choose their life goals and what they choose to believe in their version of reality are all shaped and shaped dramatically by these brief hours of concentrated talent. Sometimes they seem to get it and often not. I shouldn’t blame them too much. It has only been in the last few years that I began looking at film in terms of ethics, business ethics in particular. And worse, the films that have been important influences in my own life didn’t become apparent to me until I reflected long and hard while watching films I’d seen in my youth.

I wonder what they think about themselves from what they saw growing up. There were scant few special effects in my time and now they’re present in most films sometimes dominating them to the exclusion of all other factors. Could it be that lives seem humdrum and banal compared to an episode of Transformers? And because special effects take up so much time, do they live lives where conversation and relationships are de-emphasized just as in the films?
I know that for a good number I am planting the seeds of what someday will be a strong knowledge and appreciation of film culture and its significance in our lives. Future success is the rough equivalent of dry bread for dinner. You know it’s probably good for you but you’d rather not eat it.

James Pilant

Women Play Computer Games

On By southwerkIn business ethics
Women Play Computer Games

In the article below, it is revealed that Minecraft will soon have a female protagonist. Instead of always having to play a male, a player can choose either sex.

Apparently the video game world just realized that there are women who play video games. So, let’s see if I have the chain of male cluelessness down – males were surprised to learn that women could talk, write, speak in public, choose their own husbands, control their own property, vote, drive cars, work, operate machinery, play sports, etc. What’s next?

Women Play Video Games
Women Play Video Games

Don’t worry. I’m sure there is a great number of things people in various industries are confident that women don’t, can’t or won’t do. I remember reading a magazine from back in the fifties. They were interviewing this guy who was a chef and they asked him if it bothered him to do what was traditionally women’s work. He explained that he wasn’t a cook, he was a chef and his job was tough and no woman could do what he did.

For many males, maybe all males, being identified however distantly with the female other is frightening and demeaning. Zones of apparent all male participation are comforting if wickedly unfair and ridiculous.

If we are going to practice business ethics, women are not the other – women are part of we, we the decisionmakers, the players, the consumers, etc. etc.

It’s obvious from reading about this mini-revolution in gaming of having female video game characters, that the designers were men who felt that the players in the games they made were also men.

How many times do we in the business of educating people have to see this pattern before realize that it might be better and easier to work on how our students construct a comfortable narrative based on yesterday’s gender identities? If we teach them that males and females are opposites but different perspectives on humanity, we might make better professionals – and better human beings as well.

James Pilant

Minecraft, Temple Run: Video game characters don’t have to default to male.

Fans of Minecraft—especially girls—have long felt frustrated that the only default character available in the popular building game is a man. Now, the game’s programmers have announced that players will get a lady option. The Washington Post describes this new character, Alex, as “a seemingly female character with thinner arms, pinker lips, and a swoop of hair around her neck,” in contrast to default character Steve, “a bulky man with short, dark hair and a 5 o’clock shadow.” Owen Hill of Mojang, the game studio that created Minecraft, explains that this move will better “represent the diversity of our playerbase.”

via Minecraft, Temple Run: Video game characters don’t have to default to male..