For some years, I’ve suspected that by studying our pens we could learn a lot about our relationships. I know: It sounds fluky. But I think I can back up my hunch, having just conducted our first household penventory.

Don’t bother looking it up — penventory isn’t in the dictionary yet. It simply means “an inventory of all pens possessed by a single household at any given moment.” I must confess, right up front, that the concept is in its early stages, without professional oversight or agreed-upon standards. I should also note that our household probably falls rather wide of the average. My wife and I do a lot of writing, so in addition to our computers we rely heavily on pens. And because we travel here and there, we’ve accumulated more than our share of ballpoints stamped with hotel logos — which, despite all the talk about paperless offices, are more prevalent than ever.

Still, I’ve done my best to carry out a competent audit. I didn’t count pencils, markers, or highlighters. I excluded penless caps, refills, ink cartridges, and assorted springs, clips, and barrels. And I’m sure I overlooked pens lurking in suit jackets, old overalls, retired briefcases, shaving kits, piano benches, tool boxes, sewing chests, glove compartments, garden baskets, and (ouch) ski boots. I didn’t try to categorize: For my purposes the plastic roller-ball with the pull-off cap counted just as much as the slender, gold-plated, monogrammed ballpoint with the smoothly turning twist top. Nor did I try to distinguish pens that worked from those that were clogged, hardened, jammed, or otherwise useless.

Notice I didn’t say empty. My informal survey has convinced me that there are hardly any empty ballpoint pens in the universe. More on that in a moment. But first the results. Our household, as of this audit, has 159 known pens. That includes six in my nightstand and 12 in my wife’s, 19 in the old olive-oil can in the kitchen, 29 in the downstairs study, and 66 in a drawer in my closet — a finding for which, as my wife knows, I have no adequate explanation.

Let’s suppose, however, that she were content to use only a single, favorite pen for the next year. Let’s also suppose that almost all of the rest could be scribbled, sanded, twisted, or otherwise coaxed into working, and that no new pens appeared. That would still allow me, by a quick calculation, to use a different pen each day between now and April 25, 2008.

And that, I think, is news. It’s safe to assert that there has never been a society on earth, right up through my parents’ generation, that could make a similar claim. My father, for most of his career as a professor, carried a fine fountain pen that he held in high regard. When I began using ballpoints in school, I got some nice ones as presents from time to time, and was crushed if they got lost, swiped, or stepped on. Only in recent decades has the pen become the one tool every student owns in greater numbers than anything else.

So naturally it’s only now that our culture has any use for penventories, which serve to remind us of five sobering things:

1. We’re a culture of convenience, so wedded to our ease that, if we’ve forgotten to bring a pen with us, we’re unwilling to walk across a room to get one. Instead, we keep a couple in every drawer, assuming that they’re all available for casual sharing.

2. We’re a culture of obsolescence, immersed in a world of disposables where some handsome-looking pens quit working within moments. Result: We expect failure, building in redundancy and hoarding backups.

3. In an age of recycling, we’ve overlooked the environmental pollution arising from non-biodegradable pens. Instead, we discard them with an abandon that would appall us if applied to Styrofoam cups, printer cartridges, or flashlight batteries.

4. We’re so besotted with materialism that we’d rather keep our options open than express commitment. So instead of investing in a single long-lasting pen, we use pens promiscuously, rarely expending all of the ink in any of them before losing interest and flitting to another.

5. We’re woefully unobservant, stumbling into an involuntary hypocrisy that cries out against convenience, obsolescence, pollution, and materialism while indulging in those very things every time we pick up a pen.

If you’re beginning to suspect that a penventory is about more than just pens, you’re right. It’s mostly about relationships. If you doubt that, reread those five points, substituting the word relationship for pen.

That, after all, is the moral of this tale. Is the disposable relationship, in fact, the hallmark of our age? Have we been schooled to tire of long-term quality and prefer short-term variety? Do too many relationships carry someone else’s logo? Are we littering the moral landscape with the landfills of half-used relationships?

As you do your own penventory, think about these things. If you top 159, let me know. I’ll promise two things: I won’t embarrass you by publishing your name, and I won’t send the winner a prize pen.

©2007 Institute for Global Ethics

“At present there does not exist any strong evidence that any abstinence program delays the initiation of sex, hastens the return to abstinence, or reduces the number of sexual partners” among teenagers.

– Text from a new study from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, a nonpartisan group that analyzed research into teens’ sexual behavior. Unlike abstinence-only programs, comprehensive programs supporting both abstinence and contraception “were having ‘positive outcomes’ including teenagers ‘delaying the initiation of sex, reducing the frequency of sex, reducing the number of sexual partners and increasing condom or contraceptive use,’ ” according to the report.

