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August 15, 2024
 

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Peter Singer
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 14, 2012
Rampant use and abuse of religious freedom
What are the proper limits of religious freedom? Marianne Thieme, leader of the Party for the Animals in the Netherlands, offers this answer: "Religious freedom stops where human or animal suffering begins."
COMMENTARY / World
May 14, 2012
Are humans getting better at beating violence?
With daily headlines focusing on war, terrorism and the abuses of repressive governments, and religious leaders frequently bemoaning declining standards of public and private behavior, it is easy to get the impression that we are witnessing a moral collapse.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 24, 2012
How much should one's birth gender matter?
Jenna Talackova reached the finals of Miss Universe Canada last month, before being disqualified because she was not a "natural born" female. The tall, beautiful blonde told the media that she had considered herself a female since she was four years old, had begun hormone treatment at 14, and had sex...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 16, 2012
Use law enforcement and fees to sink Net pirates
Last year, I told a colleague that I would include Internet ethics in a course that I was teaching. She suggested that I read a recently published anthology on computer ethics — and attached the entire volume to the email.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 19, 2012
Commitment hatched Europe's ethical eggs
Forty years ago, I stood with a few other students in a busy Oxford street handing out leaflets protesting the use of battery cages to hold hens. Most of those who took the leaflets did not know that their eggs came from hens kept in cages so small that even one bird — the cages normally housed four...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 17, 2011
Time to ban world's deadliest recreational drug
U.S. President Barack Obama's doctor confirmed last month that the president no longer smokes. At the urging of his wife, Michelle Obama, the president first resolved to stop smoking in 2006, and has used nicotine replacement therapy to help him. If it took Obama, a man strong-willed enough to aspire...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 17, 2011
Unjustness of death penalty underlined again
Three significant events relating to the death penalty occurred in the United States during September. The one that gained the most publicity was the execution in Georgia of Troy Davis, who had been convicted of the 1989 murder of Mark McPhail, an off-duty police officer.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 13, 2011
Toward a planet safe for great apes
Two new movies released this month — one a science-fiction blockbuster, the other a revealing documentary — raise the issue of our relations with our closest nonhuman relatives, the great apes. Both dramatize insights and lessons that should not be ignored.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 20, 2011
Gauging moral progress by animal welfare
Mahatma Gandhi acutely observed that "the greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 20, 2011
Objective defense of why some things matter
Can moral judgments be true or false? Or is ethics, at bottom, a purely subjective matter, for individuals to choose, or perhaps relative to the culture of the society in which one lives?
COMMENTARY / World
May 16, 2011
When prevention is more effective than relief
When the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan in March, Brian Tucker was in Padang, Indonesia. Tucker was working with a colleague to design a refuge that could save thousands of lives if — or rather, when — a tsunami like the one in 1797 that came out of the Indian Ocean, some 1,000 km southeast of...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 16, 2011
The enemies of a digital universal library
Scholars have long dreamed of a universal library containing everything that has ever been written. Then, in 2004, Google announced that it would begin digitally scanning all the books held by five major research libraries. Suddenly, the library of utopia seemed within reach.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 4, 2011
Justifying an intervention in Libya for justice' sake
MELBOURNE — The world has watched in horror as Libya's Colonel Moammar Gadhafi uses his military to attack protesters opposed to his rule, killing hundreds or possibly thousands of unarmed civilians.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 16, 2011
The world needs more elephant mothers
MELBOURNE — Many years ago, my wife and I were driving somewhere with our three young daughters in the back, when one of them suddenly asked: "Would you rather that we were clever or that we were happy?"
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 6, 2011
Penalties pay off for New Year's resolutions
MELBOURNE — Sometimes we know the best thing to do, but fail to do it. New Year's resolutions are often like that. We make resolutions because we know that it would be better for us to lose weight, or get fit, or spend more time with our children. The problem is that a resolution is generally easier...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 16, 2010
Is open diplomacy possible or even desirable?
PRINCETON, New Jersey — When the furor erupted over WikiLeaks' recent release of a quarter-million diplomatic cables, I was reminded of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's 1918 speech in which he put forward "Fourteen Points" for a just peace to end World War I.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 16, 2010
Consumers should demand diamond clarity
PRINCETON, New Jersey — Diamonds have an image of purity and light. They are given as a pledge of love and worn as a symbol of commitment. Yet diamonds have led to gruesome murders, rapes and amputations.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 9, 2010
Leaders' broken promises are costing lives
PRINCETON, N.J. — In 2000, the world's leaders met in New York and issued a ringing Millennium Declaration, promising to halve the proportion of people suffering from extreme poverty and hunger by 2015.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 16, 2010
If wild fish could only scream
PRINCETON, N.J. — When I was a child, my father used to take me for walks, often along a river or by the sea. We would pass people fishing, perhaps reeling in their lines with struggling fish hooked at the end of them. Once I saw a man take a small fish out of a bucket and impale it, still wriggling,...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 17, 2010
When does transparency start eating its tail?
PRINCETON, N.J. — Transparency seems to be the word of the day in a wide array of policy domains. But is greater transparency always good?
Japan to revise consumption tax exemption for overseas tourists
Tourists walk through Nakamise shopping street near Sensoji Temple in Tokyo in April
Japan's tourism industry hit by cancellations after megaquake alert
A beach closed due to a megaquake alert in Hiratsuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, from Friday to Thursday.
Focus shifts to incoming typhoon as Tropical Storm Maria dissipates
Newly formed Tropical Storm Ampil, which is forecast to approach eastern Japan this weekend, is seen on the left side of this satellite image.
Kishida to step down in September in bid to show ‘LDP has changed’
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida speaks during a news conference Wednesday at the Prime Minister's Office in Tokyo.
Publisher finds surprise audience after translating history textbooks
Yamakawa Shuppansha president Takeshi Nozawa holds the publisher's textbook on Japanese history — used in high schools across Japan — alongside the new English version in Tokyo on May 23.
Economic security is about strengthening and sustaining growth, former minister says
Former economic security minister Takayuki Kobayashi says changes in the international balance of power, along with deepening economic interdependence, have led some countries to attempt to use their economic power to impose their will on others.
Ice bandanas, convenience store breaks: Running under Japan’s summer sun
Blistering heat is becoming a fixture of summer in Japan, but a few tweaks to your routine can make your outdoor runs bearable — if not enjoyable — until cooler temperatures return.
Japan issued its first-ever megaquake alert. What does that mean?
Naoshi Hirata (center), chairman of a committee tasked with evaluating the risk of a Nankai Trough earthquake, speaks at a news conference in Tokyo on Friday.
France brings down the curtain on its Olympic party with Tom Cruise and Leon Marchand
Fireworks are set off during the closing ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics at Stade de France in Saint-Denis on Sunday.
Japan fuels U.S. LNG boom even as climate targets and impacts loom
Flaring at the Cameron LNG export terminal in Hackberry, Louisiana. Flaring, a common sight at LNG plants, is a controlled burning of gas for reasons ranging from depressurizing equipment to disposing of gas that can’t be used. The practice is a "waste of money" and negatively impacts climate change and human health, says the International Energy Agency.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Sociologist Gracia Liu-Farrer argues that even though immigration doesn't figure into Japan's autobiography, it is more of a self-perception than a reality.
In search of the ‘Japanese dream’
By Thu-Huong Ha

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JNTO promotes sustainable tourism initiatives

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