Dueling, slavery, foot-binding, strapping children, long gruesome executions, public torture all were once completely normal if by some considered wrong.

How these practices, in most countries anyway, became unpopular, outlawed, and the subject of moral opprobrium is fascinating history.

This raises the question of which common practices are completely normal today but that our grandchildren will ask, 'what were they thinking?'.

Kwame Anthony Appiah, a philosophy professor at Princeton University and the author of "The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen", looks at industrial meat production, isolated elderly, and the environment.

In addition, more on the currency row between China and the United States, inequality in the United States, biology and business, why President Obama is sending his daughters to private school, Canada's looming immigration debate, and lost airline baggage.

The BBC's chilling 6-part series Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State  http://www.pbs.org/auschwitz/ does a frightening job of getting former SS murders and their non-German helpers (now frail and elderly) to explain in their own words -- " How could you?" -- why they thought murdering children or beating to death a old man because he was Jewish was in any way related to winning a world war.

The Slovakian guard chuckling over the three pairs shoes of the condemned he stole is breath taking.

"How could you?" is the question Professor Appiah asks us to ask ourselves because you can be sure it will be asked of us.

Once, pretty much everywhere, beating your wife and children was regarded as a father's duty, homosexuality was a hanging offense, and waterboarding was approved -- in fact, invented -- by the Catholic Church.   http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/24/AR2010092404113.html

Related.

Dueling scene from Barry Lyndon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDupoFh5Op0&feature=related. Note how rules based it is.

Related.

Lecture by Professor Appiah that discusses among other things the end of dueling in the United Kingdom and foot binding in China.

Kwame Anthony Appiah, Honor and Moral Change http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f90tMmyufkE&NR=1

Foot binding was practiced in China for about 900 years until outlawed 1912 and eradicated in 1949.

3-inch 'lotus feet' were considered a sign of immense beauty including erotic and vital for the marrying off of daughters. Foot binding was practiced less according to class, the rich 100% falling to about 50% among the poor.

The physical consequence was that the feet bones were systematically broken and the flesh rotted until the foot stopped growing.

Suffering for beauty is a concept familiar to most women, who have dyed, plucked or shaved their hair, squeezed their feet into uncomfortable high heels or even surgically enhanced parts of their anatomy. Millions of Chinese women went even further — binding their feet to turn them into the prized "three-inch golden lotuses."   http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=8966942

 

Just how did 14,000 French senior citizens die in the summer heat wave of August 2003?

This report considers the failure of the French government to prevent the unnecessary deaths of 14,000 predominantly senior citizens during a heatwave in August 2003.  http://everything2.com/title/French+heatwave+disaster+of+August+2003

We have presented many arguments that the currency row between China and the United States will solve nothing without structural changes in both economies. The risk is that a lack of 'satisfaction' in the currency argument may open the door to more blunt forms of trade protection.

FROM 2005 to 2008, China's government allowed its currency to appreciate by nearly 20% against the dollar.  http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2010/09/trade

The currency will rise anyway. But soon enough?

Washington and Beijing are in a war of words. At a “Town Hall” meeting last week, President Obama complained that China had not complied with its promise to allow the renminbi to appreciate faster.   http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c890f194-ca42-11df-87b8-00144feab49a.html?ftcamp=rss&ftcamp=crm/email/2010928/nbe/Comment/product

My Ph.D. thesis demonstrated that Reagan's trade policy of insisting on export restraints by the Japanese automobile producers reinforced the power of the Japanese state over business and dramatically pushed up the price of automobiles giving more life to state dominated economic models. 

Anatole Kaletsky argues the same risk exists over the currency row now in play at a time when the world is looking at free market versus state driven economic models.

IT is a safe bet that Asian currency intervention was not on the minds of Republican primary voters in Delaware this month when they selected a Tea Party favorite, Christine O’Donnell, as their Senate candidate.    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/opinion/27kaletsky.html?_r=1&ref=global

One view is that Chinese leaders will not allow a rise in the currency because the country is wedded to its export model in order to suck up a rapidly growth labour force. While that may be true eventually inflationary consequences will force their hand. But when?

President Barack Obama had an intensive discussion about the yuan with Wen Jiabao Sept. 23 on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York, if White House officials are to be believed.   http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/09/24/china_won_t_revalue_the_yuan

 

Roger Cohen on a divided America.

The “animal spirits” of which Keynes spoke are on the prowl across the United States. Their mood is ugly.   http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/opinion/28iht-edcohen.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=globasasa211

Americans want to live in Sweden but they live in America.

Earlier this month I published a 10-part Slate series (PDF; serial version; slide show) about the 30-year rise in income inequality that Princeton's Paul Krugman has dubbed "The Great Divergence."   http://www.slate.com/id/2268872/

America's progressive tax system.

Barack Obama's admission that his policies would "spread the wealth around" has ignited a nationwide discussion of how progressive the tax system should be and how it should be used to redistribute income among Americans.  Obama has been very successful in bolstering the conventional wisdom that the U.S. tax system does not place a significant enough burden on wealthier households and places too much of a burden on the "middle class."  http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/23856.html

Looking at how biology impacts business decisions. Nature rules.

Dr Richard Arvey on why biologists are turning their attention to the softest science of all: management.  http://www.economist.com/blogs/multimedia/2010/09/biology_business

Why President Obama sends his daughters to private school.

President Obama reopened Monday what is often a sore subject in Washington, saying that his daughters could not obtain from D.C. public schools the academic experience they receive at the private Sidwell Friends School.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/27/AR2010092701766.html?wpisrc=nl_most

Canada's looming immigration debate.

Political correctness is stifling debate over a dysfunctional and dangerous immigration system, some influential political thinkers have concluded, and they mean to get that debate started.   http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/seeking-immigration-review-new-centre-focuses-on-moral-contracts/article1729389/

The debate begins.

While immigration is having a major impact on the lives of Canadians, there is a serious lack of accurate information available to the public about its benefits and liabilities. Most Canadians are unaware of the substantial costs associated with current immigration programs as well as the fact that high immigration intake discourages Canadians from acquiring the skills necessary to fill shortages in the workforce.   http://www.immigrationreform.ca/

And the good news about lost airline baggage.

The Department of Transportation is working on a new rule to mandate that airlines must offer refund fees in the event that your bags are lost or delayed.  http://www.publicradio.org/columns/marketplace/business-news-briefs/2010/09/airlines_against_delayed-bagga.html