BEAVERTON, Ore.
A scientific and ethical Rubicon was crossed last week as researchers in Oregon reported that they had cloned monkey embryos and extracted stem cells from them, an advance many scientists say shows that the same process could be carried out with human cells.

The development was immediately condemned by opponents of the process who fear that such measures would lead to widespread destruction of human embryos, the Boston Globe reports. Opponents also contend that it is fundamentally immoral to clone humans, and worry that the technology eventually could be used to artificially create humans in the same manner that Dolly, a sheep, was cloned 10 years ago.

The advances reported last week mark the first time embryonic cloning has been achieved in a primate, the animal most resembling a human.

Those backing the research say the process could lead to revolutionary cures for a variety of maladies because cloned stem cells can produce replacement tissues completely compatible with a patient’s immune system, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Some scientists also cautioned that even though the latest development involved cloning cells from a primate, and that what works with primates typically works in humans, the researchers could not sustain a viable pregnancy with the cloned embryo, meaning that the research does not mean it is now possible to clone a human, MSNBC reports.

Other recent developments also hint at ways that many of the moral issues related to embryonic cloning and stem cell research could be circumvented: The BBC reports that various anti-abortion groups have welcomed a process that creates stem cells from fragments of skin, eliminating the need to use human embryos.

SAN FRANCISCO
In a development that capped a series of sports scandals through this summer and fall, former San Francisco Giants star and all-time Major League Baseball home-run leader Barry Bonds last week was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Bonds was charged with making false statements to a grand jury that investigated the BALCO laboratory, which was implicated in the distribution of steroids.

Allegations that Bonds took performance-enhancing drugs have dogged him for years, though he has never been formally charged with any related offense until last week.

Bonds testified in 2003 that he never knowingly used steroids, saying that he may have been unwittingly exposed to the substances when his personal trainer supplied him with a cream Bonds said he thought was an arthritis balm and a clear liquid he believed was flaxseed oil, reports Sports Illustrated.

If convicted, Bonds could face up to 30 years in prison, though legal analysts interviewed by ABC News said that a sentence ranging from several months to a couple of years would be more likely.

While most of the details in the case are familiar to sports fans, there was one surprise, reports sports network ESPN: The indictment maintains that Bonds tested positive for steroids and concealed the results of the test. If that proves true, the existence of evidence scientifically connected to Bonds via DNA and other means will be difficult for the defense to reconcile.

Bonds, who is perhaps one of the most hated players in the history of baseball, slugged his way into the record books in September by breaking Henry Aaron’s home-run record. The man who bought Bonds’s record-breaking ball held an online public poll, with the majority voting to have the ball branded with an asterisk before being given to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Other sports icons who fell from grace after recent ethics scandals include Olympic gold-medal sprinter Marion Jones, who admitted steroid use and now may not only forfeit her medals but have the gold-medal spots she won at the 2000 Olympics left vacant in the official record books, according to the Associated Press.

Also tarred were Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, who is awaiting sentencing for his involvement in a dog-fighting ring, and Floyd Landis, who was stripped of his 2006 Tour de France title after testing positive for a banned substance, a finding he continues to dispute.

In recent months professional basketball also was embroiled in a scandal involving a referee who admitted he bet on games and passed information along to gamblers.

LONDON
A prominent British ethics panel says laws on alcohol should be tightened to protect the nation’s health.

U.K. Guardian science correspondent Alok Jha writes: “In a review of public health policy, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics concluded that, left to themselves, people do not choose to live healthy lives, and the state must intervene to control behavior. Lord Krebs, principal of Jesus College, Oxford, who chaired the council’s review, said the government had a duty to help people make healthy choices.”

The council’s approach was unusual in that it gathered not only physicians but philosophers, economists, lawyers, and scientists to determine the extent to which the state should intervene, reports the Times of London.

In its report, the council recommended limiting drinking hours and increasing taxes on alcohol, and also explicitly rejected the notion that such intervention is symptomatic of a “nanny state,” a derisive term popular in Britain.

Instead, the council stressed the “stewardship” role the government should play in helping citizens make healthy choices, reports online publication PoliticsUK.com.

The Nuffield Council pointed to statistics showing that alcohol-related deaths in Britain soared to 8,386 in 2005 from 4,144 in 1991, according to the Reuters news agency.

OTTAWA
A recently released video that shows a man dying after being Tasered by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has raised ethical questions about the Mounties’ use of force in the incident.

Amnesty International says it wants an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the October 15 death of Polish national Robert Dziekanski, CTV reports. Dziekanski, 40, who does not speak English, had become agitated after being held in a secure area of the airport for about 10 hours while waiting to meet his mother.

