My group's ethical dilemma for Research. We're supposed to ponder and discuss. (Ha!) The issue:

"A trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by dropping a heavy weight in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you - your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five. Should you proceed?"

My reaction is that 1) I'm not strong enough to throw him over the bridge and 2) I don't think I could cold-bloodedly kill him, even to save five other people. But I might ask him if he'd consider jumping, himself, to save the others. Which I'm sure would go over really well. :D The variation on the question is, of course, that you merely switch the track the trolley runs on, knowing as you do so that there's one person, instead of five, tied to that alternate track. Oddly enough, I might consider doing that. If I didn't go all Hamlet on the situation and start pondering "Yes, but what if that one person will cure cancer?" and then, "But what if one of the other five people will cure cancer?" followed by, "But what if that one person is a serial killer?" and, "Maybe the other five people are KKK members...." 'Tis a quandry. The easiest thing is, of course, to simply do nothing. Thus abdicating responsibility for the situation---and the accompanying guilt---but I'm inclined to think that may be an unethical decision in and of itself.

I dunno. It's fun to ponder, but I hate that I'm doing the pondering for *Her* class. Grrr....

...And nifty names, by the way. We're, like, totally Storm Rider sisters! Does this mean "storm rider" is really a secret name for librarians?

...Riders on the stoooorm... ::hums:: ...riders on the stoooorm.... la-la-lala ...into this house we're born...into this world we're thrown....

That is *so* the librarian theme song now.