A series of events have brought the issue of gay marriage to the fore. Nudged by the Vice President, Barak Obama came out in support. North Carolina, by contrast, voted to prohibit it. Closer to home, Mayor Boris Johnson recently put his fo…

On Monday, the state of Kansas in the USA passed an anti-abortion bill which includes several morally controversial measures (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/04/kansas-abortion-bill_n_1478706.html). One measure receiving a great deal …

In case you didn’t know: The EU is currently celebrating the “European Year for Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations”. The paramount aim of this initiative is to increase the well-being of the elderly by raising awareness that t…

Philosophy is often impractical. That’s an understatement. It might therefore be surprising to think of a career as a philosopher as a potentially high impact ethical career – the sort of career that enables one to do a huge amount of good …

With thanks to Clive Hamilton for his talk. Stratospheric sulfate seems to be one of the most promising geoengineering methods to combat climate change. It involves the injection of  hydrogen sulfide (H2S), sulfur dioxide (SO2) or other sul…

This week is ‘Sustainable Fish Week’ at Ghent University in Belgium. All fish on the university restaurants’ menus come from sustainable fisheries or fish farms (with practices that can be maintained without reducing the ability of the targ…

A headless lamb was recently born. This is a natural phenomenon. It is similar to anencephaly in human beings. I wrote recently on the moral obligation that vegetarians have to support the development and consume frankenmeat, derived from s…

You will no doubt recall that some time ago I was bewailing the backwardness of Britain when it comes to shutting people up who disagree with me. I think the case in point was in Austria, where the authorities were prosecuting a woman for c…

Your politics are determined by your values, your opinions about the facts of the world, and, let’s be honest, just a little bit of tribalism. But the future is approaching, as it often does, and great transformations may be in the ca…

By Charles Foster There’s a significant association of PTSD symptoms with a particular allele, according to a recently published study from UCLA and Duke. Some of the ethical consequences are already being discussed.  One consequence might …