Child who could not recognize faces becomes famous portrait artist

As a child, Chuck Close suffered from prosopagnosia, a disorder that makes face-recognition difficult. Nevertheless, Close grew up to be an skilled artist, able to paint faces with such veracity that a physician could diagnose skin cancer merely from examining one of Close's paintings.

Astounding!

Ethical Mistakes: A Learning Resource in Law School?

If a mistake could walk into a room, most people would not touch it with a ten foot pole. However, a few who know how would embrace the manifestation.

Learning from mistakes is a skill, not just a choice. All schools, including law school. should consider how to cultivate this skill in their students. Rather than simply show students what behavior is wrong and right, educators should use additional means to help students learn to navigate moral waters, so that these students, when they graduate, can avoid pitfalls as well as recite them for exams.

Is Big Business a better steward of the environment than the general public?

Mike Voissan, President of Motivated Seafoods by greenforall.org

With criticism against BP rising with a tide of oil flowing onto resort beaches and into verdent wetlands, generalizing blame for environmental degredation against Big Business may be tempting. Yet, in certain cases Big Business may actually protect our environment against the general public. Take for instance, the case of Oyster farming in Southeastern Louisiana.

When asked by journalist Bob Edwards why company oyster fishermen use inefficient equipment, Voissan responded that inefficient equipment allows only a harvest of 2 or 3% of the animals, preventing overharvesting.

His company owns 10,000 acres of oyster farms, which company policy protects from overharvesting, unlike public fishing areas, which are vulnerable to over fishing by individuals, because "...communal rights do not ensure that the costs of an individual harvester's actions in exploiting the resource are borne fully by him. In attempting to maximize the value of his common right, the individual can be expected to over-exploit the resource leading to depletion of the stock, and in the extreme case to extinction of even replenishable resources. Private property internalizes the costs of the harvester's actions." Property Rights and Efficiency in the Oyster Industry Richard J. Agnello and Lawrence P. Donnelley Journal of Law and Economics, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Oct., 1975), pp. 521-533 Published by: The University of Chicago Press (see also the Tragedy of the Commons).