While he threw a chair at a wall and screamed, a video taken by a passerby shows that he appeared to have calmed down by the time police arrived. The video has been widely posted on news sites and circulated on the Internet.

Dziekanski was shocked twice with a Taser, a device that emits a stunning jolt of electricity, and subsequently pinned to the floor.

“I don’t know why it ever became a police incident,” retired Vancouver police superintendent Ron Foyle told CBS News. “It didn’t seem that he made any threatening gestures towards them.”

A similar view was expressed by Poland’s ambassador to Canada. “The reaction of the RCMP officers was unsuitable to the situation,” Piotr Ogrodzinski told the Canadian National Post. “What I’ve seen was that Mr. Dziekanski [was] a person who was agitated, frustrated, I think terrified, but not aggressive. He was not making a gesture that he intended to fight anybody.”

Canada’s minister of public safety last week said he was awaiting an RCMP internal report on the incident before taking any action, reports the Toronto Globe & Mail.

Political reaction was varied, according to the Globe & Mail report, with some supporting the use of Tasers and saying the RCMP appeared to act properly, but with critics arguing that the RCMP should not be allowed to investigate itself.

The incident follows a series of public embarrassments for the RCMP, including a probe that found the agency turned over faulty information that resulted in the arrest, deportation to Syria, and eventual torture of a Canadian national, as well as a recent parliamentary committee hearing into allegations of high-level corruption within the agency.

SAN FRANCISCO
Internet giant Yahoo, at the center of a legal and ethics controversy over the rights and responsibilities of U.S. Internet firms doing business abroad, last week settled a lawsuit brought by the families of two Chinese dissidents who were jailed with the help of information Yahoo gave to Chinese authorities.

CNN reports that the suit was filed by dissident Wang Xiaoning, his wife Yu Ling, and the family of a pro-democracy reporter named Shi Tao.

Wang was sentenced to 10 years in prison for pro-democracy blogging and Shi received a similar sentence for writing about the Tiananmen Square crackdown of 1989, a subject outlawed by Chinese officials.

Financial terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but the Times of London reports that as part of the deal, Yahoo agreed to provide financial, humanitarian, and legal help to the families and set up a legal fund to help other imprisoned dissidents.

Yahoo’s settlement followed by a week what PC Magazine called a “public shaming” before the U.S. Congress in which executives of the firm were berated for furnishing details that helped the Chinese government track down the Internet addresses of the dissidents.

Technology news service CNET reports that some close to the case speculate that Yahoo settled because if the lawsuit had gone to trial the firm would have been forced to disclose its involvement in other Chinese investigations.

The Global Online Freedom Act of 2007, a bill being considered by Congress, would prohibit U.S. companies from cooperating with foreign nations in censoring Internet content or helping authorities track down users, reports AsiaMedia, a news service based out of UCLA.

BANGKOK, Thailand
Sales of rubies and other gems from Myanmar are slumping, apparently as a result of international outrage and the threat of widespread sanctions following brutal repression of protestors in the nation formerly known as Burma.

Critics have questioned the morality of trading in the gems and have called them “blood rubies,” likening them to “blood diamonds” — stones mined in war-torn areas and used to fuel insurrection, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Burmese rubies account for about 90 percent of the world’s supply, reports the Voice of America. They are often sold from venues in neighboring Thailand.

According to a news summary from the Christian Science Monitor, some of the world’s largest jewelers, including Cartier and Tiffany, have told their suppliers they will not buy gems from Burma, and a bill currently before Congress would prohibit the import of Burmese gems that are cut or polished in another country.

But as The New York Times reports, the issue also has resurrected recurring ethics arguments about sanctions. Some argue that stanching trade in rubies will hurt the ruling military junta’s pocketbook, while others contend that sanctions will hurt impoverished Burmese miners who earn their money independently of the government, often by smuggling their gems to Thailand.

The Times report also notes that there is some question as to whether authorities can accurately identify rubies of Burmese origin. Some experts claim that Burmese rubies can be identified by chemical signatures, though some disagree.

UNITED NATIONS
A majority of nations in a U.N. General Assembly committee dealing with human-rights issues last week voted to support a global moratorium on the death penalty.

The nonbinding resolution, adopted by a vote of 99-52 with 33 abstentions, came over the objections of nations including China, Iran, Sudan, and the United States, reports Bloomberg.

According to the Agence France-Presse, the debate initially centered on international law and national sovereignty, with the United States saying nations should be allowed to apply the death penalty “in conformity with their international human rights obligations and to ensure it is not applied in an extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary manner.”

But the issue became increasingly divisive after an unlikely coalition of several Islamic countries and the United States attempted to insert a paragraph that would have protected life “at all its stages” — an effort to confer legal rights to embryos and fetuses.

That amendment was defeated.

The draft resolution states that capital punishment “undermines human dignity,” that “there is no conclusive evidence of the death penalty’s deterrent value,” and that “any miscarriage or failure of justice in [its] implementation is irreversible and irreparable,” according to the University of Pittsburgh law-news site, the Jurist.

Next, the resolution must be submitted to the entire General Assembly for a vote. If it is passed, reports the International Herald Tribune, the measure would remain nonbinding but would carry “moral weight.”

It also would call only for a moratorium, not an end to, the death penalty.

Last week’s vote came amid growing debate on the morality of the death penalty in the United States following a recent Supreme Court decision that effectively ended execution by lethal injection until the court rules on whether the method — which has been prone to error and may cause pain — violates constitutional guarantees against cruel and unusual punishment.

In other actions, the same committee, known as the “Third Committee,” passed a motion calling for member states to take greater action against all aspects of sexual violence, according to a report from the U.N. News Center.

ISLIP, New York
Global positioning systems (GPS) are helping municipalities catch workers who goof off on taxpayer time, but the practice is raising some ethics issues as well, according to a report from the Associated Press.

AP reporter Frank Eltman writes that in Islip, on New York’s Long Island, GPS devices saved about 14,000 gallons of gas over a three-month period, compared to the year before. A local official claims that employees now know they are being watched and are not using the town’s 614 official vehicles for personal errands.

While most municipalities installing GPS devices say the purpose is not to catch goof-offs but to improve maintenance and deployment of buses, trash trucks, and snowplows, some employees are crying fowl, saying the devices are a Big Brother-type technology.

Eltman writes: “[I]n Indiana, six employees of the Fort Wayne-Allen County Health Department lost their jobs last year after an administrator bought three Global Positioning Satellite devices out of her own pocket and switched them in and out of 12 department vehicles to nail health inspectors running personal errands on the job.

“Employees were caught going to stores, gyms, restaurants, churches, and their homes. (And the administrator was reimbursed the $750 she spent.)

“One of those who got in trouble, 27-year employee Elaine Pruitt, decried what she called ’sneaky’ methods. She said she had fallen ill and stopped at her home for a long lunch break, returning to work just 38 minutes late.”

Similar cases have resulted in investigations and disciplinary actions in Boston and Denver, according to the report, and Teamsters contacts increasingly contain language that protects workers from being spied on or punished because of the devices.

From the Pew Research Center:

“African Americans see a widening gulf between the values of middle class and poor blacks, and nearly four-in-ten say that because of the diversity within their community, blacks can no longer be thought of as a single race.

“The new nationwide Pew Research Center survey also finds blacks less upbeat about the state of black progress now than at any time since 1983. Looking backward, just one-in-five blacks say things are better for blacks now than they were five years ago. Looking ahead, fewer than half of all blacks (44%) say they think life for blacks will get better in the future, down from the 57% who said so in a 1986 survey.

“Whites have a different perspective. While they, too, have grown less sanguine about black progress, they are nearly twice as likely as blacks to see black gains in the past five years. Also, a majority of whites (56%) say life for blacks in this country will get better in the future….

“Other key findings include…:

• “Big gaps in perception between blacks and whites emerge on many topics. For example, blacks believe that anti-black discrimination is still pervasive in everyday life; whites disagree. And blacks have far less confidence than whites in the basic fairness of the criminal justice system.
• “But there are also areas of agreement. For example, blacks and whites concur that there has been a convergence in the values held by blacks and whites. On the popular culture front, large majorities of both blacks and whites say that rap and hip hop have a bad influence on society.
• “Blacks and whites express very little overt racial animosity. As they have for decades, about eight-in-ten members of each racial group express a favorable view about members of the other group. More than eight-in-ten adults in each group also say they know a person of a different race whom they consider a friend….
• “A 53% majority of African Americans say that blacks who don’t get ahead are mainly responsible for their situation, while just three-in-ten say discrimination is mainly to blame. As recently as the mid-1990s, black opinion on this question tilted in the opposite direction, with a majority of African Americans saying then that discrimination is the main reason for a lack of black progress.
• “On the issue of immigration, blacks and whites agree that most immigrants work harder than most blacks and most whites at low-wage jobs. Also, blacks are less inclined now than they were two decades ago to say that blacks would have more jobs if there were fewer immigrants.”

“A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.”

– Samuel Johnson (English lexicographer, critic, and poet, 1709-1784)